Hello friends,
Happy Thanksgiving! Andrew and I would like to take a moment and thank you, our readers, clients, friends, parents, and families…for an incredible 2009. Without the support of all of you, we definitely would not be where we are today. You trusted us with what we consider one of the most important days of your lives. And, we weren’t just trusted with the food coming out right, the decorations looking perfect, or the schedule going smoothly (note: those things are ALL incredibly important as well!), we were trusted with preserving your wedding day memories; those little moments, those big moments, the “I love you” whispers throughout the day, the loud joyous laughter when old friends came together, and most importantly, telling your story through photographs that your family will keep for generations. And to our clients (past, present, future), if you didn’t already know, you should know just how honored and blessed we are to not only be part of your day, but be invited into the intimacy of your lives.
So, thank you. Thank you for letting us love what we do so dang much.
About a year ago, I stumbled on this video made by This American Life’s radio host, Ira Glass.
Here are a few lines from it that have stuck with me over the year:
- … Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me, is that if you’re watching this video you’re somebody who wants to make videos (take photos), right? And all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean?
- Like you want to make TV (take wedding pictures) because you love TV (weddings). You know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just like love, OK? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.
- But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.
- And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.
Over the last year, we have seen the “gap” between our taste and our ability slowly close. One key thing that Ira says is:
…your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit…
He goes on to say:
…the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work.
And this is where we have been so thankful this past year. We went from photographing 17 weddings in 2008 (our first full year, with a season starting in May 2008), to booking 39 this year (with our season starting in February and going through December). Thanks to you, we have done a lot of work. A ton. And, thanks to you, we have gotten better with each wedding. To be quite honest, if we weren’t striving to get better with each session, we probably wouldn’t want to keep doing this. So, again, thanks.
And now, we will leave you guys two images from two weddings we photographed recently, both in Austin, Texas. First up, our good friends, Esther and Jeff:
And, secondly, Kelley and Andy, who were willing to risk their lives (and the lives of their wedding party) on Austin’s very busy highway 360 for this photo.
Thanks for stopping by everyone! We hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend!
-Jason & Andrew
P.S. What are you getting for Black Friday this year?
P.P.S. Should we have a Black Friday sale?? 😀
