Hi this is Vanessa Joy here with Breathe Your Passion on AdoramaTV and I'm here
with Phillip and Eileen Bloom. Hey guys. Hello.
They are photographers, why don’t you tell me a little bit about what you do on the
photography end. Sure yeah,
we’re primarily wedding photographers. We started in a small town market where we
still live but have expanded our brand to be able to shoot
destinations and around the world. You guys are married so you both have a
hand in the business right? That's right,
we both have been shooting weddings together up until this point.
I've been scaling back a little bit more now because of our kids. We have two
little girls ages 5 and 3 and now we're adopting a two year old boy from china.
In case you didn't have both those hands full.
Exactly. So that'll eat up a lot of my time of course and I just want to be
home more often. That's exactly what I want to talk to you guys about, so I
always ask this question, what's your definition of success? What does success
look like for you guys?
Yeah, so a big part of that for us, that we thought a lot about is not
just balance, because i' think everyone talks about work-life balance and
usually that means something along the lines of scaling back and work
and adding some free time.
We find that there can be a better kind of cycle where everything comes
together in unity. Eileen is wearing our community shirt,
This is like a symbol of everything that we've come to find important where,
you can be doing work that for us is success because it's making the
difference in people's lives. Even if we are making money through a wedding we want
to invest in our couples and in their marriages and do something meaningful
and and we want, when we're doing education, when we have our workshops we don't
want to be, you know, at workshop that you come back for every year. We want you to
have a one workshop experience that allows you to kind of take control back
of your of your life and do something meaningful with it.
We're here such a short time. Yeah it sounds like success to you guys is really about
impacting, you know more meaningful things
in the root of whatever it is that you're doing rather than just on the
surface. Yeah, yeah.
Life is short. So with you guys you know being married working together not the
easiest thing, Eileen what is the biggest thing you two fight about at home. Biggest thing we
fight about? That is a very good question I would say,
business-wise it would probably be our styles. Ok.
He likes using a lot of off-camera flash, I just like a little more natural
light and just kind of softer romantic imagery. So business wise I would say
that.
All right, well then you get to answer at home. I'm kind of a obsessive-compulsive,
I want to reorganize the kitchen and Eileen will come in and remind me
this is my territory, stay out of my kitchen.
Like literally, so that happens. There's some of that. So you have a three-year-old,
a five-year-old and adopting a new baby, baby, toddler? A two and half year old. So
he’s getting into toddling. Ok. So even now before you know that
child comes, what is a day in your life look like? How do you organise, it manage
it and make time for everything that you have to do? So our little kindergartener
goes off to school in the morning and then we have our three year old and so a
lot of times we actually switch off.
Switch off days. So tag team, and we try our best to end work by about 5:30
in the evening. That way we have the evenings together, we can eat dinner as a
family and just shut off work. So if your tag teaming, how many hours a day do you
actually get to do work? Sit in front your computer
if that’s what you're doing. Lately with our three-year-old at home we'll kind of
enjoy the morning with her, we’ll maybe start working about ten. I think mornings kids
are better so they're more pleasant, so it’s good to enjoy the morning. She has her
nap which is the one time that will work together and otherwise
I think the huge thing in our in our work space, in our success has not been
about trying to work more and more. Churning out more and more.
It's been deciding what to cut and where to make things more efficient. So
just putting into practice studio management software, bringing on help.
Who do you use for studio management? For studio management we use 17hats.
Ok, I’ve herd good thing. Yeah 17hats and Shukur
the two really robust ones that I have heard of and seen, that are great.
Then bringing in help, this is the first year that we brought in a studio
manager, graphic designer who are working in the studio with us and associate
photographers.You outsource as well?
Yeah we outsource our basic editing, so that’s the color correcting. Exposure and color.
Who does that go through? That goes through Evolve Edits. Perfect, so
outsourcing studio management, tag-teaming during the day, what are some
tips you guys can give us for people just like you? Whether you're
married or not, you're running a home business but you have to, one, live your
life, two, enjoy your life and three, manage children.
Just what are some tips you can give us? Maybe one from each of you.
One that immediately comes to mind, is when
you're with your family, with your kids, you put down the phone and really just
connect with them. You look at them in the eye and just put work away.
That's amazing, I know my daughter when I pick up my phone and she's in front of
me, sometimes she'll get upset with me and she'll cry and she will want me to put the phone
down. When you're not giving them that undivided attention it might as well not be
attention at all. So I break that up and be inefficient your family and
inefficient your work.
So really scaling those apart. I love that, is that your tip or do you have
another? I’ll add to that. That’s a really good tip,
to be efficient in your work and efficient in your life.
This is just a small one that also comes
to mind related to you know phones and our devices because I think it's a it's
a big thing. Like turning off the notifications is kind of interesting
that biologically we're kind of tuned to be constantly aware of danger, even
though we live in safe societies now, you know maybe you at one time we were
looking out for predators. With those notifications going off
even if you don't pick it up, it completely spins the neurons
in your mind in a different direction and you lose the ability to be creative.
Which for us as artists is so important.
Creativity actually is a result of boredom,
when you're in a info processing mode of mind.
So as much as you can be bored, gaze at the stars, watch a fire crackling in your
fireplace. That actually allows your mind to work.
Where as most people are consuming like five hundred percent more
information each day than they did in the eighties.
So it's a big change in our world. So we are less creative because of that.
Thank you this has been really helpful and I know everyone watching is going to
really enjoy these tips and just having people like you guys that they can
relate to and hear from and know that you know they're not alone and we're not
alone. We are all not alone.
So thank you guys and thank you so much for watching Breath Your Passion here on
AdoramaTV. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you don't miss a
thing. I will see you next time