Today's guest post is by Davina Fear, Familyness Adventure Seeker, wife, mom, familyness photographer and creator of Love 15. “By day, I photograph families. By night, I build forts the size of elephants with my family. I live in a yellow house and I believe real life is the best getaway ever.” Follow her on Twitter.

As a wedding photographer during the first two years I was in business the start up seemed slow but steady. In the third year the amount of work that came to me as a result of those first two years became overwhelming. I was involved in a variety of projects, not to mention speaking engagements and weddings almost every weekend. It had been one year since my fourth child had been born and the summer had flashed by me before I had even taken a breath.

That’s when I knew that my life had to change.

My business became bigger than me. My life had become my business.

It didn’t feel like I had a real life anymore.

And most of us think that’s what we want.

Until it actually happens.

We think that the rush of what we’re looking for is in the next $1000 that’s handed over to us or the next presentation in front of a room full of people.

An entire summer passed by me while I shot weddings galore. An entire summer when I didn’t see my kids. We didn’t go to the pool, camping, or the other summer stuff that we looked forward to each year when school was out and the sky was clear. Instead, they had a nanny. The entire summer. I have nothing against nannies. I just didn’t plan to have a nanny. Ever.

Life can pass that quickly when we’re not paying attention. It happened to me.

It happens daily. In the little ways.

I was in a place I had never intended to end up.

At the time I was traveling and speaking and shooting sessions and weddings like crazy. I had raised my prices three times and still had plenty of work. It seemed like I was successful. It seemed like I was arriving.

… Arriving to a place I didn’t want to be.

I have a great family so the support I needed wasn’t an issue.

I was the issue.

I meant to be a mom and then a photographer. Not the other way around.

In the past few years I’ve met 100s of women from around the globe. What we all want most … even more than a successful business … is meaning and relationships that we can lean on.

This community of people, these photographers, want more than a successful business. They want a successful life.

I hear that call! I was one of them. Six months ago I knew that Familyness was what I am meant to share with the world and with that assurance came Love 15.

As an industry we talk about balance and how much we need it. And I’ve wondered what that means?

And what I think we really want is to know that each day we’ve honestly connected with the people that mean the most to us.

We want moments every day where we’ve really looked at and seen the people we love most. That’s when we feel like we’re doing okay. That’s when we feel balanced. It means that we’ve done what we were meant to do for the day. We stopped our world and we saw what we’re blessed with.

That’s the purpose of Love 15.

A chance to really see the people we love the most.

I believe it can change the world because it changes our relationships, it makes us feel like a better mom, wife, husband, daughter, friend.

Love 15 is a little prompt each day. One small idea that takes less then 15 minutes.

Each morning an email arrives in your inbox as a little reminder with an adventure idea of how to spend 15 minutes with your spouse, child, friend, or someone you love that day.

The reason the idea arrives first thing in the morning is so that it can be there in your mind, just waiting for it’s perfect opportunity. Many people who are doing Love 15 go about their day as usual and in a pocket of time while they’re sitting and waiting for someone to come out to the car they’ll think, “This is it! This is a Love 15 moment.” And they do their adventure idea on the spot.

When I thought of the Love 15 concept I knew it would have to be easy and guilt-free. It’s not designed to be something that you add to your to do list. It’s an idea that floats around until it finds a landing place. If today got crazy. No worries. Tomorrow is a new day. And that means a new idea for a fresh day. They don’t pile on top of one another. They drift into a day and leave with the day.

Most days we know we want to do something meaningful with the people we love. We just don’t see the opportunities when they present themselves and sometimes when the opportunities do arrive we don’t know what to do in them because it’s unexpected.

Love 15 solves both of those problems.

So, starting today … spend just 15 minutes to a happier life and more familyness.

Love 15 went up to $12/month last Friday but Davina has graciously offered to bring the price back down to Tiffinbox readers until 5.30 pm EST on Tuesday, February 14 … yeah, for Valentine's Day … to $7.50/month. If having “family time” is as important to you as it is for me, I say “jump” on this special offer. I have!

