Search Results for: bliss photography

by Guest Contributor Sarah Grace

Fight to the Death! Only One will be Victor! May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor.
Such a TRAGIC, FICTIONAL STORY, right?

Maybe not so fictional in the Photography world. Any of these phrases sound familiar?

That client is MINE! Every man for himself, no I will not network! Are “the Odds” in my favor to be successful?

My dear friends, what if I could provide 3 tips that would ensure that the Odds would FOREVER in Your Favor?
Listen up!

#1: Find Water First. New photographers, I love you. I cringe at the pressures you feel. The business world you are jumping into is vastly different than the one I jumped into. I am sorry. 🙁 I have noticed a tough trend in how the photographers I mentor feel.

Overwhelmed.

The minute they decide to go “real-deal” in the industry they feel pressured to have the following: Logo, website, Facebook business page, custom Facebook tabs, free download, promo video, mailing list, monthly newsletters, boutique packaging, 1,011 photoshop actions, customized gift cards, stationary, fancy camera bag, and-the-list-goes-on-and-on.

I plead with you, friend. Listen to the surprisingly brilliant, Haymitch. Find Water First. Discover the most crucial survival tool in the arena…

Water = YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS

You may have a stellar website design, a rockin’ logo, a fancy $500 bag, and even a perfectly make-you-cry promo video, BUT – how are your images? Your ability to capture amazing photos in any kind of light, at any time of day at any location on a consistent basis is KEY to your survival in the arena.

YOU CANNOT AVOID the need for water.
It will eventually catch up to you.

Before your spend your time and hard-earned money into the outer-needs (most of these needs should be categorized as WANTS) of your business, spend your energy “Finding Water” by refining your photography skills. Don’t you feel so Katniss right now?

Need recommendations for truly nourishing photography workshops? Click here to see our recommendations…..

#2: Under-promise and Over-deliver: From District 12? Feeling a little underprivileged? Underdog? Awesome! My heart breaks every time I think of Peeta saying “My mother said, ‘It looks like District 12 may finally have a winner.’ But she wasn’t talking about me. She was talking about you.” Moment of silence for that SAD thought, people! One of the most satisfying parts of the entire series is the “unlikely victory” of Peeta and Katniss.

There is nothing magical, jaw-dropping, or special about the Careers winning the games year after year.
So…add some SPARKLE to what YOU have to offer in the arena.

Tell your clients they should expect their photographers in 3 weeks, and deliver in 10 days. Remind your clients to expect 25 images after the session, and bring 30 because you JUST COULDN’T let them miss those extra 5. Did they order that darling accordion book for Grandma and Grandpa? Fabulous. Include 2 accordion books when you deliver, just in case they need an extra Christmas idea. They will be your greatest fans, supporters, and in many ways…sponsors. 🙂 The arena can be such a happy place.

#3: Build an Alliance & Remain Loyal: Always. Find a buddy/buddies through your journey. Husbands, dogs, roommates, and your sweet momma don’t count. Find a buddy that is in the arena too (a photographer.in case you missed the symbolism!). Set up a private facebook group where you can bounce ideas back and forth on, chat on Skype once a week to stay accountable to each other, and sincerely invest in each others survival & success.

Unlike the typical “Games” there can be more than one winner, in fact – everyone can win!

Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty of clients. Enough clients to keep us all booked, successful, and friendly. Remember, there is no amount of money, fame, or opportunity that will ever be worth losing your Alliance in the arena. Share in successes! Laugh through failures together, and most importantly – remain Loyal. The time will come when an opportunity to get ahead will present itself (maybe your Alliance’s old client has now showed interest in you…what are you going to do?)… Remain loyal. Always.

Who would have thought the Hunger Games held such wisdom for us Photogs? Take the mystery, fear, and desperation out of the entire process as you Find Water First. Under-promise and Over-deliver, and Remain Loyal to your Alliances.

It’s a beautiful work we are a part of.

Sarah Grace

About Sarah:  Sarah Grace is celebrating her 4th blissful year as a photography teacher.   Mentoring flourishing photographers makes her heart sing, as well as collecting Vintage Little Peoples’, and devouring all things Drum Corp (check out www.dci.org and watch her inner-geek emerge!).  Sarah believes in holding no secrets back when teaching and that photographs can truly change the spirit of your home sweet home.  Sarah Grace lives in Arizona with her husband, reader-extraordinaire 4-year-old daughter, and orange-crayon-lovin’ baby boy.

Visit Sarah at her WEBSITE | FACEBOOK pages today!

by Guest Contributor Elizabeth Halford

Imagine a world where photography changes lives. Imagine a world where new life springs out of a session with you. Imagine your business, your art, your photography having the power to change the course of a couple’s marriage. Imagine finding out that the grand dreams that drew you into photography in the first place really can come true… enter “Beloved Photography”.

