Many months ago, I got a sneak peek at Stop Getting Ripped Off: Why Consumers Get Screwed And How You Can Always Get A Fair Deal when it was still in draft form. I read it in three-point type on my iPhone while on vacation — something only a handful of authors could entice me to do. Bob Sullivan is one.

This is what I remember: in places, I felt sick to my stomach. He’s talking right to me and makes me come face to face with my own quirky patterns of not caring about numbers and not being fiscally responsible. Bob Sullivan is on a mission to educate Americans and change the way we view and spend our money, make us smarter, be our consumer advocate. He genuinely writes to help people. He writes as if he has an established relationship with his readers. (He does, of course.)

Bottom line: I loved the book before it was published and although I haven’t received my printed/bound/autographed copy yet, I’m already confidently talking it up to my friends.

He emailed me today to let me know NPR used my photo alongside a “Fresh Air” interview.

We actually shot this photo for Gotcha! but the shoot for this latest book kept getting pushed back for one reason or another. Note to self: schedule Bob Sullivan for a photo session before he starts writing his next book.

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My goal for 2008 is to know exactly where my money is, where it’s going and how to best to run this business using that information to guide me. That’s a HUGE goal for a girl whose philosophy regarding any kind of use of numbers since junior high math class was, “Nah, there’ll always be a cute boy around who will do it for me.”

So I got some books to help me, and I’ve been talking to anyone who will listen about how I might accomplish this goal and I’m posting it on my blog to hold myself accountable to the task.

It’s just time. As Michael Gerber puts it, my photography business has entered adolescence. So here’s what’s replacing my Kappa Book Club reading list for this month as I prepare to enter financial counseling with my accountant in another couple of months:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
• The E-Myth Revisited; Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• The Total Money Makeover; A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey
• Advice for Photographers: The Next Step by Al Weber
• The War of Art; Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (who, btw, writes fantastic novels!)

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Congratulations, Mr. Sullivan, on a bestseller! The first of many, I am to guess.

[Oct 17, 2007 post:]
Bob Sullivan is an award winning journalist who covers Internet scams and consumer fraud for MSNBC.com on his blog, The Red Tape Chronicles. He published his first book, “Your Evil Twin: Behind the Identity Theft Epidemic,” in 2004.

His latest book, Gotcha Capitalism, is a brilliant analysis of the hidden fees American consumers pay each day and what it means to each household’s bottom line at the end of the year. It’s available for preorder at Amazon.

If you really, really, really squint, you can read “Photo Credit: Christine Gacharna” in the publicity ad!

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All of my Holgas have been genetically modified by Randy Smith. They are wonderful cameras, Randy Smith’s Holgas. For those of you who are not familiar with it, “The Holga is an inexpensive, medium format 120 film toy camera, originating in China, that later came to be appreciated for its low-fidelity aesthetic. The Holga’s cheap construction and simple meniscus lens often yields pictures that display vignetting, blur, light leaks, and other distortions. Ironically, the camera’s quality problems became a virtue among some photographers, with Holga photos winning awards and competitions in art and news photography.” [Wikipedia]

My Holgamod goes to the beach. It rides rollercoasters. It sits in cubbies and waits while I ride the water rides. It causes all kinds of commotion with airport security (considerably more than my regular gear does, and we’re all very amused by this.) It’s a $20 plastic film camera from China that I can afford to lose/ruin/have stolen. And yet I treasure it, guard it and take good care of it. The Holga illustrates perfectly that it’s the photographer, not the camera, who creates a great image.

It has been almost 7 months since I shot my Holga. How is it that 7 months have gone by and I’ve not taken out my Holga to play? The answer to that question is the topic of this post.

Running a photo business is a lot of work. In my experience, it’s been a lot like having a newborn in the house. Maintaining perspective and balance proved difficult. In late November, in the middle of holiday family photo rush, I scheduled myself a day off and went with my amazingly talented artist friend, Suzanne, to The Torpedo Factory in Alexandria. We wandered the galleries and admired the work of so many artists, and then WHAM I was struck by a photograph. Turns out, the photographer was Craig Sterling. We looked through his work as he went about his studio business, but as soon as he was off the phone and seemed as if he could spare a minute, I approached him. I told him I didn’t want to offend him, especially if he’d just schlepped a $35K Hasselblad across Europe, but some of his work spoke to me with the very same qualities I love about my Holga. He smiled at me.

