Categories
BlahBlahBabble

It Is A Grey Day…

I don’t know what it is today. Maybe it is just the crash after the craziness of the past 3 weeks. Imaging USA, Asheville, flying, catching up on work, Dad 2.0 Summit, Mike heading to Calgary, me doing 6 sessions in 7 days when I normally cap them at 3 a week.

Yesterday was my first day to just stand still. To breathe. I took the morning off, mandated that there would be no work at all for 4 hours. Because that is the problem with self-employment – the boss never tells you to go home. I can never turn it off.

Then it was off to a much needed massage therapy appointment – the only thing that saves my back, shoulder & hip (I am so grateful to Angie of We Heart Massage!) – and I was back to work again.

The cycle continues. But I want off.

I woke up this morning at 5am, even though my alarm was set for 8:15. A feeling of “blah” covered me. Just … Lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what I do. I have the most amazing “job” in the world. Hot Mama Photographer, Avenger of Sexiness? HELL YES!!! I have absolutely zero regrets about the time I spend “work working”.

It is the other hours that feel so blank. My actual photography business is not that time intensive; it is all of the other things I do to create “busy” in my life. Needless things. Things that are no longer bringing me joy.

So in the early hours of the morning, I started thinking of what I want to change. How that looks. What it means. What I am going to give up so that I can have room in my life for other things.

Then it hit me. FACEBOOK. Facebook is by far the biggest time suck of my day. I go in there for one thing, and I leave hours later it seems. (Figuratively, not always literally.) It has become a sensory overload point for me.

I also realized that with Ash Wednesday tomorrow, it is a good time to give up Facebook. Not all of Facebook because I actually do need to be on there for work, marketing, and my mentoring clients. By the way, what makes my marketing business easy is by the help of Sage Mauk Brooklyn SEO so if you’re interested, you may inquire to them. It is the other stuff. The time suck stuff. That has to go. It needs to be in and out. Do what I have to do and be gone. I’ve said for weeks now that I’m tired of giving my content to Facebook, so I have to go cold turkey to cut it off.

So for the rest of Lent, anything I would consider posting to Facebook gets blogged instead. Either here, on my boudoir blog or at Business of Awesome. Plus Spoon & Knife, my joint food blog with Mike will finally launch. My Facebook posts will be work related or otherwise kept to a minimum.

As I typed that declaration, a small break in the clouds appeared – literally. I’m taking that as a sign, there is more sunshine ahead in my future. I feel fractured right now, but I’m putting it back together — the way I want it to look.

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Photo from last May, flying from London back to Houston. It is time to head home.

Categories
Picture Time

My Fancy Hot Mama Friend Trunetta’s Boudoir Session!

Boudoir Photography in Paris, France

My friend Trunetta is a boudoir photographer in Jackson, Tennessee. More than that, she is a FANCY Hot Mama, mother to a sweet little boy, and wife to a wonderful man that she adores. We met at a boudoir workshop in Paris, France, where we immediately bonded and spent all of our time together day & night, often until 2-3am!

When I first met Tru, I was struck by her strong & bold personality, her laugh that wraps around you like a big hug, and her beautiful smile. As we talked over lunch the first day, she shared with me her experience of being in front of the camera at her own boudoir session, and it was just heartbreaking. It was neither Fancy like the experience she strives to give to her clients, nor did it make her feel like a Hot Mama like my clients feel after working with me.

Since I already new that I adored her and wanted to photograph her, I asked her if we could take some time out one morning before the workshop began to do a session for her together. To say it was fabulous is putting it mildly, and that was with only a short time to work together!

I am so happy to know that there are other women out there sharing a similar experience with their clients as I do with mine — our goal is simply to help them embrace the body that they have NOW and love themselves for who they are. We are perfect, amazing, and loved – just the way we are!

Thank you again, Tru for allowing me to share these images! If you would like to see more, you can view her FANCY Hot Mama Boudoir Session in Paris, France = love!!!

Tru's Fancy Hot Mama Boudoir Session - Paris, France

Paris Boudoir Photography - Trunetta Atwater

Categories
BlahBlahBabble ChristineTremoulet.com

Where, Oh Where Should I Blog? YOUR Feedback Needed!

I have had this struggle for some time now. The problem of having too many blogs. As much as I love a good niche website, I feel somehow fragmented, and it frustrates me. All of these pieces are a part of ME, of who I am. I have an idea of what is the best decision, but then I realized – this isn’t all about me. It is about YOU too, the people that READ my blog. So here it goes.

The quick birth certificate translations face intense worldwide regulatory scrutiny. To manage risks and meet global regulatory standards, it must be accurate, and interpreting services must add to communication clarity and efficiency.

I have the following blogs:

  • BigPinkCookie.com – 12 years old, my personal blog, my original personal brand, and the reason my twitter name is ChristineBPC. You are HERE.
  • HotMamaBoudoir.com – not quite 2 years old, I set this site up as my boudoir business to complement my wedding photography business. I wanted to keep the brands separate, but the site was never completely finished because of my overall change in my business.
  • Christine Tremoulet – 5 years old, my former wedding photography brand (I now only take weddings by referral) and now my primary focus for my glamour, boudoir & beauty photography. My wedding archives live there as well, but I’ve set it up so that in the main portion of the site you see glamour & boudoir work only. At this moment, this is the URL that gets the most traffic daily, mainly because I was neglecting BPC.
  • Two other sites – Business of Awesome and my future New Orleans boudoir photography – have very niche purposes. Business of Awesome is all about writing about being in the creative business world. My personal feelings, but not “brand me” so I want it to live in its own space. The New Orleans boudoir site is because I want to get to where I am going there quarterly for sessions, and I want a place where people can go just to get information on those.