If you follow many other photographers, you may see the word ‘Beloved’ being used here and there. I think it’s one of the most important new techniques for photographers to understand. Beloved has changed my life. And it can change yours, too.

Beloved is the brain child of photographer Jesh de Rox. It’s not entirely simple to just tell you everything you need to know about it in one blog post. Even Jesh has a way of describing it in such a way that you’re left still wondering what it’s all about. I think this is because explaining Beloved to someone who hasn’t yet been changed by it is a bit like speaking to someone in a different language. But when you do get it, Beloved will blow your mind.

The main principles of Beloved are thus:

Not creation. Discovery. The Beloved state isn’t something you fabricate – it already exists in the people you work with.

Give everything. Give it first. If you want people to be moved when they see your work, you must be moved while you’re making it.

Invite into experience. You aren’t the director, you’re the stage.

Reading those three principles doesn’t tell you how to have a Beloved session. And this is the problem I ran across when I wanted to understand what Beloved was about. When I wanted to get past what I perceived as gushy mumbojumbo and find out how to create these extremely emotive images. But that was my problem. I wanted to take pictures. And with Beloved, you can’t just takepictures. You first have to give. In a Beloved session, you become as emotionally bare as your subjects and you must do it first before they will respond in kind.

The first time I heard about Beloved was when I saw this session from London photographerMarianne Taylor. I was instantly captivated. I began Googling this word “Beloved” and found this website. I clicked play on the bottom right and listened to the nearly 2 hours of Jesh presenting the Beloved concept. At the end, I felt so hungry to know more. So I purchased his field guide. When it came, I read each card and thought “how in the world will I ever be able to say things like this to people?!” They were deep, emotional, intensely personal experiential invites. The experiential invites {which I have also heard called “expression invites”} are the meat of the Beloved session. They set the stage for the intensely emotional images you see Beloved photographers producing. Some are lively and fun and the intended purpose is to invite your subjects into a light, joyful, happy place. Others will likely evoke tears. These less ‘fun’ ones I set aside and told myself “I’ll never say that gushy stuff to perfect strangers”.

So here I was with the Field Guide and not a single clue what to do with it. I scheduled to meet a lovely couple I know for a try at my first Beloved session. The session was lively, jumpy, lots of action and LOTS of laughter. It was super fun. But not deep. Or emotional. Or fulfilling like I thought it would be. I felt like having this field guide was like being given a powerful power tool with no training how to use it. In fact, I’d say I didn’t even fully understand its purpose in the first place. Because Beloved isn’t just about taking pictures or creating fabulous visual imagery. I was hearing that this was a life changing thing. And that first session really didn’t change anything for anybody.

I booked my husband and I for a Beloved session with Marianne Taylor. It was a few months until we could have our session and this left me with plenty of time to hunger and yearn to finally experience Beloved for myself. When we met Marianne, she was so calm and peaceful that all my nerves began to melt away. She really seemed to know what she was doing and this made me feel very secure that our experience would be wonderful. During that session, our cups ranneth over. You see, as a couple married for a decade, it’s all there. The love, the passion, the tension, all that. It’s there – no one needed to create smiles or tears during that session. Because they have been there for years. Marianne just invited us to push away the things that make us forget. The things that cloud our vision of eachother. We spent 2 blissful hours drinking eachother in and there just happened to be a photographer there to make it last forever.

And this is what I realised about Beloved in that session:

• It’s not a photo shoot. There just happens to be a photographer there.
• That gushy stuff I said I’d never utter to a stranger? It was powerful.
• Beloved isn’t about physical posing. It’s emotional posing.
• Beloved was life changing.

During the session, I became unaware that there was a photographer. There were times when I couldn’t hear her shutter, couldn’t feel her walking around us. I have canvases from that session allover my house. They’re not representations of something real. They ARE something real. Seeing them brings back the strong feelings I felt while we were there infront of Marianne’s camera. Having our own session helped me understand what my clients should feel like infront of my camera and how to actually put the concepts in the Field Guide into action.

I’m still on a huge journey of discovery. I’ve only done a few sessions as such and am still learning how to interact with people in this way. And because it starts first with me, Beloved has sent me on a journey of personal discovery and evolution. Although Beloved was originally intended to celebrate the marriage relationship, photographers are finding its power translates to all walks of life.Families, children, even solitary sessions. Beloved isn’t for everyone. Not for every photographer or for every client. But I believe that if you give it a chance to get in you, to show you that photography really can change the world, then it just might change your life, too.

