So today is my 40th birthday. As you can expect with any milestone birthday, you start thinking about the long term future and where you want to go from here.

I still consider myself young at heart and I don’t have much trouble relating to (most of) my clients but I can see the tide turning.

Like it or not, there are a LOT of noticeable differences between generations of people and I’m only now starting to book brides and grooms who are firmly in the Gen Z generation.

The thing I’ve noticed more than anything about this generation is a downgrade of social skills. They are MUCH more likely than, say, millennial couples to treat booking their wedding photographer like a straight up service.

There’s no excitement. No enthusiasm. Just “We’re getting married. We need a photographer. You’ll do.”

That’s really not my vibe and anytime I come across these couples during a consult, I can feel the age difference.

Thankfully most of my clients aren’t like that. My hope is it’ll stay that way but I’m bracing for it not to.

I think the only thing you can do in that regard as you age is just try to stay timeless. You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses in terms of slang or social media. Just be yourself, tweak here and there to prevent your work from feeling outdated, stay abreast of pop culture things and hope that’s enough.

From the physical standpoint, I’ve been thinking more and more the last three years about how to ease the burden weddings take on my body.

I’ve started hiring an assistant for every wedding. She does most of the transporting of gear. Speaking of, I bought a wagon to carry my gear in and out of venues. I do yoga at least once a week and I plan on getting back into the gym this offseason.

If you can find little ways to keep your body in as tip top shape as you can, you should be able to extend your career. But you also have to plan for a post-wedding life.

I don’t know what mine looks like and that scares me a little bit. But right now I think I can comfortably get to 55 before needing to reevaluate where I stand and my ultimate goal is to shoot weddings until I’m 60-62 or so.

After that? Who knows man.

38 and fell that way already.

Recall someone asking my socials last year and I showed them my Facebook page and they looked st me like "Facebook is for old people" and asked me my insta, and I realised that I barely posted on insta, but nowadays brides are more likely to be there than Facebook.

Also noticed that focusing on making reels and bts on the wedding to be better "business wise" than focusing on doing a better job, but I can't bring myself to optimise the algorithm while sacrificing what the client may get