Man. What a year it has been! I hope you and yours have been doing as best you can given everything that’s going on in the world right now.
It feels almost foreign to be blogging again. This is quite possibly the longest unplanned hiatus I’ve taken from the blog… well, ever! But, I’ve also never lived through a global pandemic so it’s definitely taken some time to find my footing.
When the pandemic began, it was like the depression switch was flipped for me. And even though I had been working so hard at trying to get myself together, I just couldn't get out of the funk! That was really tough to manage and my “managing” initially involved a lot of sleeping. Eventually I was able to start implementing a few more healthy coping mechanisms- eating better, taking my supplements, getting some kind of physical activity in, prayer, bible reading, etc. And although those things are helpful, they can take a lot of energy, so I had very little left to be present online and well, that’s where everything is taking place these days!
A few weeks ago I tiptoed back onto social media and have been sharing some photos from recent sessions... and that actually leads me to today’s post!
Since I haven’t been able to share much over these past 6+ months, I wanted to do a recap that highlights the amazing folks I’ve had the honor of working with this year! So let’s go month by month, shall, we?
January
The year got off to an intentionally slow start. I was doing a lot of planning and preparing for things that ultimately didn’t happen as they were supposed to 🙃 but I did have the pleasure of photographing a couple sessions this month- engagement photos for my little brother Nahshon, and some updated photos for the amazingly talented Nicole Crowder- who was just featured in Better Homes & Garden’s magazine this month!
February
This was the busiest February I’ve had in all of my 10+ years of shooting. It was an honor to work with so many beautiful black women! Most of the sessions this month were brand and headshot photos, and we shot what we now know was our last Mini Headshot Special 😭 We definitely made it count though!
March
Before everything shut down, I’d only managed to photograph a handful of brand sessions and one artist session with Aliana Grace Bailey. I was so inspired by my clients this month and really looking forward to the additional clients I had scheduled for the Spring! That made the sudden stoppage of everything a bit more difficult to manage 😓
April
Was spent at home! After letting myself feel sad (for longer than I would have liked lol), I started working on a project that I hope to be able to share soon! I also created the Zoom Guide this month, but then I went MIA so I didn’t promote it- at all lol.
May
As things started to (prematurely) open back up across the country, I tried to figure out what working safely would look like for me and my makeup artists. Additionally, I stayed in touch with my rescheduled clients keeping them abreast of things and towards the end of the month, was able to safely shoot a couple of those rescheduled sessions.
June
I did way too much in June, let me just tell you that 😩 I had 2 rescheduled sessions at home, then traveled to Atlanta to photograph the 8 clients I was originally scheduled to to work with in April. Now that may not sound like a lot, but to accommodate all of the Atlanta sessions, I had to double-up, and on one day triple-up on sessions! Thankfully all of the photos turned out great, but the last hurdle I had to overcome this month, was my 128gb memory card being corrupted 😣 It had 2k+ photos on it from 5 different sessions! The night it happened, I sobbed myself to sleep. Thankfully my dad was able to help me find recovery software (EaseUS) so I could pull the images, but man. What a physically and emotionally exhausting trip that was!
July
After such an intense month, July was a WELCOMED slow down. Only 3 sessions this month 😅 A couple brand sessions and one grad session!
August is still in progress so I’ll share what we’ve been up to this month in a future post :)
So much has changed over these past few months and even though folks are out and about more than ever, the pandemic has not gone away. It’s actively gotten worse here in the US, and it’s difficult at times trying to manage my anxiety with everything that’s going on. ⠀
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Too many times I’ve been nervous thinking is this covid? or allergies? or stress? or some other unrelated issue but that has covid-esque symptoms 😭 This is not going to be a thing that’s over quickly, so I’ve really been reevaluating how I do things and how I want to do things in the future.
That being said, the one thing I have adjusted so far is the booking process. The majority of the sessions I’ve shot over the past few months have been with clients who were already on the calendar, but moving forward the booking process will be done via waitlist and the calendar will only available for booking 2 months at a time.
Yep! So if you’re interested in working together, you might want to add your name to the waitlist!
Booking for September and October will open tomorrow (Monday, August 17) to those on the waitlist.
This post is much longer than I intended it to be, but I hope it brought a smile to your face to take a look back at the amazing clients I’ve had the privilege of working with so far this year!
What’s that saying- thank goodness we don’t look like what we’ve been through? That’s exactly how I feel when I look at these beautiful faces. 2020 has been a tough year for all of us, but I’m grateful that I get to be apart of (and capture) even just a few joyful moments with my clients and I can’t wait to do the same for you in the coming months 🧡
-Danni