{Further Reading}

Listen to the audio on this website from Jesh de Rox.

I highly suggest participating in these resources if you decide you would like training on the Beloved genre.

About the Author: Elizabeth Halford has been shooting professionally in the UK for seven years and using the Beloved method since 2012. You can find her work here and connect on Facebook here.

by guest contributor Gayle Vehar

I still remember the first photo I took where I swooned a bit and said, “I LOVE this. I want to take more photos like this!”  Do you remember your first great photo?  Here’s mine.

I still like this photo, but admittedly, if I took the same photo today, I wouldn’t swoon. It might not even make the I-am-going-to-edit-this cut!  THAT was the moment I “fell” for photography. That is the moment that made me want to learn more. From that moment on, I craved better photos! The deep-down kind of craved!
It didn’t come overnight for me. It came slowly. Day by day. Month by month. Year by year. It has taken weeks of discouragement and days of euphoria. It has taken hours of hard work and moments of bliss. It has taken practice and patience and, most of all, TIME.
What I didn’t count on was the discouragement that I would face along the way.  I didn’t foresee the feelings of inadequacy that would surface.  I hadn’t planned that I’d meet such a strong-willed inner critic that would continually remind me of all the reasons I should just give up and never photograph again!
The problem is that it is so easy to be discouraged.  It is the easier road. I’ve probably spent more time discouraged than not.  Just typing that is a little sad and discouraging :).
But if discouragement has you in its grasp, it isn’t the end of the world.  I want to share a few tricks I’ve used to beat discouragement when it has reared its ugly head!  Please share any other tips you have found helpful in the comments!

My 5 Tips for Overcoming Discouragement
• Look back at hold photos and take pride in what you have learned.  If you have only been shooting for a short time, look back as far as you can.  If you have been shooting for a while, look back to photos from 2 years ago.  Looking back will help you realize just how far you’ve come!

• Don’t Compare!  We begin by looking at others’ work under the guise of getting better.  BUT, what it often leads to is comparing our work to theirs—and then, ultimately, discouragement that our work isn’t as good as theirs.  Remember that when you are looking at others’ work, you are looking at their “highlight reel.”  Spend some time away (2 weeks is a good amount) from looking at others’ photography.  Use those two weeks to start a personal project that will help you improve.

• Be Patient with Yourself!  It sounds a little cliché.  AND it is harder to DO than it is to type.  Patience with yourself will soothe discouragement and allow you to keep getting better over time.  Hush the inner critic with words of encouragement and affirmation.

• Use Discouragement as Incentive!  How we deal with discouragement makes all the difference.  If you allow your discouragement to paralyze you and keep you from ever photographing again—it won!  But if you take the discouragement you feel and allow it to push you and challenge you to become better—then YOU win!  For me, writing out the discouraging thoughts and feelings helps “release” them into the world and out of my head.  Then I can look at things a bit more objectively and find my path to the other side.

• Have Faith!  Have faith in yourself.  Have faith that you have improved and that you will continue to get better.  Have faith that others before you experienced discouragement and fought it, and that you can, too.
I know I still have lots more to learn.  I know that there will still be days of discouragement and weeks of feeling uninspired.  I know my inner-critic will still whisper that I should just give up.  But I also know there will be those wonderful photos that inspire me and cause me to swoon a bit.  There will be strength that comes from not listening to the discouragement.  There will be inspiration and joy!

If you are looking for a resource to help you improve your photography, I have recently written an e-book, and even self-published a soft-cover version, putting down on paper a lot of what I have learned over the years about taking better photos.

Why on earth would I do this?
I hoped it would help someone else learn quicker and faster than I did. I hoped it would inspire others on their journey to better photos.  I hoped it would save others some discouragement.

I wish you much joy in your journey to take better photos!

Hi!! I am Gayle. I am a wife to my handsome husband and mom to 4 beautiful kids. In my spare time, I am a photographer and blogger at Mom and Camera. I have a passion for sharing my love of photography with others. I teach local photography classes and regularly share photography tips and tricks on my blog. I hang out there a lot—I’d love you to stop by and visit!

Visit Gayle on her WEBSITE and FACEBOOK pages here.

by Guest Contributor Elizabeth Halford

With the ability to liquify 20 lbs off in Photoshop, shine up eyes to oblivion and make skin more perfect than Barbie, sometimes capturing the image in your camera is just a tiny fraction of the work that can actually go into producing a magazine-esque portrait.

