1. Start slow. Don’t come right in with guns blazing and start firing off a bunch of shots right away. Usually the bride & bridesmaids don’t have their hair or makeup done yet, so they aren’t going to be a huge fan of having a camera in their face yet. Instead, Justin & I will usually come in first without our gear. I’ll hug the bride, meet and hug her mom (who is usually already a fan from the engagement shoot) and get introduced to the bridesmaids (whose names I will already start to try to memorize for the bridal party pictures later). Only then will we go get our gear, and even then we start with shooting the details (dress, shoes, jewelry, a grandmother’s
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Top Ten Tips for Posing
When the Community Team asked me to start blogging about posing, my first thought was….”huh, I don’t know anything about posing.” And then I started my top ten list for posing tips and I realized that I had over 20. Oops. So maybe I do know a thing or two, but after 8 years some things start to become so second nature that you don’t realize you’re doing them. So don’t worry, if you find this to be challenging, it does get easier with practice. So before I jump right in, I want to define what I consider posing to be. And it has very little to do with the chin being tilted just so or the fingers on the hand being spread a particular
Pick up the Phone: How to Do Phone Consultations
I’m not a phone person and to be honest, I don’t think that I ever will be. I’m a quiet and shy individual, and making conversation with new acquaintances isn’t my strongest quality, so talking to a complete stranger over a phone connection scares the bijeezes out of me. I’m talking cold sweats, anxious jitters, and serious bouts of nervous laughter whenever I have to pick up the phone and start sounding official and/or competent to a new person – you know, like I actually know what I’m talking about… So in our first few years of business, I would hide behind email as much as I possibly could (of course, I wouldn’t have admitted that I was “hiding.” I was simply “playing on my
Shooting in Manual – Part 1 – Back to the Basics
Photography is one of those weird arts, like music, that requires both creative talent and the ability to understand some math (ugh!). Don’t be discouraged just yet, because if this dyslexic can figure out how to shoot in manual, I know you can do it, too. We ought to learn to shoot in manual and control the camera’s settings, because we can discern things like the difference between backlit scenes, a run away toddler, and a race car but the camera (or Program Mode) cannot. Since our goal is a creatively composed photograph with appropriate exposure, there are three primary settings we must master. We’ll cover additional settings at another time. What follows is a quick start guide to demystify the complex settings of shooting
FAQ: Natural Skin Tones
Confession: I’ve been avoiding this question… We’re totally digging on our Uservoice page and stoked on all the thoughtful questions people have been asking and voting on, and this is one that has slowly risen to the top, and now I simply can’t ignore it. The truth is that the answer to this question is super simple for me to state with a quick do this, this, and this, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the most helpful way of explaining this. So, I’m going to do my best to give you some solid tips & tricks to get the skin tones in your images to look more natural and authentic. All things being equal, your clients will 1) be the most happy with their
Sales 101: It’s All About Relationships
Most photographers don’t choose to follow their passion for photography because they enjoy selling “stuff.” Photographers are artists, and generally have an aversion to just about anything related to selling. After all, we’re artists, so it’s our inclination that we create art for the purpose of the creative process. At the same time, if you’re running a business, you have to make money. Many photographers – especially wedding photographers – design their business to make most of their money through their creative fees. This is a perfectly acceptable model, if you truly understand your costs, labor expenses and margins, and it meets your businesses needs. On the other hand, I think that wedding photographers (and portrait photographers for that matter), leave a lot on the
How Your Creative Products Can Help Set You Apart
I remember when I first started offering Canvas Gallery Wraps in my first year of business. I could never see myself as a client purchasing an $800 canvas print, it sounded so expensive. I really wanted to sell them to my clients instead of the traditional photo print because I loved the way my work looked on the beautiful canvas! But I questioned if clients would actually pay that much for a picture. I also loved to design and sell coffee table books to my portrait clients. The books took me a long time to design. I realized I wasn’t making very much money for the hours I was putting in. I wasn’t serving my business well by not charging enough for my work. But
The Ugly Truth: It Takes Money to Make Money
Starting a business is a Catch-22. I’ve touched on the topic before in previous UGLY TRUTH post titled Red is Normal for the First Few Years in Business. Unlike some other photographers who teach it’s okay to take out a $60k loan to spend on advertising and equipment, you’ll find me teaching quite the opposite. SURE you will need to buckle down and spend some money in order to get your business up and running, but how do you do this without going deep into debt!?? Here’s what I would do if I was starting out from scratch opening a photography business: 1. Read Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover from cover to cover, twice. Listen to his show. Become a debt dominatrix like me. Get passionate first and foremost
Running Your Own Race – Three tips for being a Lovemark
Of all the people to give you an analogy about running, trust me you would think I would be the last. Because, quite simply put: I. hate. running. Absolutely hate it. Loathe it to be more precise. In fact, about the only thing that I hate worse than running is happy runners. I mean honestly, what are they smiling about? But. I digress. Because I am about to lay a running analogy on you. Smack down style. And I think it’s something we all (myself very much included) need to hear. Flash back three and a half years ago to when Justin & I were first deciding to go full time with this business. Law firm offers were turned down, student loans were deferred, and
Sales is NOT a dirty word!
This past weekend my husband and I went shopping for a chandelier for our living room, a belated birthday present for me. Now first let me premise this with the fact I have never been in the market for a chandelier before. We see this as a luxury item (only to be purchased once we completed our emergency fund!) and had a specific budget in mind. We knew we were not happy with the cheap imitation ones sold at Lowes and Home Depot for $100, but we did not want to spend over $500 on an extra- large elaborate one either. After countless internet searches, and trips to locals stores, we finally turned to friends and family for recommendations. On the recommendation of his mother,