It’s Contagious

Excitement! It could be adrenaline topped off with the remnants of a Starbucks tall (shortest cup) Americano I finished, but it’s been 2+ hours since the coffee and Sara and I are talking about work and getting excited.

When have I ever been able to say that after coming home from 12 hours at work – starting at 6am after 4 hours of sleep, no less – I am too excited to sleep right away? Or that the reason I’m awake is because I couldn’t wait to see the photos I took at work? Or that I have been walking around the same campus with 20+ pounds of camera gear on me for 20 of the last 72 hours and had pep in my step on my (4 block) walk to church at 9:30 this morning?

While reviewing today’s engagement session of Jaclyn & Tim it hit me how our word-of-mouth marketing and web-search-optimized website have brought us all of this year’s wedding couples to date from or taken us out of state. We started off in April celebrating with Katie and Joe in Elmhurst, Illinois, photographed Molly & Aaron in town from Chicago, traveled to Lansing, Michigan for one of my best pals’ Charley & Katrina’s wedding day, Bridget and Doug came to town from Ohio, and yesterday Kim and Scott were in from New Jersey. Today I shot with Jaclyn and Tim and they drove 5 hours up from Ohio with their chocolate Labrador Griffin for an engagement session for their October wedding in Grand Rapids, Michigan!

While out for coffee tonight with a same-named friend Eric, we got to talking about wedding days and work. He has worked as a wedding videographer and we traded funny stories from our perspectives behind the lenses. I stopped while my Americano was at the perfect drinking temperature and marveled how much I am blessed – first off that I work in such an exciting and fun environment and that secondly my wife is as excited about it as I am.

Working for yourself is work still, but we tend to quickly forget it’s work when we get to share this much creative excitement. I can’t thank our clients enough for inviting to share their wedding day with them. Getting excited comes full circle pretty quick, too. When Zach saw me check the camera LCD during his engagement session and say “oh yeah” at a shot I lined up, he mentioned how he and Jacqueline fed off our excitement about their photos.

This stuff is seriously contagious.