It is Friday night at 8:30pm and my wife and I are laying in bed with our computers on, while watching ESPN. This is our lives. We put our daughter to bed an hour ago. It is not the most exciting thing ever, but there is a place and a time for it. Work life balance. This should be the last Friday like this for awhile.
I am constantly struggling with the work and family balance. This week has been particularly bad. I have a few big projects going. I am creating a new portfolio, retouching a huge project, had a huge shoot, and am switching from Nikon to Canon.
I am in the process of creating a new portfolio to show to some advertising agencies that I have not worked with. So in addition to my normal work I am having to edit a new portfolio, and then shoot what I need to add to the portfolio. I get to do this on top of my normal work and my personal work. I have one of the creative directors that I work with laying out my portfolio for printing and creating some new marketing pieces with me. With a little bit of work I think this project is going to win at least a local addy award. A bit part of being in my profession is showing portfolios of your work to agencies. I have slacked off on this for the last five years. Putting a portfolio together to show the best of five years and show where I want to go is a tough thing.
I am working on retouching some files for a doctors office that I photographed two weeks ago. I have about 20 files left and I want to finish them this weekend. So I will be up until at least midnight working. Then I will be up by 6am before my wife and my daughter to try and wrap up and get things going for the morning. Retouching interiors and exteriors is not the worlds hardest work, but it can be time consuming to ensure that everything is straight, and all of the colors and tones are consistent.
I’m also in the process of switching from Canon to Nikon. This is going to be a great move for me. The files from the Nikon D800 are way better than anything coming from Canon. Selling my old gear is actually pretty time consuming. On Monday I have some Nikon gear arriving at the house that I can’t wait for.
We do have some cool stuff going on though. Today we had some amazing weather so my daughter and I were able to go to the park for a few hours this afternoon. This weekend we plan on going to the aquarium and taking a walk.
Anyway it is time for me to get back to work.
An Awesome Dad Blog 