Austin... it's a weird place, man... but it's a cool place. A place to just let your creativity and own thoughts flourish. At least that's how I felt! My friends and I had a great time visiting, being crazy and whoopin' it up! I'm so happy I brought my camera with me. My wee Nikon D700 with a 50 mm 1.4 lens, did just the trick. Small enough for my bag and way lighter than the D3s.

So... this is how the trip started off... picked up from the airport by some real Austin folk...

the tone was set! {obvi I was there to party...NO KIDS)

p.s. that pregnancy test was our sick joke on the boys! no one is having a baby :)

{Audience: Photographer, mother, taker of pitcha's}

While my husband {who's very business saavy} asked me what my 2015 business goals are going to be my reply was... to survive. hahahaha, no seriously! With 2 young ones around here I have no idea what my life will be like. I'm certainly prepped for the shoots I've already taken on, they're in my mind, I'm prepared to execute perfectly... but bringing on new jobs is not in my wheelhouse at the moment... in turn I'm coining this year my "discovery year"... I want to have a more open dialogue with other photographers so we can learn and grow together. In my discovery year I want to discover new parts of photography that i've never explored and push myself to learn new tricks. Most importantly, I want to share it all here on my blog with you!

...so here we go! Below are my 2 top priority goals for 2015 that I want to share with you...

1. Perfect my personal photo filing system

of course I have my own unique workflow in order to run my business efficiently, but what about my personal life?

{my goal} - have a beautifully archived year in photos printed, album style. So my files need to be easily accessible and organized in one place so I can dump them into my album builder at the end of the year. I'd like to curate this selection more over the years... but for now, she's growing so fast I want them all!

{how I plan to achieve} - I just updated my external hardrive with another trusty (so far so good) Guardian MAXimus so this is perfect timing. Here is the path I will use to keep everything easy to locate and in order.

2. Try having a newborn shoot at my house

{my goal} - I am creating a trustworthy and quality brand which means my work needs to be on point (as always). To have consistent work my lighting needs to be consistent and I need to know it well. I know the light best in my house and even more so in Sienna's sun filled playroom {which I've strategically purchased all furniture to be white so it bounces light even more :)} I think it would be the perfect location for a newborn studio but the thought of having customers in my home freaks me out a bit... mostly because I'd have to clean 24/7! So maybe I can test it out to see what in all needs to go into having a home studio and will it be worth it to me financially.

{how I plan to achieve} - well what'dya know?! I'm about to have a newborn here 24/7 so I can test the lighting out on him... if it works then I'll invite a client over and see how it goes!

That's all for now folks, stay tuned and check in with me to see my progress... until next time,

AK-47 {what my old field hockey teammates used to call me, hehehe}