name: Katie

age: 26

current city: Brandon, MS

living situation: In mi casa are my husband (Clayton), seven-year-old football card extraordinaire (Caedon), two-year-old little Dora the Explorer (Addie Kate), and two little pups, Bax and Mack. We live on a golf course in Brandon, MS and love it! We moved here in 2009 so that I could do my photography at home with the fabulous trees and greenery in the background. We are also now  closer to my husband’s work, which offers after school care for my son.

occupation: natural light portrait photographer for Mary Moment Photography

how do you structure your time and space? Structure is my dear old friend who tries to run far away from me despite my best efforts to keep him close at all times! Because I am a natural light photographer, there is no need for me to have a studio outside of the home. However, having an in-home studio makes it difficult to separate family from work. I have created a strict portrait schedule in order to balance my family life with my work life. I used to work every Saturday of the year, and sometimes I would work four to five shoots a day. I had to quickly take hold of my sanity and realize that I was missing a whole lot by shooting so much. I now schedule my sessions so that I shoot Mondays, Fridays, and one Saturday a month. This gives me time for soccer games and birthday parties, and energy for my family when I return from working. My husband also made a very important rule: I cannot shoot and edit in the same day. I used to tend to shoot all day and then edit until midnight. This practice left no time for me to see the fam. I love my husband’s rule! Speaking of my husband, I have an amazing one. He works in pharmacy at a local mental health clinic and is wonderful when it comes to watching the kiddos on the weekends while I am shooting. We put everything on a calendar so we can make sure that he has his free time, I have my shooting time, and we all have family time.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? Right now my season is winter. I am in my busiest season and am busier than a bee in a flower garden. My son just started first grade, and I am a room mom and an active PTO member at his school. My son also has soccer, which my husband coaches, so we have practice twice a week along with games every Saturday morning. My daughter is only two, and though she has nothing recreational on the calendar, she still keeps me on my toes! My photography is growing super duper big, and my mom is in her last stages of research with her lung cancer. Right now, I may not be seeing sunshine all the time, but soon comes spring and everything will be bright as daises.

-what season(s) preceded this one? Let’s say I just emerged from fall. This past season wasn’t the best since it is when I found out that my mother has stage three lung cancer. For a little while last season, I had to put a halt on everything that didn’t involve my mother so we could deal with the news and pray and pray for guidance for the future. Also during the time, I shot seven weddings back-to-back. After a season like that, I would say that I felt like falling… so fall it is.

-what season(s) might your future hold?  Never will I EVER say that my future holds a cold season. I believe we will have sunny skies from here on out. From now on, we are going to only allow seasons like the Mississippi summer — bright, sunshiny, and happy! I believe my mom will hopefully have surgery to remove the tumor, my little ones will continue to grow and learn and be amazing people, and my husband and I will keep enjoying our children and loving each other. As for my photography, I leave that up to my clients. I love my clients, and I believe that the harder I work, the more they will come back and bring their friends. My future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!

favorite family activities: We love taking spontaneous family trips! We love our annual trip to the beach. I have gone every year since I was 12, and my entire family goes, including my siblings, nieces, and nephews. Unfortunately, this past summer was the first time we did not go due to my mother’s illness, but we made a camping trip out of it and enjoyed each other so much! Family is my favorite. I love spending time with my family and seeing my children play with their cousins. It is honestly the best thing ever.

favorite solo activities: I love being an activist. I love raising awareness and funds for Heather’s T.R.E.E., which was founded when I lost my best friend due to domestic violence. I love speaking with young men and women regarding issues that they are facing and how they can get out of harm’s way. My friend was a beautiful, smart, college graduate who had her whole life ahead of her. She was surrounded by the best family and friends. We never dreamed this could happen to her. I believe that if I knew then the warning signs of domestic violence, I could have done something different. If others can know what I know now about the warning signs of domestic violence, maybe they can be saved or save a friend.

katie and heather

Heather also is the reason I am now a photographer. Her name was Mary Heather Spencer, and I created Mary Moment Photography a couple months after her death and several conversations I had with her family. Even before I became a professional photographer, I always had a camera around and took photographs of friends. Thankfully, I have many photographs of Heather and me together. I took one of the photographs at a friend’s wedding, and she said, “You really need to start charging people for this. You’re kind of good at this picture taking thing”. 