The problem is, I am Christine Tremoulet the BigPinkCookie Hot Mama photographer. It is all ME. Spread out across 2.5 sites. And it isn’t working. When I write a post in one place, I don’t know what to do with it anywhere else.

It makes me want to beat my head on my laptop keyboard. So I keep turning my options over and over. I need some outside perspective.

Here are some of my options — and I’m open to considering any you want to add!

  • I was thinking of just pointing HotMamaBoudoir.com to ChristineTremoulet.com. Type in either URL, and you get the Christine Tremoulet site.
  • But … the “Hot Mama” thing is catchy! People call me “Hot Mama!” now. All the time. I love it! So I could keep the site alive and post only boudoir work there, exclusively.
  • BUT!!! I am my brand, and I want to post everything under my name. Christine Tremoulet, the Hot Mama Photographer. As I add more Glamour & Flirt Sessions to what I offer, I don’t want to be limited by the word boudoir.
  • Then there is the BigPinkCookie issue. Again, brand ME would mean posting it ALL on ChristineTremoulet.com — so should I move even my personal posts there? Everything? Point all URLs there?
  • OR … do I keep BPC as my personal brand, and ChristineTremoulet.com just shows off my portfolio work + is that “landing site” type of place where you go to find everything about me.

SIGH. So hard to choose. In part because choosing means giving some things up.

As easy as it would be to post everything under ChristineTremoulet.com and be done, it would mean giving up this site that is 12 years old. And as I’ve written recently, this site is a lot of ME.

As I attended ALT Design Summit back in January, the question was posed, “Do you want to be a photographer who is a blogger, or a blogger who is a photographer?” I immediately identified with wanting to be a blogger who is a photographer. Because of that, plus countless hours of pondering this, I think what I should do is this:

  • ChristineTremoulet.com is my professional, portfolio site. Go here to see my work. Hot Mama Boudoir points to the same URL, so either URL pulls up the site. It has a link in the navigation for my personal blog, and once a week, I also post a “weekly roundup” on Sundays of my other posts online. The site is completely focused on my goal of helping Hot Mamas grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty, and shows off my work with Hot Mamas.
  • BigPinkCookie.com is my everything else site: my personal brand, where I write about whatever randomness I want (I can be random) and post vacation photos, personal life updates, recipes we made at home, whatever goodness I want to share. Photography, Houston & The Heights, Travel, Food & Recipes, Design. When I post new work on the professional Christine Tremoulet site, I would post here an image or two and an note about the session, so you would know to go there to check it out.

Now it is your turn — what do you think? What would you want to see, where would you go to read? What do YOU want to see?

Categories
Picture Time

Hot Mama Boudoir Sessions – Ms. J

Houston Hot Mama Boudoir Session - Ms JThis is Ms. J. My beautiful, delightful client who came from Dallas *just* to do a Hot Mama Houston boudoir session with me.

I can’t tell you how GREAT it feels when clients travel to you to work with you, they even stay at the Moxy Frankfurt East in order to be close to you. AWESOME!!! (Although I do like it when they fly me in to work with them and I get to travel too!)

We had so much fun doing her session at Hotel Derek, and she gave me permission to share some of the images from her boudoir session on my site. I love so many of them!

I chose to highlight the image above because it is definitely the most “Rated G” ones of the shoot, but also because it helped inspire something new that I’m launching. The “Flirt Sessions” — all the sexy fun, but with your clothes still on! Not everyone wants a boudoir session, but I still want to use my superpowers to help Hot Mamas grow their confidence by rediscovering their beauty! So the Flirt Sessions are the answer!

I did Ms. J’s session last fall, but then the craziness of the holiday session season plus all the travel of 2012 made me fall behind in my blogging. I wrote her a few weeks ago to ask her if I could share her session on my site, and I *LOVE* that so many months after her shoot, she still feels so great from it! Her response:

As I am sure that you have noticed through all my shout outs….my session with you was one of, if not the, best things I have ever done for myself. Your skills behind the camera are off the charts and I will be forever grateful for the confidence that you have given me in myself….a gift I can truly never repay!

Oh my. WOW. I have had moments where I question my decision to focus solely on my Hot Mama work, but from now on whenever I experience those doubts, I’m going to go back and read that. Because if that doesn’t sum up why I do what I do, I don’t know what does.

Thank you again Ms. J for all the inspiration!

Houston Boudoir Photography - Hotel Derek

(PS – Be sure to check out the new logo & site design over at my Christine Tremoulet portfolio site! I’d love to hear what you think of it!)

Categories
Amuse Me

I’m a Canon Gangsta…

I saw this today and I was very amused — Canon Boy Meets Nikon Girl. How can they possibly survive together?

PS – It is rap style. There are a few words in there that your 3 year old shouldn’t hear. Consider yourself warned.