Before I knew anything about photography, my husband and I had our yearly photo sessions with a popular studio photographer in our city. He covered my pregnancies and our growing family year after year. I have a little birth mark on my lip. It’s kind of like a little bump you get when your purse your lips. When we got our first images back, I was so oblivious to the process of photography and editing that I thought I looked amazing and didn’t ever consider the fact that it was done in Photoshop. I just figured that I actually looked that good or that he just had a really good camera. Until I noticed that my birth mark was gone. I don’t mind my birth mark. It’s part of my face, not a temporary intruder like a zit or a bruise. But no one had asked me if I wanted it removed.

In the end, I didn’t mind enough to say anything, but it’s the example I think about when a reader posed me with the question that inspired this post: are our clients prepared for their transformation?
I know that not all photographers go for a hyper real, super edited look but even the most simple of adjustments can either thrill or annoy your client. Here are a few examples of my retouching techniques:

• I once had a rather large bride whose dress pushed everything…well…up. I think you call it ‘back cleavage’. But since it was on her back and she wouldn’t have been particularly aware of it’s presence, I took care of it in Photoshop. I didn’t intend on being unrealistic. I didn’t take weight off, but I did smooth out a couple of rolls which she may not have known were even there.
• Acne is pretty much always an ok thing to remove. If it’s not a permanent fixture – part of someone’s style or identity – I always assume it’s ok to remove it. This includes bruises, zits, acne scars…
• A staple of many photography businesses is the newborn session and often, this includes the new parents. I don’t know about you mums, but after having a baby, I’m always blissfully unaware of the actual state of my figure. Somehow, I think I’ve become skinny again overnight and it’s not until months later I look back and say what was I thinking?! In light of this, I’ve always found that I can give a little (keyword little) help to a new mummy’s post-partum figure without her even noticing.
• I almost always do a bit of touching under the eyes. Whether you’re a man or a woman, dark circles and bags are rarely a welcome part of your face. Even on children, they can be a huge distraction but tread lightly with editing children. I happen to know that for my son and some other kids, springtime photos will show darker under the eyes from allergies. But I don’t go all the way. I do the eyes before any other editing by duplicating the layer, applying a quick removal using the patch tool and then lowering the opacity of the layer by half. This means that half of the under eye area still shows through, but it’s just not as puffy or dark.
• Now, who made the rule that men are more attractive as they age? If you have that guy’s address, let me know. I rarely fix signs of aging in men. Using the above tip, I will sometimes soften the look of wrinkles or 5 o’clock shadow, but I don’t make his face look flawless.
• My favorite tool for retouching skin in Photoshop is from Totally Rad and it’s called ‘Pro Retouch’ you can just paint pores pretty! And when I was an Elements only type’a gal, I used MCP’s Magic Skin actions. Also, the adjustment brush in Lightroom is a pretty rockin tool for softening skin.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: expectation management is the numero uno most important thing to establish for resulting in happy clients. If they can clearly tell what you do and what they can expect by looking at your portfolio and website, then they won’t be surprised with the results of their session (as long as you haven’t deviated from your usual style). Obviously, they won’t know that you’ve removed imperfections from someone’s face, but they will probably notice that everyone looks pretty darn good through your camera. You might even be so brave as to add a little B&A somewhere on your website (like the FAQ section) to show people how fab you can make them look if they hire you!

Now, there are a million-and-one things you can talk to a client about in your pre-session consults. Location, wardrobe, style. And if you want to add another item to that list, you could talk about their feelings towards retouching. However, be careful…because like I mentioned in a post on dPS last week, you might want to carefully reconsider bringing up the word ‘Photoshop’. The instant you do, folks will light up with the possibilities of a Kim Kardashian-esque transformation and before you know it, you have a gigantic list of things they’d like you to take care of in your magic computer. Instead, talk to them about their body image. Ask them what they love about themselves and what they don’t love (but don’t make promises about fixing them). If this doesn’t come up naturally in conversation, it might happen during the session somehow and if it never does, don’t worry. Just follow your instincts.

I find it particularly helpful to pay close attention to your clients’ reactions during the viewing session. If they look confused, twist their face with distaste or mention that they don’t look like themselves, you can tell them that you did some light retouching and let them know that it can be re-worked in the prints that they actually want to purchase if they weren’t happy with their transformation.
We’re so lucky to be living in this technological age. We have every tool imaginable at our disposal for producing flawless, amazing and life-changing imagery. Sometimes, it’s best to leave things raw and real, sometimes you can go to town making a client look flawless. Test the waters and see what happens and remember…there’s always ctrl+z to fall back on!

About the Author: Elizabeth Halford is a professional photographer and blogger in Hampshire, England. She owns Glacier Cake Photography and a blog for photographers. Elizabeth is a second generation home educator and is, regrettably, quite addicted to Facebook.