I heart NY. I’ve been putting off writing this blog post for quite a while now. Don’t get me wrong; I’m honored to be asked by The Photo Life to write about ANYTHING I do, I just don’t like to write. I mean I have the world’s most neglected blog on the planet. That said, somehow I have been able to amass over 6,000 tweets. So, when I sat down to write tonight, I wondered what I could say to tell the story of my I Heart New York sessions in a new and different way. Recently, I’ve been taking a new approach to things. I’ve been making the conscious decision to tell the honest truth – no sugar coating – just raw thoughts and
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How To Bring Out Authentic Emotion in Your Shoots
Jeff and I were just in San Francisco this past week and in the course of four days we shot three engagement sessions for three incredibly unique and beautiful couples. Each couple was very different from the others – their stories were distinct and their personalities were one of kind. We absolutely LOVE that all of our couples have such unique stories and personalities – we wouldn’t trade this job for anything – but photographing so many different types of personalities can also be challenging, right? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if every one of our couples responded the same way to our jokes? If they all looked great in the same type of poses? If their senses of humor all clicked perfectly with
Find Your Client’s Signature Pose…and Name It
When I first started out I dreaded the engagement session. In fact, I dreaded anything that meant I had to actually pose or direct my clients. It just scared me because I had no idea what to do with them. But as the years passed and I got more comfortable with the idea, I have actually grown to love shooting engagement sessions. I’ve learned that working with just the couple can be really fun and the opportunity to explore multiple locations allows for a high level of creativity. Not only does the engagement session allow you to get to know your clients a little better, but it also gives you the opportunity to see how they photograph and to figure out how to make them
Character Marketing: Why do your clients hire you?
Why do clients hire you? Think about it for a minute. Over the past 13 years as a photographer/entrepreneur, I’ve realized that the reason people hired me was not always what I assumed it was, especially in the beginning years of building my business and reputation. I would have liked to think that people hired me because they had to have me as their photographer. Looking back over my first few years though, I realized that many of the people who hired me did so not because of who I was, or what I did, but for some other lesser reason. They might have hired me because I was the most economical, because I sold them on me, because I had a show special, or because I
6 Tips for Photographing a Destination Wedding
Destination weddings have taken the photography business to a whole new level. Once reserved only for the elite bride and groom, now many couples are choosing to have destination wedding as an opportunity to spend more time with their families and friends in a gorgeous locale and make the entire wedding an ‘experience’ to remember for a lifetime. As photographers, we have an awesome opportunity to shoot in exotic venues and jet-set across the globe – it’s incredible! As much fun as it can be, you have to know what you’re getting into to make sure your clients (and you!) have an amazing experience. Successfully shooting a wedding at an unfamiliar location takes preparation, constant communication with your clients and an understanding of the wedding
Why the Wedding Day Runs Late (And 5 Ways to Prevent It)
We’ve all been there before – something runs late on the wedding day, and suddenly that cushy hour of photo time that was on your schedule evaporates into 15 minutes of chaos with a 24 person bridal party and a list of family portraits a mile long. Perfect… The ability to handle the pressure of a late wedding day with grace and ease is definitely what sets apart a great wedding photographer from a good one. But the ability to prevent the day from running late in the first place is what turns a great photographer into a true wedding professional. Jeff and I have identified five of the biggest reasons that weddings tend to run late – at least in our experience – and
Choosing Images to Deliver to Wedding Photography Clients
In selecting images for delivery to the client, we want to make sure we’re delivering enough images to tell the story of the wedding day while making sure that we’re not overwhelming the client with too many images. The purpose of this article is to provide a few objective guidelines to help with the very subjective image selection process of the wedding photography workflow. In general, we should be aiming for around 800-1200 per wedding, but there is no magic number and each wedding will have unique circumstances. Overall Guidelines The overarching question you should be asking yourself as you go through the images is the following: “What is the purpose of this image?” Each image needs to have a purpose. It needs to portray
How We Educate Our Wedding Clients on the First Look
In my last article here on the Pictage blog, I walked everyone through The Youngrens perfect wedding day schedule, which is built on the couple seeing each other before the ceremony. Not surprisingly, there were questions about how we get our couples to do a First Look. These days, most couples come to us already wanting to do a First Look, but it took a few years for that to be the case. In the meantime, I had to become pretty adept at educating couples about them. (Notice how I say ‘educating’ and not ‘convincing.’ BIG difference.) In my experience, there are normally two reasons that a couple doesn’t want to do a First Look: (1) they don’t know what actually happens during a First
Mastering Reception Lighting, Forever.
I’ve had this problem for years when it comes to an entire wedding collection I would post on my website. Great getting ready, great portraits, beautiful ceremony, and the light is sweet, then we grab the stellar sunset shots and then the reception hits and I’m left with horrible lighting when the DJ turns the lights down low. I was never really happy & satisfied with the quality of the light on the images with my on camera flash and therefore I just hated to use the images. So my slideshows stopped with the first dance. As the years went by I got on camera flash down, but off camera flash was always touch and go. I could get some of the shots to turn
The Youngren’s Wedding Photography Schedule
There’s nothing better than a stress-free wedding day when everything runs on time, people are ready to take pictures when you need them, and you have creative freedom to do your job well. Can I get a ‘fo-sho’ from my wedding peeps out there? And you know what the best part is? There’s a lot that you can do as a photographer to make sure that these kinds of wedding days happen more often than not, which is a pretty sweet deal if you ask me. In fact, the photographer and the wedding coordinator have the most control over how a wedding day is run, which means two things: 1) You get to create the best photography schedule to help make you successful 2) You