Turns out, Craig Sterling uses one of Randy Smith’s Holgas, too. We were thrilled to discover this common thread. And while I have been a portrait photographer since the fourth grade, Mr. Sterling is an accomplished landscape photographer. We shoot completely different subjects but we share a common bond: a love for the photograph.

Mr. Sterling spent a great deal of time that morning talking with Suzanne and me. He was generous with his information and experiences. I sent him an email that night thanking him for his openness and warm welcome. One of the best pieces of advice I got from Mr. Sterling is that I don’t have to be a great photographer to run a photography business — rather, I have to be a good business owner.

Mr. Sterling sent me a Christmas card, a wonderful black and white of our nation’s capitol, and this message:

A good friend lent me this book…you should buy it and read it…it’s one
of the most accurate “advice books” for someone like yourself. It was
really enlightening! You won’t be wasting your money…promise. It’s only
$10.00. –Craig Sterling

I bought the book and have almost finished reading it. It’s small, an easy read, but it carries a powerful punch. I was naive to think I needed to be a good photographer to open a photography business. If I had known in 2004 what was required of me to truly run a photography business, I might have opted to continue my career as a writer instead.

Carlos, my fabulous, handsome, generous and loving husband (and CFO of Christine Gacharna Photography), put a new MacBook Pro under the tree for me this Christmas, and Santa left Adobe CS3 in my stocking. Maybe such tools will improve my photos, but that wasn’t the point; the point was to streamline my digital workflow, freeing up considerable chunks of time for the more important stuff. In the process of migrating my old life onto my new machine, I was checking in on bookmarks to some of my favorite photographers I’ve met along the way: one in particular, Jason Wallis, had a post over the holidays that led me to Strobist which in turn led me to flickr…the list goes on and on. Click on the links and see for yourself this wonderful experience of photography — a subfolder in the wonderful experience of life.

2007 delivered much of what I need to be successful as a business owner — a loving and supportive family, the right tools, incredible mentors, online resources, hard work, good books, fabulous clients who yielded equally fabulous images for my portfolio, and even a few difficult circumstances that gave me some perspective of growth and boundaries to help pave my way.

It’s easy to forget that which draws us in; photography is no exception. When I was a college freshman, my big brother told me not to let college get in the way of my education; I’ve never forgotten that advice, and I’m applying it here to remind me not to let the photography business get in the way of taking photos. If 2008 brings nothing more than a renewed focus on all that I love, I will have achieved the balance that is the prelude to success.

And judging from the images of my first client of 2008, which I’m editing tonight with my new and improved workflow and hope to show off soon, I’m well on my way.

But that’ll be another post, marking the end of this one.

Happy new year!

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Today was tight partly because this morning, the lovely ladies from my Kappa bookclub met at the Patrick Henry Library in Vienna (we meet somewhere new in Northern Virginia each month) to discuss “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. (If you’ve read this book, too, I’m interested to hear your thoughts in the comments section!) I love bookclub. I love reading, I love the ladies I’ve met through the club and I love venturing out into new places in Northern Virginia that I otherwise wouldn’t have found. Bookclub is a commitment to remind myself constantly not to skip over the little things that I love in the craze that is everyday life.

After two delicious hours of bookclub, I raced off into life, including editing the photos from my latest shoot:

Kristen loves to scrapbook, and she had an idea for a scrapbook page that she wanted to put together so in addition to her portrait (which was the main reason for the shoot), we experimented with some funky shots. Later, after she got home, she found her original idea and she emailed to tell me LOL that we’d gotten it all wrong! I immediately replied, asking if she wanted to try again tomorrow and she wrote back very graciously that no, she will be able to scrapbook just fine with the images we took but thanked me very much for the offer.

And then she wrote, “You must really love your job!”

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