What have I been up to and where have I been?
OH HEY! Me again, I'm back with a lot of content and new insight to share! Ready to dive in?
So, first of all, I have been SO busy and no that's not a virtue just a fact. Since my last blog post I have learned so much in my business and personal life. I'll share a bit of both and try to keep it in balance.
On the personal side, turns out the imposter syndrome from a previous post is tied into some other mental health struggles I have including anxiety and PTSD from 6 years of deployments, separations, back to back babies and oh yeah, living overseas through the craziest last few years any of us have seen. There's a lot more to it and I'm happy to share if it'll help you to know a little more of my story, just let me know in the comments. For now i'll leave it there. I am getting help, I see a therapist each week sometimes on my own and sometimes with Aaron. I have also started supplementing with magnesium and CBD to help with the insomnia and anxiety and I am working out at the crossfit gym again to help me work through stress in a healthier way. Shout out to Conroe Fitness for being a wonderful place to build muscle, resilience, mental fortitude and community. Also, the endorphin boost can't be downplayed. I was formally diagnosed and prescribed a medication for these conditions but I have opted to pursue more holistic methods of care first and will pivot should it become necessary. Don't worry, God has been there for me through it all and my husband has been a real life hero dealing with all of my insecurities and moods as I navigate healing. If there is interest in learning more alongside me as I do about all of this, again, I am happy to share.
For spring break my family spent some much needed "unplug and recharge our souls" time at the lake with friends and I cannot emphasize enough how regenerative it was for all of us. I hardly took any photos and I wasn't on my phone 99% of the time we were there. God has given me some wonderful friends who have poured into me these last few months. From there I went to a bridal shower for my dearest friend Allyson and took photos of her event while in attendance to put into an album and gift her with at her bachelorette weekend. Don't worry, I already spoiled it if it was ever even going to be a surprise. I am terrible at keeping secrets. Kind-of your typical oversharer, obviously.
On the business side of things we're rocking and rolling! I collaborated with a local boutique owner who is just getting her own business up and running and we took some amazing product and branding photos! I'll attach some below for you to take a look at. GO CHECK OUT HER BOUTIQUE: https://charlielouiseboutique.com and be sure to follow her socials! She's a momma of two and has a bit of a spicy side as you'll see from her style. I'm all about helping out and collaborating with another mommaprenuer so you'll see more from the two of us in the coming weeks! May even be adding styling and a boutique discount to my photography services if I get enough interest! What do you think? This was my first session in my CONTINUOUS LIGHT STUDIO! That's right, I have backdrops and lighting and props and chairs and so many things to do in studio sessions now right out of my beautiful sunroom. You seriously have to come check it out! I'm in love with it and loving using it. Someone need to come model for me though because I can only take so many self portraits or pictures of my kids. Lets get your next project on the schedule asap! I have been experimenting with batch editing, masking and creating presets to include with my branding and product photography sessions. Once I have a set of presets for Kayla I'm going to batch them out to her to use on her social media so she can maintain a consistent brand image and I can add it as another service I provide in my business. When I've got all of those steps figured out I'll be sure to share. One tip I learned from this photo-session is keeping the edits super simple to replicate from photo to photo so the whole can be seamless, this meant overlapping subject masking instead of using the brush so that all I had to do was recompute the subject when copying my settings from one photo to another. It was also very important for the clothing to be true to color and texture so that customers know what they're getting so my approach to editing overall was slightly different. If you'd like to see a tutorial of this just let me know! Ok now for the pictures!
I have so much more to fill you in on, renovations, more travel plans, more photo sessions, and a ton of the back end of this business stuff that I've been learning in heaps. There will be several more blog posts in the coming days. If you want more of this content I'd sure appreciate feedback so I know someone out there in the world is reading this and enjoying it. Thanks friends!
All my love,
Amber Ingram