Davina also offers Get To Know You (GTKY) kits – templates, essentially – for photographers. Use the code: seshu20, to receive 20% off anything you put in the cart. Buy either the WEDDING bundle or the INSIGHT bundle and save even more! (nope, I don't make a dime for promoting Davina's products)

Blogs began as personal journals – ones that were kept private or open to the world. Now they are so much more than diaries. They are a way of communicating with your clients. Call it “marketing” if you will, but it works. If you are in need of learning something specific, there is likely a blog that covers that niche.

Photography is no different, though there are tons of photography blogs out there, including this one. What I've envisioned, of course, is to make this site truly community driven. That means hosting guest bloggers, entertaining opposing viewpoints in the comments section and being open to suggestions on making this site better for everyone.

To an extent, I have to be careful about what I publish and even promote. I am contacted virtually every week by a vendor looking to have her or his products and services mentioned here. And I am happy to promote them if (and it's a big IF) the products and services are truly helpful for other photographers.

There are times when I am sent review copies of magazines, books, scripts and Photoshop actions. Obviously, once these are sent to me, I get to keep them. If I am sent camera equipment to test, I do have to return those of course. While I am open to receiving these gifts and opportunities to review items, I am clear on one thing – if the items do not meet my standards or aren't going to be very helpful for other photographers – I reserve the right to not mention it here. Does that sound fair to you? There is little or no point in berating a product or service in public when we all know that we are all just trying to make a go of it. I do and have in the past emailed the vendor privately with my thoughts. So, please be sure that I do act as a filter, for your benefit.

The blog post about creating blog montages was clearly helpful to Richard Esposito, a Connecticut-based wedding photographer. Read his testimonial below:

“Thank you for the suggestion with using Storyboard! I used to do these collage type blogs in the past and it was way too time consuming. I just gave up. I write actions like this all the time, but I didn't have the time to even think this up. The Storyboard script for Photoshop is beyond just an action with all it's options. I purchased it and it will now be a big part of my blogging workflow. As you know, I'm a bit of a workflow junkie. Thank you Seshu and Storyboard! I'm loving the Tiffinbox blog.”

Or, this one by Stacey Doyle on Twitter just today:

I am loving @brandcampblog's Circus Circus to help me with my writing! Thank you @PicSeshu for your review! http://bit.ly/ewlClz

So, here is my question to you – Do you love the products and services mentioned here on Tiffinbox?

Was it an e-book like Ed Verosky's series on Taking Portraiture To The Next Level or Stuart Little's recent tutorial on creating rounded corners in Lightroom 3?

Tell me which blog posts you have found useful. Would you like to see more reviews, tutorials, or both? Email me at seshu at tiffinbox dot org. I look forward to hearing from you all. If you have suggestions on products and services that you feel photographers would find useful, please contact me as well. I am always open to learning about what is out there.

This is a guest post by Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick, NYC based architect, interior designer, photographer AND mom! Alethea has her own business, nestingNYC (formerly alethea cheng fitzpatrick photography). Her first guest post here was “Please Don't Just Give Your Clients A CD or DVD!”

You know how many families want beautiful family portraits in their home but have a hard time getting through the entire process?

As an architect/interior designer and baby photographer, Alethea takes care of the whole thing from start to finish, meeting families in their homes and designing, creating, delivering and installing the perfect custom portrait wall gallery to complement their home and lifestyle.

My eighteen month old son is going through a very affectionate stage (well, apart from when he's screaming his head off in the stroller and looking up at me with teary eyes filled with betrayal because I won't carry him).

He comes up to me, pulls my arms around him and says “‘ug!”

Sometimes he says “mommy ‘ug!”

Yes, it is as heart melting as it sounds.

But it's also particularly meaningful because of an amazing piece of advice I recently received from Kristen Kalp, business and marketing genius at Brand Camp Blog and an incredible photographer in her own right at Essential Imagery.

“Coffee coffee coffee,” she said. “Take people out for lots and lots of coffee. And measure your success in hugs.”

This little piece of advice has changed everything for me – how I think not only about my business but also about my life.

I don't interpret this advice literally. It might not be coffee, it might be a two and a half hour lunch… with cocktails… on a weekday. And hey, I live in New York City, some people kiss and hug everyone … and some people don't really like to hug at all.

