If you read our blog weekly and pay attention to details, you’ll notice this one’s been posted a bit later than usual! That’s because we just finished up shooting non-stop for 4 days straight with our clients for Champ Within’s EPIC Weekend – more to follow on that in a later post! 🙂 In the craziness leading up to it we weren’t able to meet our goal of having our blog post ready to go before we showed up to shoot, but now we’re realizing that could have been for a great reason! As we drove home from the 96-hour whirlwind project that is “EPIC Weekend” we realized we were in need of some MAJOR recharge time! It got us thinking that maybe we aren’t the only ones who have felt that way and that we should share our top 3 Ways to Recharge after a long shooting event or any emotionally or physically draining even for that matter!
Connection Time
One of the first things we feel like we need after a long shoot day is time to re-connect. That might sound weird since we’re a husband and wife team and just spent the day working together, but that’s really the point: we just spend the day working together. Not sure about you, but we’ve never had as deep of a relationship with co-workers as we do with our spouse. After a day of manual labor, strategizing, problem-solving and photographing, we both long for time to connect on a different level outside of work.
And it goes beyond that, really. As parents, we love the time to re-connect with Brody and Paislee as well. After being gone shooting for 4 days, we made sure we cleared our schedule to be able to spend quality family time together talking, playing games, (right now the Nintendo Wii is a family favorite) and just enjoying life together.
Create a Stress-Free, Restful Environment
This may seem like a no-brainer, but we aren’t just talking about getting some zzz’s! Yes, rest is important (especially after getting next to none for 4 days), but we’re talking about way more than that here. It started with us making sure we had a way to get our kids and enjoy the connection time with them, but continued beyond that. Instead of coming home and adding pressure to ourselves by trying to figure out what to cook for dinner with an empty fridge, we chose to outsource dinner! We let someone else make it for us so that we could eliminate that from our to-do list.
We also didn’t sign ourselves up for anything for a couple of days after our shoot. We knew we’d need time to decompress and get life back to normal with laundry and groceries without the added pressure of other commitments. Allow yourself time to truly rest and get your foundation back in place so that you can be more effective when you do get back to the grind!
Have a Plan in Advance
This is a huge one for us and honestly, something we used to really struggle with! It’s really easy to get caught up in planning for the work you have ahead and really hard to remember the work that will come after. Think of the photo editing, the timelines, and expectations and pressure you may feel from your clients, emails and phone calls you missed, etc. It can all really add up to a whole lotta work and pressure if you don’t plan in advance for it.
Before leaving for our project, we planned out our editing timeline and communicated it with our client. We ensured we had the time to catch up on the emails and phone calls that are needed to keep our business moving forward – not ignoring them to get onto editing ASAP. Don’t forget to plan for the work on the back end of a photoshoot!
Bonus: Get a Massage!
In a perfect world, this one would happen weekly! We’re both suckers for a good back massage!
After long shooting days like we’ve just finished, our bodies feel pretty darn sore! We (especially Jon) used to feel pretty silly about being sore from taking photos until something happened that changed our perspective. One of the TRANSFORM coaches – a legit fitness coach – picked up our camera rig and said, “Woah, you carry this around all day!? You guys must get massages after every shoot, right?” He was amazed at the weight of our Canon 5D MKII with a 70-200mm lens and a Nissin MG80 Pro mounted on the hot shoe.
After we got done joking with him about creating a “photographer’s workout” series for YouTube (<—Anyone in??) we realized that it’s no coincidence our bodies are sore after shooting all day – it really can be taxing on the body.
That same coach’s second comment about massages after every shoot initially made us laugh, but then we realized how much truth there was to what he said. If we don’t take care of our bodies, how can we expect them to take care of us and enable us to do our jobs?
So, consider this doctor’s orders – grab a massage here and there, especially after long shoots! Your body will thank you!
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