After Heather’s death, which was when I was eight months pregnant with my daughter, I realized that life is short, and we must do everything we can to be happy and help our loved-ones to be happy. I am now taking her advice as well making sure that her life and her death are not forgotten. I miss her every day.

source(s) of inspiration: My Mother. My mother is the reason I am who I am. She is the one that started my photography infatuation. She has taken pictures since I was born, and I remember growing up with a camera in my face. Her love for photography and great advice have made me the photographer I am today. Her outlook on life has made me the mother and women I am today. She is currently being treated at MD Anderson in Texas for a possible Lung Cancer removal. She was diagnosed in May of 2010 with stage three lung cancer and  has endured chemo and radiation, pneumonia, and blood transfusions. She has fought this cancer for her children and grandchildren, since we need her so much.  She inspires me to fully live and love life. I want to be the best mom in the world to my children, and it’s all because my mom is the best to me.

best MakeShift moment: This probably… Wait. Let me rephrase. This IS the craziest thing I have ever done, and I hope to never do it again! I had a bride switch her wedding date to a day when I already had another wedding scheduled. I shot both weddings in one day! I had enough time to get from one to the other since one was in the early morning and the other was in the late evening, but I was pushing it! I literally ran from the reception of the morning wedding to get ready for the evening wedding, and I made it just in time! Needless to say I will never do that again but I am proud to say that I pulled it off, and that I loved and enjoyed both weddings. Also, for both weddings, I had amazing second shooting assistants who saved my life. Phew, makes me sweat just remembering it!

find katie on the web:

• photography business: www.marymomentphotography.com
• photography blog: www.marymomentphotoblog.com
• heather’s T.R.E.E.: www.heathersree.org

[if you or someone you know would make a good “mother of invention,” please check out the nomination process and questionnaire located on the sidebar to your right.]

first name: Carol

age: 33

current city: Hermosa Beach, CA  (near Los Angeles)

living situation: I live with my husband and our two boys, ages four and two. We recently added a fish, who only became a member of our family because it was a favor at a birthday party.

occupation: Wedding & Portrait Photographer 

how do you structure your time and space? I currently have an office in our house. I work about 30 hours a week and have a nanny who comes four days a week for the first half of the day. This allows me to have free afternoons with my boys and cook dinner. 

I squeeze in grocery shopping when needed and try to do fewer, bigger trips every other week than many small trips every week. I keep an ongoing list of what’s needed to keep me organized and keep the grocery store time streamlined.

My mother-in-law also comes one day a week to help us. She will take the boys all day and stay either overnight or until bedtime, to ensure that my husband and I have a date night to catch up. I cherish these date nights and uninterrupted conversations! 

I spend many weekend days away shooting weddings or families on location. I feel blessed that my husband enjoys taking care of the boys when I work during the weekend. 

When I get busier in the fall and add fifteen and more hours to my work week, I scrape the help together the best that I can.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives, 

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? I think I have the best of both worlds right now, working at home and being available to my children during the day while they are still young.  It gets tight, space-wise, with my gear and post-production and office work, but I still prefer being close and listening to what’s going on downstairs.   

It can be very frustrating when my family needs me during my work time, since I try to keep the times divided. Sometimes I just have to go to the office and shut the door and ignore the polite little knocks or crying for “mama,” and sometimes I just “arrive” at the office a little later than usual.  It takes will power & patience to work from home, but I wouldn’t trade it. 

-What season(s) preceded this one? Before I had children four years ago, I was a photographer, only I worked many more (uninterrupted) hours while I was building my business. 

-What season(s) might your future hold? Eventually, when my children are in school for more hours, I would like to have a studio I can go to for my work, and for shooting and meeting with clients.  Also, I would love another assistant and an intern!

Favorite family activity: Loading up the stroller and going to the beach.  It’s the most fun AND easiest place to watch our children, and it wears them out!

favorite solo activities: grocery shopping, jogging, yoga (only once or twice a month). wait… answering this question makes me realize I need more time to do more solo activities.

sources of inspiration: 

• Finding new favorite music- I love Pandora & XM
• Reading my favorite blogs, websites & magazines 
• Gardening with my children
• Fabric shopping ( I don’t really sew but I enjoy looking at the colors and patterns)
• Online photo forum with other photographers

best MakeShift TOOL (i just added this category because its so important): The iphone. I have educational games and filtered YouTube clips downloaded for bribery when an important work phone call comes in during my time with the kids. Usually, I try not to take calls when I’m with them, but sometimes, the “shapes and puzzles” game really comes in handy!  It also comes in handy in doctors offices and airplane trips.  (Search the itunes app store for “toddler teasers,” a shapes, numbers and letters quizzing game, and your two year old will quickly learn to recognize a hexagon!)

