With a title like that, it better be big, right?  Well, this announcement is.  As many of my friends and family know, and quite a few clients, my husband is a professor here at Grinnell College.  We’ve been incredibly blessed by his position here and really have grown to love the community here.  We’ve made great friends and are so excited to raise our ever growing family here.  No, we are not leaving Grinnell – we wouldn’t dream of it!

However….we are relocating temporarily.  To SPAIN!  As a faculty member, my husband is fortunate enough to have time off from teaching to focus on his research in computer vision.  We’ve been dreaming and planning for this season for a while, and while several other locations were possibilities, or even staying in Grinnell, we are SO excited to spend his study leave in Barcelona, Spain for the 2016-2017 academic year!

We both enjoy traveling and believe this is a once in a life time opportunity that can’t be put off.  While it’s hard to imagine being so far from our home, friends, and family for that long, we are really looking forward to the adventures as well.  I can’t wait to explore Barcelona and other nearby cities, and we definitely plan to visit some other places in Europe while we are overseas!

Obviously, this means a LOT of change for us and our soon-to-be family of 4.  Oh yeah, we’re expecting baby #2 in early December.  We will be needing to find housing, pack up necessities, and probably find replacement items once we arrive.  I’m already scoping out European versions of Craigslist to find used baby items since we will have a 3 1/2 year old and 6 month old and can only bring so much on a plane!  We plan to relocate sometime during the summer of 2016, most likely sometime in July depending on when housing becomes available.  If anyone has any tips for living abroad or relocating with young children, I’m all ears!

I’m sure many of you are wondering – what does this all mean for your photography business?  Well…let me tell you, making the decision to even GO was super duper hard for me.  I absolutely love working with the amazing clients I have come to know.   It started to really get real when I started having to tell brides that I wasn’t available for weddings after July 1, 2016.  That was so so hard for me, because I just love weddings and hate saying no!  At this point, I am not booking weddings between July 1, 2016 – July 15, 2017 since I will be overseas.  That means, I’ll be taking a full year off from photographing weddings since most likely my visa won’t allow me to work in Spain.  It’s possible I may do some assistant shooting and styled shoots while in Barcelona, and of course lots of travel photography.  I fully plan to bring most of my camera gear 🙂

For the weddings I have already booked for 2016 in early summer, I have plans in place for making sure all of the editing and product delivery happens before I leave.  So fear not, this will not impact your experience working with me in any way!

For the class of 2017 seniors, this means that your window to have me photograph your senior portraits is SMALL and much earlier than usual.  Typically, I photograph the majority of seniors August-October, but that won’t be possible for you.  If you’re a current junior and member of the class of 2017 and have been looking forward to having me do your senior photos, please PLAN AHEAD!  I will be scheduling senior sessions for late April through the end of June of 2016 and try to work with as many 2017 seniors as possible.  My sales and product options will be a bit different for the class of 2017 just to make things easier for me as we are wrapping things up before our travel, but most products will be offered.  In short, for class of 2017, you will need to have me photograph your senior portraits spring of 2016!  And in case you’re wondering, weekends are already a bit limited because I have several weddings booked for May and June already, so start thinking about scheduling your session now.

I realize that’s a lot to digest, but we are so incredibly excited!  I hope to be able to share some “just-for-fun” photo shoots and travel photos while I’m away, so this blog won’t be silent, I promise!  While I’m sad to take a year “off” from photography and business, I plan to jump right back in when I return.  It will be like I was never gone!  🙂

Let me know if you have questions, or if you have any suggestions for our travels, we’d love to hear that too!

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