Most clients that come through our doors only see half of our jobs here at BennyAni Photography! We always put the clients first when we’re in a session but once those doors close, we are back to the desk!
Our days always start with coffee. The first thing we do when we walk in the door is put a pot of coffee on! We both run on coffee the whole day. Sometimes clients are shy when we ask if they would like us to make another pot. What they don’t realize is no matter what, the coffee pot is almost always empty at the end of the day!
The next thing we do is set up for the day. As the assistant, I’m usually the one who sets up the studio for the next session. Marggie definitely has better things to be doing, like editing. For each session we send out a questionnaire for clients to fill out telling us what their color preferences are and asking for any specific requests. I take a peek at those and set up according to the colors and preferences!
The newborn section gets warmed up, oils go in the diffuser, and outfits get picked out! That area takes the most set up time but it's also the most important! It can really make or break the start to our session.
If we don’t need to be set up immediately, I go through the email inbox and get back to everyone as quickly as I can. I have a hard time even leaving at the end of some days knowing I have to wait until the morning to get back to people who email back 10 minutes after I leave at the end of the day. We strive on promptness when it comes to replying to our clients!
Once our clients are here and we’re getting to work, we LOVE to chit chat! We love to get to know new clients and grow our relationships with the ones who have been here before. If you have been here before, I’m sure you know this first hand. Sometimes it’s hard to get out the door.
After the sessions are over, Marggie is back to uploading, editing, and getting our clients those images we work so hard for! Every once in awhile we also receive orders for birth announcements and she designs those as well. Those are a lot of fun and a great change of pace through long days of editing!
You can imagine when we have a 3 - 4 shoots a day, we have pretty full days! Some days it's hard to get to anything else done. Our average day seems to have a 6 month session or two, a newborn, and often a Cake Smash. Days can get pretty full! At some point in the day we get to our lunch. It can be hard to make time for it some days when we just want to keep cruising with work! We try really hard not to give into Jimmy Johns or Thai food, but some days we just can’t resist when we’ve worked a busy morning! Door Dash is amazing!
Whenever we are caught up on work we like to pick back up on our projects. Whether it is a Cake Smash set design, a new business adventure, or just keeping up with the studio and all the messes we manage to make so quickly! My personal favorite to work on is Cake Smash sets! They are so creative and its nice to take an artsy break every once in a while! My favorite one to make was the pumpkin set we did in October. I was able to paint pumpkins and arrange the flowers. How can you call that work?! Plus the beauty of putting those sets together is having those items for future use! We now have lots of flowers on hand! Hobby Lobby should know me by name soon if they don’t already.
A couple other things we do regularly are several shopping cart updates and for Marggie, researching new poses to try out. We try to get new props every once in awhile as they are investments in furthering Marggie's photo style and the quality of her images. She also likes to take the time to look at other photographers and check out what new poses and props they are using. We like to try new things here and keep up with what clients are looking for. We also love to be prepared, even if our shelves are overflowing!
Like I said, the studio gets messy fast and keeping it organized is important when you need to work fast during sessions. The faster we can move with kids, the more time and smiles they tend to give us! That means a lot of the time Marggie needs to use a prop and then just throw it to the side and move on! I’m here to keep up with all of that. It can be a lot of scrambling but it means Marggie gets to keep her energy for making goofy noises and faces at little ones to make them giggle! Big smiles are our favorite. However, those sober/big eyed images top our favorite list too.
Our days here are long but some days they go so fast! I have it easier than Marggie, I get out of the studio earlier than she does most days. There is lots to do but Marggie always has the most to do. She’s the only one that can edit so her list is never empty. We love our jobs and we know we are beyond blessed to work them! I can tell you I sit next to Marggie all day and I've never heard her complain about what we do every day! We are fortunate to have you all as clients and look forward to seeing you here at the studio! Come join us and be a part of one of our busy days!
We hope to see you soon!
