Hey, everyone!! It’s me again, Katie from <3 always Matilda photography. This month I’ve been having a hard time deciding what I want to blog about. What can I say that is valuable? Truth be told, my journey is only starting out and I’m still finding my way, so I worry that what I have to say won’t be what everyone is here to read. I have decided to share some images that speak to something that I feel is SO important. More than making great portraits or being able to process your photos with the best of ’em, I think making a personal connection with my clients is on the top of my priority list.
Let me tell you a little story about how far this connection can go. A year ago, I ran a special to gain experience. For $80, I would go to people’s homes, do some holiday photos and give them the digital images. I found a really special family this way. I would LOVE to show you some of their holiday images that I took back then because it lends itself to my point. The good good news is that I delivered them their session. The bad news is, this is the only photo I have from that very first session, downloaded from facebook.
A few months later they called me again. My prices were still low, but they were higher because I wasn’t running a portfolio special anymore. They booked me anyway. I went to their home and did a 1st birthday cake smash for their little twin boys. The good news is that there were such cute photos of little toes and little fingers covered in blue icing. The bad news is that I don’t have a single photo to show you from that session. My son dropped my hard drive and, like one of my fellow monthly contributors, it cost me around $1200 to get the photos recovered. I lost all of my old client sessions, they were unrecoverable. I lost this one pending gallery. I lost all my personal photos from the end of 2014 through March 2015 and random photos from random folders before then. I lost any material that I had: actions, workshop info… you name it, it’s gone. We had a relationship, though. We cried together over facebook messenger… let’s face it – I cried for days. Then we pulled together, met up and took photos of the kids under the cherry blossoms. The older kids were both born in April so this was symbolic for their family as well as a gorgeous back drop.
Something even more special about this Mama? I didn’t have a babysitter for the one day and time that we could get it together before all of the cherry blossoms fell off of the trees. She told me to just bring those kiddos with me!!
I wasn’t sure if I would ever hear from them again, no matter how much they loved their images, no matter how much I improved from that very first portfolio Christmas session. I put them through so much!!! When I announced my fall mini-sessions a couple months ago, do you know who was the very first person to contact me?! You’re right!! It was the mother from this family. They booked two sessions. They still loved me!! My heart was bursting.
I’m just finishing up their halloween fall mini session and I can’t wait to deliver it. The best part of this job is the joy we deliver with our photos and hearing from clients about how much they love their images. We watch our clients grow. We make art and connections and friends. That’s pretty amazing.
<3
*image of Katie by My Four Hens Photography