New Year, lots of new ideas and plans - Time will tell if they pan out

This year is the one I plan to make work out the best of all the years thus far. HTFotography is going to grow into something amazing with the help of some of the plans Henrik and and I have been putting together over the last month or so.
The first aim is twofold, approach big industry, and micro daycare businesses. Both will be given options that will make working with me worthwhile for them in the long run.
We have also added more equipment to our collection to enable us to do the best work possible and provide the most fantastic images to our clients straight out of camera with as little post pocessing needed as possible which in turn will make my workfolow more streamlined and efficient.
We recently made a move away from storing out images on disks and began investing in extra external and internal hard drives. Working out the cost of DVDs for back-ups, it became apparent that it worked out way more expensive and was much more prone to fail than if we kept buying extra hard drives.
I also stopped providing people with disks of images from their shoots, and instead providing password protected online galleries which they can share with others via a link in an email. I find this helps keep control over print quality. Often people used to take their disks to photo print kiosks which didn't read different folders and simply loaded up the lower res images more quickly than the high res versions which meant they often ended up making their enlargements from the wrong images with horrifying results which they would then blame me for.
No I work in partnership with two professinal labs in Durban, and also do prints up to A3 size at home with my own professional photo printer. The result, much better looking prints and much happier clients.

I might look into taking a part time job sometime this year with a photographer where I can learn more and earn a regular salary enabling me to build up some savings to help me realise the dream to build our own warehouse studio/home. That might take some time, but with a bit of hard work and luck, we will get there eventually.

HTFotography has also recieved a new look with a brand new logo designed for us by the fantastically talented Jürgen Henke of Creative Studios(info@creativestudios.co.za).

Sticks and stones might break my bones... but keystrokes can sometimes kill you.

This story really freaked me out today.
I am pretty tech savy but it made me think about how my daughter, aged 2, might concievably have to deal with some things which go far further than sticks and stones in her day to day interactions with her peers and collegues in the future, and I might not have the skillset to help her cope with it.
It made me think about how much I as a parent need to keep up with what is going on in my child's life right from now, and how it is my responsibility, nay, my duty, to make sure that I not give in to technology and shrug my shoulders saying, "this is too higher-grade," the way many parents are doing today.
We are thinking seriously already about when Evangeline is going to get her first computer. At the moment it will probably just be a simple machine without any real network access, more a workstation for herself to keep her away from ours where she can do real damage by accidentally downloading HUGE files or undoing steps I spent hours on in editing photographs (both of which she has done already, did I mention she is only 2?).
Parents of teenagers who are not up to date with the technology being used everyday by their sons and daughters have a daunting task ahead of them.
An I being naieve in thinking that if I keep upo to date from now I even stand a chance of being alright by the time my child is a teenager?
An adult friend was attacked in a similar fashion to that described in the article on cyberbullying about a year ago.... He, at 38, struggled with the same issues and ended up wasting a lot of time and energy fighting an enemy he couldn't see who didn't follow the rules.
This sort of thing is going to get worse before it get's better.
There are all sorts of statistics of suicides which are related to stuff that happens online.
It really makes a mockery of the old song my Mum used to teach me to help me deal with taunts and teasing, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never harm me."