But what it means, to me, is that you should surround yourself by people you love, and who love you. It means business dates, not business meetings. It means connecting with people, asking them what their biggest challenges and dreams are, and finding out how you can help them.

It means believing that you have something amazing to offer – and offering it.

It means that all of a sudden something has clicked for me and I finally understand how to grow my business in a way that feels good.

It means that I have fallen in love with marketing.

I've never hated marketing, and as an architect, I probably was “into it” more than most. I started my own business after having my son as a) I went crazy taking photos of him and gained a new appreciation for the power, meaning and value of portrait photography and b) I wanted the flexibility so I could continue to be mostly at home with him. It's also true in retrospect that I've always wanted to have my own business, ever since I started one as part of an extra-curricular activity in high school, but I had become waylaid from that goal over the years.

Even with over ten years of experience as a creative professional with lots involvement on the business side, and even though small business owners are always talking about how surprised they are at how much time they have to spend marketing … well, there's no other way to say this. I was still surprised! I feel a little silly about it now but yes, I suppose I did somehow think that I could put up a website, tell all my friends, and run a few facebook and craigslist ads and I would be up and running in no time!

Well, needless to say it has taken a little more work than that. It's one thing to hear that running your own business involves a lot of marketing, but actually experiencing it is a whole different thing. I have been truly humbled by how much there is to learn, but it has also been thrilling to learn so much so quickly… and think of how much money I've saved by not going back to school to do it!

The good news is that the “hug” approach to marketing means that marketing and, ugh, the even more dreaded (to me) “networking” don't feel like marketing or networking – it feels like living your life. In other words, it feels very natural.

I do think that it means you have to be in the right place to begin with. You have to not only love what you do, but you have to love where you are and the people that you get to meet and work with. Where that is will change over the course of your life. It certainly did for me when I became a mother in a way that was completely unexpected to me – I wanted to be a mother all the time!

Now I know that to some, that may sound like a complete nightmare, and they enjoy their professional life where they get to exist outside of parenthood. I can totally understand that. But for me, that was the last thing I wanted to do, and it still is.

“Being a mother all the time” does not, for me, mean spending all my time with my son, at least not since he was a tiny baby. That would not be good for either of us. But it means building a professional life for myself that integrates well with being a mother not just practically in terms of hours and flexibility, but conceptually. It means building a professional life for myself based on who I am as a person. It means integrating the professional and the personal much more than I ever dared to do before.

Being a mother is part of what enables me to be the photographer, designer and business owner that I now am – it's one of my assets and I draw on it constantly. And it explains why returning to my old and formerly much loved professional life suddenly seemed and continues to seem so unfathomable. I don't want my professional and personal life to compete, I want them to complement one another and feed off one another.

I hear a lot of talk in the photography industry these days about shooting from the heart, following your passion, and doing what you love, and not just from crunchy granola types either. Again, these are easy words to say, but I'm starting to experience how true it is, not just from a creative perspective but from the business side too.

Measure Your Success In Hugs

So simple, yet so powerful, it impacts everything – who you talk to at the next event and how, what your website looks like and says, what your offerings are, the relationships you establish with other businesses and vendors, and how you work with and follow up with clients.

I'll have to come back in a year to tell you the longer term impact, but so far, all signs indicate that it's going to be really great.

I love connecting with new people, telling them about my business and following up with them. Everyone has been so excited and supportive.

I really look forward to filling my monthly newsletter not with sales and marketing copy but with information that I hope will be valuable and interesting to new and expectant parents and families with young children. I feel good about forwarding it to people, rather than self-conscious that I am “marketing” to them.

I've had some fantastic business dates with people I have quickly come to love and I can't wait to see what those relationships bring. I know it will benefit them, their clients and my clients as well as my business – it's win/win/win/win! And honestly, I'm more excited about what I can do to help them than what they can do for me.

In the same way, I'm no longer afraid to ask for business, because I'm not asking for something, I'm offering something.

Finally, I get to create beauty out of joy and happiness every day… and people hug me for it. It doesn't get much better than that.

Who are you going to hug today? And who will hug you?

If you're looking for amazing insight into where you should be going with your photography business, check out Brand Camp Blog and talk to Kristen!