Today is my last day at my full-time day job.

When I was in high school or college, I never really expected to one day have my own business.  In high school, I wanted to be an actor and spent any free time I had in the theater, both acting and directing (yes, I was one of THOSE kids).  In college, I first decided I wanted to teach theater, but then realized I couldn’t get my degree in theater education, so I instead majored in English education.  I then taught, both high school and middle school, which I absolutely loved, but just couldn’t manage to get into a suburban school district and was instead stuck in CPS (for those non-Chicagoians, that means that I was teaching in gang-infested areas in the city).  I had the opportunity to become the photographer at the small university where my husband works, so I jumped at the chance.  Photography was just as much of a passion as teaching, and there were some incredible benefits offered at the university.

And that’s what I’ve been doing for three years.  My job has taught me a lot about photography and with working with people older than high-school age.   It allowed me to be published in brochures and magazines that have distributions in the tens of thousands, and I met some wonderful people along the way.  And, in fact, I’m still going to be doing some freelance work with the university, and I’m grateful to be able to still work with them.

But, I’m excited to be completely on my own.  It’ll allow me to not only have a faster turnaround time with images, but I can offer more fun products, fine-tune some business practices, branding, and website items, and give each of my clients even more personal attention.  I am a perfectionist by nature, and I’d rather do one job fantastically well than do a good, but average job at two things.

So, keep checking back… lots of exciting things are going to be happening.