best MakeShift moment: One Sunday evening, after a long weekend of celebrating our son’s first birthday, the door bell rang. My mom ran in the kitchen and told me that a couple had arrived to meet with me about their wedding. With all the focus on our house guests and birthday festivities, I completely forgot that I had booked a meeting for that night (another hazard of the home office!). We all looked around and saw the same thing: our place was a disaster with newly opened toys, wrapping paper, suitcases and lingering trays of party food. Luckily, we lived right around the corner from a French pastry & coffee shop. I asked the couple to wait one minute while I quickly gathered my sample albums and laptop (which had a slide show of my work), changed out of my play clothes, and ran out the door. As we walked into the coffee shop, I put my hand in my pocket and luckily found a $20 bill to treat the couple to a tasty treat. Whew!  It turned out to be a great meeting, and eight months later, I photographed their wedding. This makeshift “near crash” moment was only possible because of our “village” that holds us together:  grandparents, friends, and extended family. I don’t know what I would do without all of them and their support. 

find carol on the web:

• website: www.carolreach.com
• blog:  www.carolreach.wordpress.com

first name: Erin

age: 31

current city:  Birmingham, AL

living situation: I live in a house with my husband, 21-month old son, and our golden retriever named Atticus. We are expecting a baby in September.

occupation: Photographer, self-employed. My  husband and I are both photographers who run our business together. I shoot mostly kids and family sessions, he does commercial work, and we photograph weddings together. We share all the other gazillion responsibilities of running a business including administrative tasks, communicating with clients, bookkeeping et cetera.

how do you structure your time and space? I primarily care for our son during the day, though our schedule allows us to (somewhat) leisurely start most mornings as a family sharing breakfast, light housekeeping and getting ready for the day. I really enjoy this time together and see it as a luxury we will not always have. Around 8 a.m., my husband goes to work downstairs in our basement office. It really is his office because we’ve discovered that I never work down there. I keep my computer on the bar in our kitchen where I steal moments to check email during the day and then sit to work during our son’s nap and after he’s gone to bed. I rarely feel caught up in my photography work so I constantly feel the pull to be working. I have found that I can really attend to (and enjoy) the time with our son better when we leave the house. We usually spend our mornings going to the library, the grocery store and running various other errands. We’re usually home one morning a week to play (or he plays while I attempt to clean/do laundry). I also attend a weekly Bible study where our son stays in the nursery.

I usually leave the house for three to five photo shoots a week (not including photographing weddings about half the Saturdays of the year). My preference is to do these over one full day (usually Fridays) and one other morning or afternoon. Through trial and error, I found leaving for one entire day during the week was easier for me than trying to schedule shorter blocks of time away on several different days. The latter made me feel like I was constantly switching gears, and I was totally frazzled in all of my roles. I hire a babysitter for most weekdays I leave to shoot, though my husband sometimes spends the time with our son. My mother-in-law takes on most of our working Saturdays, and other family members take the rest. Sometimes I’ll even bring our son with me on a shoot. He enjoys watching the spectacle of my working and the treats I bring to entertain him along the way.

Because we work most Saturdays, we have recently begun protecting Tuesdays as a day for our family to do something fun together – hikes, museums, et cetera. Our business feels established but it seems like we’re constantly still wading through what we all need and what works best for each of us. Even though my husband and I don’t have a lot of intentional date nights, we spend so much of our time together and really do enjoy most of it (we owe a lot of the enjoyment factor to some incredible marriage counseling that we still regularly attend to help us figure out how to work/play/do life together). I don’t take much time for me by myself away from home right now. I haven’t really figured out how to do that well.

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? Working from home and mostly creating my own schedule allows me to feel like I spend most of my time with our son. I really enjoy the fact that none of us has to be anywhere most mornings and we can (theoretically) choose when we want to work. One of my main challenges is combating the mom-guilt that seems to always be lurking (work more or work less, organic vegetables or free cookies at Target, cutting out coupons or spending my free time doing things that feel more life-giving to me, mother’s day out or not…). I also struggle with contrasting the affirmation that comes so quickly and easily from my clients with how hard it can seem to get through an evening with my toddler before bedtime. Also, I really wish I had more time for friendships in this season. I miss my closest friends who live in other states and find it hard to have the time, energy and all the rest that’s needed to really cultivate new friendships. 

