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Word of Smith’s talent spread around town, and even-tually she decided to take the next step by creating a website and crafting a pricelist for her services. “I didn’t set out to do a business plan because I was-n’t sure it would work,” she said.

Meanwhile, she kept working to hone her craft. She joined a “picture a day” group on the photo sharing site Flickr and when she wanted to do something new, she watched online tutorials.

“I forced myself to shoot in manual. Doing some-thing every day, it forces you to get better,” Smith said. Now the energetic mom juggles taekwondo classes, football practice and more for her children, ages 4 and 6, while keeping up the schedule of an in-demand photog-rapher. To fit it all in, she finds herself occasionally stay-ing up until 2 a.m. to work on her images and design photo albums after her children go to bed. Last year she shot 16 weddings and found herself facing what seemed like an insurmountable backlog of work: 7,500 photos she needed to edit.

“My business exploded. I had more business than I could handle.”

This year, Smith has set limits on how much work she’ll take on, hoping to have a steady, yet manageable summer and balance for her active family.

Rock Creek photographer KrissyAllori also works to manage the busy lives of everyone in her family — she has two children ages 2 and 4 — and her burgeoning photography career. She says she often wakes up between 4 and 5 a.m. to have time to do her photo edit-ing, correspondence and blogging before her children

wake up.

“I do my very best not to do it when my kids are awake. They start to notice when I’m on the computer too much,” she said.

But the early hours are worth it to fulfill her creative passion for custom, lifestyle portraiture.

“It’s a hobby that I love but I get paid for it. It’s weird to do something that I enjoy so much that actually brings in the money. It really fuels my tank,” she said. “I get so much praise from random strangers. There’s not a lot of jobs where you get praise at all.”

Allori is a self-taught artist whose work is getting noticed. She was featured in October on “The Maternal Lens” blog and the hosts of that website said her work was “crisp, clean and refreshing.”

Like Smith, Allori sharpened her skills on her favorite subjects: her children.

“My kids got tired of me taking pictures of them so I moved on to my playgroup friends,” she said.

The practice has helped Allori make young people comfortable in front of the camera.

“If I didn’t have kids, I don’t think I’d be able to get the natural reactions out of them,” she said. “I know what makes my kids smile and laugh and I can use that.” Allori said she tries to blog a few times a week, often posting a dozen or so of the best images from her latest sessions and sharing behind-the-scenes insights from the shoot. By hosting contests, learning some tricks about search engine optimization and commenting on other people’s blogs and websites, Allori said she has been able to make a lot of connections on the web. “If this was not the Internet age, I would not be doing business,” she said.

E-mail: angela@asmithphotography.com

While Smith says she enjoys photographing subjects of all kinds, she has found that her passion lies in capturing “life’s most treasured moments — the miracle of a new-born, the confidence of a high school senior, a young couple in love and a bride’s tears of joy on her wedding day.” She offers both outdoor and in-studio photography in Sherwood.

E-mail: krissy@krissyallori.com

Allori is an on-location, custom photographer specializing in families, high school seniors, engagements and wed-dings. Her photos are all about illustrating the connec-tions between people. She says she loves variety, rich colors and prides herself on her attention to detail in every photo she processes.