Stay at Home Sessions and How COVID-19 Has Effected My Business
So since the likelihood of there being a person reading this who hasn’t been affected in some way by coronavirus, the nice thing is, I get to skip the explanation of what’s been going on.
Times have been really hard for everyone lately. Whether you’re young or old, an essential worker or on leave, your life has been impacted by the largest global pandemic that’s happened for generations. It’s crazy to be alive right now and realize that you’re apart of one of the biggest things to happen in recent human history. But here we are. Coming together and fighting a war on two fronts, COVID-19 and the stupidity of people who don’t think the virus is a real thing. But I digress.
Specifically for me, times have been interesting. I started this time of quarantine by embracing the insane amount of free time I found myself having by just trying to do nothing. But unfortunately, my brain doesn’t allow me to be bored for too long without coming up with something for me to do, so I began creating new music and comedy content for my personal Instagram account (@bobbykernsjr). I did song covers, a parody news show and even created a new comedy series about a fictitious church. But eventually, I realized that though everything I was doing was fun, it was time to figure out how to use this time to work on taking my business to the next level.
Most people, especially people who have their own businesses, don’t ever really have an unlimited amount of time to reflect and change the things in their business that they need to. But strangely enough, corona made the impossible possible and I’ve been able to spend a tremendous amount of time devising new and different ways to improve my business. But more on that later.
Lucky for me, before quarantine began I had saved enough money to live okay, but with life being extremely unsure, I eventually decided to figure out how to get back to work safely and make some money. And thus “stay at home sessions” were born. Prices for my sessions are the lowest they’ve ever been, but understandably. The best thing about these new sessions is that they have allowed me to get creative in a completely new way. I’m used to doing sessions in parks or in studio where I have more control over the environment or bigger areas to shoot. Being limited to the confines of a family’s yard is a really cool challenge that I’ve been enjoying, whether it’s posing an entire family on their porch or photographing small kids as they run around their yard.
Quarantine also allowed me the opportunity to shoot my first maternity session and my first proposal! Olivia and Nicholas’ proposal was so amazing to be apart of and I loved being apart of such a big moment in my friends lives. As for the maternity session, I arrived at the session with a few ideas and really let my instincts lead me. I was shooting at a park I had never been to, but to my relief, the park had a great layout and great locations for photos. The session turned out great and the couple loved the photos!
Earlier I mentioned that quarantine has allowed me time to develop new things for my businesses and this website and blog are a couple them. For years I have been dissatisfied with how my online portfolio looked, but I never had the time to fix it. I’ve also wanted to start a blog for about a year, but this is the first time I’ve been able to start it. Some other things I’ve developed about my business have been a new Facebook Group for Past Clients for perks and discounts, gathering testimonials from clients, bought a new iPad and Apple Pencil and learned new techniques for editing and skin smoothing, redesigned how clients receive their photos and buy additional things from inside their galleries, and so much more!
I won’t ever say that I’m grateful for COVID-19 because so many people have risked and lost their lives fighting for themselves and others during this time. But what I will say is even through these extremely difficult times, I’m glad that I was able to figure out how to keep my business afloat and create new things. Like so many have been saying, this is the beginning of a new normal and going forward, it’s going to be interesting to see what happens both with my business and the entire world.