-what season(s) preceded this one? Before parenthood, we were in the early stages of running our own business full-time from home. In some ways, life felt crazier then because it wasn’t guided by the routine that raising a child demands. We worked all the time; I scheduled photo shoots and meetings whenever clients wanted, which left me with little routine and balance. Our marriage, our home and our business are much healthier now than they were then due to the rhythms we have established. 

-what season(s) might your future hold? It is difficult (and I’m not sure I’m ready) to see beyond our life right now with young children. We hope that our family is still in the beginning phases but we also have lots of dreams and goals for our business. I honestly have no idea how we’re going to balance working and raising a family as we grow (in both ways), and I can easily get very overwhelmed at the possibilities. In the months that we were anticipating our first child, I remember how fearful I was of not being able to balance it all. It hasn’t been easy by any means but we’ve waded through and made progress in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Remembering that helps me to have hope that through trial and error, we’ll figure out new routines (and how to make enough money to eat).

favorite family activities: Taking walks/being outside together, traveling and seeing new things and places.

favorite solo activities: Reading, looking through home magazines for ideas, talking to my best friends on the phone (in person would be much better).

sources of inspiration: my mom; my husband and my son;  people who are willing to be transparent and real. 

best MakeShift moment: Life feels full of these moments right now. I had so many expectations of what I would be like as a mother and it has been refreshing to let go of a lot of those. Just recently, while I was preparing dinner, I was so happy that my son was occupied while pouring the dog’s water back and forth between the food and water bowls. The mess was huge but well worth it. I regularly give him cups of ice that end up melting all over our hardwood floors, he’s allowed to sit (but not stand) on our coffee table, and I am not ashamed of bribing with suckers or candy when necessary. For me, letting all of these things be okay feels like quite a shift. Also, I have allowed myself to give up cooking most nights. We eat a lot of take-out and it works for us most of the time.

check out erin’s stunning photography at www.nolenphotographyblog.com.

first name: Melissa

age: 34 

current city: Memphis

living situation: loft apartment with husband and daughter (3 years old)

occupation: professional photographer, freelance writer

how do you structure your time and space? Currently we live in a loft, which makes the division of labor a bit tricky. When mom is on the computer, she is also in her daughter’s play space, so it makes working from home challenging. My daughter attends a daycare twice a week for a 6 hour stretches; even with his help, we often find ourselves doing our work after she goes to bed, so I often feel like I never see my husband even if he’s just across the living room! We have ultimately decided to send her to school everyday; she is intensely social, so I don’t feel as guilty about this decision as I once did. I’ve made sure to spend an hour out of her school time for pilates; that’s my church. 

using the metaphor of seasons to describe the phases of women’s lives,

-what are the particular challenges and highlights of your current season? trying to stay present as my daughter’s creativity and imagination blossoms; often she wants to play some hybrid role playing game, and I’m trying not to think about client emails I need to return

-what season(s) might your future hold? Spring – renewal for both of us. Also, my husband and I are blessed with fairly flexible schedules (read: no schedule) due to our freelance jobs. But the flip side of this is little structure and chaotic child care. A lot of my day consists of trying to steal time to edit photos while playing dress up with my daughter. I had always envisioned having two kids, but now I can’t imagine willingly inviting more chaos into our lives. We both have siblings we love dearly, and I’m saddened by the thought of my daughter not having a brother or sister, but I get secretly giddy by the thought of how much more we could do as a family of 3: travel easier, afford to travel easier. Our daughter would be that cool kid who gets to bring a friend along for awesome excursions. We wouldn’t have to split further our already fractured attention spans between 2 kids. Even better, more time with the husband, and time to revel in being his girl, not just the mama of his kids. But even the act of writing this makes me feel guilty. Another awesome kid? Why wouldn’t we try to move heaven and earth and our schedules around to have one of those?

favorite family activities: walking by the river, Rock N Romp, going to Miss Cordelia’s for groceries and a cookie 

favorite solo activities: pilates, writing at Republic Coffee, taking pictures of downtown Memphis

sources of inspiration: dinner with friends, a glass of wine while cooking dinner

best MakeShift moment: Typing an entry for a fiction contest one handed while rocking my daughter and my dog throwing up at my feet. I can’t say handled the situation gracefully, but I got the sucker done, rocked the kid to sleep and cleaned up the puke. All in a day’s work.  

the first picture was taken at a book signing for melissa’s first book, Veiled Remarks: A Curious Compendium for the Nuptually Inclined. check out melissa’s blog for her fabulous photography and well-crafted tales: http://www.modernmedusahead.blogspot.