I have been wanting to post this for a while now but just never sat down and took the time.

As most of you know, about a year and a half ago, Katie, my wife, started a photography business.

Understand that when she first approached me with this idea my reasoning for agreeing was based upon a "wellllll...okay" sort of mentality.  I honestly believed that we would spend a lot of money and time and the result would be somewhat of an "eh....".

Wrong.

We started off spending what seemed like a fortune on cameras, equipment, logos, designs, web hosting, etc.  We also purchased Adobe Photoshop which I knew she would never use because she hated it when "blogger" or "Picasa" didn't act right and I usually had to "fix" it. 

Wrong again.

The first few times she sat down with Photoshop I tried to help.  I had some minor knowledge of the application because every now and then my job requires me to do some design work.  I hate design.  I hate it because I am NO GOOD at it.  I can take someone's design and implement it programmatically but that is it.  All of that said, I tried to help her a little.  I thought I knew the 'right' way to work Photoshop.  I thought I knew the 'professional' way to work Photoshop.

All together now... "WRONG."

You see, I have learned a lot about Katie throughout this process.  She's a perfectionist when it comes to her work.  She's creative when it comes to her work.  She's good at her work.  She is an artist of the most unique kind because she made photography her own.  She took the business of photography and it flourished because she made it hers - unique and non-replicable. 

I come from an industry where "patterns and practices" are what everyone follows.  My industry (software engineering) is based upon good standards.  The same goes for many businesses I have seen.  A lot of software engineers, graphic designers, database designers, etc base their success on HOW they did something and HOW they implemented the standard (standard = the 'right' way to do things) that they stopped caring about the result of their work.  In some ways, professionalism becomes more about 'knowing' than about 'doing'. 

Katie did it.

Katie took her gift of photography and made her tools (cameras, software, etc) adhere to that gift.  She didn't conform to the standard and she was wildly successful.  I mean, I truly didn't believe she'd make a profit.  I planned our finances around that belief.  She made Photoshop her own.  She made art with a very advanced tool.  Art is not a standard.

Katie took pictures on the weekends and edited on the weekday nights.  She spent the days with the kids being a mom (which she told me yesterday she "loves being a mom more than anything else").  She became so busy and so popular that we had to slow things down and start turning clients away.  To this day I am amazed.

The response she received was incredible.  She never advertised; yet, within a few months she was booking clients 6 months or more into the future.  She was asked to present her material at a booth for the employees of David Maus Toyota (David Maus Jr. hit on her but that's a story for a different time).  She filled a 1 terabyte hard drive (that's 1000 gigabytes for those of you in Ocala) with client's photos.  I started getting really nervous about taxes because I hadn't planned for this at all (even after costs and write-offs How I Wonder Photography still owed Uncle Sam his part).  Again, she was wildly successful beyond what I could have imagined.

All of this goes to say how respectfully proud I am of Katie for being the best wife, mother and business-owner I have ever known.

Labels: business, How I Wonder, Katie, photography, pictures, technology