More benefits of the professional photographer

More benefits of the professional photographer – NON Professionals beware!

As I think more and more on the subject, I become more aware of what sets me apart from the Aunts, Uncles, and friends out there running around with a camera, thinking “I can do that”.
Some of the key factors are Equipment, experience, knowledge, and attitude.

With equipment this item is often over looked from people know don’t know what they are looking at. Allow me to explain.

When you walk into Best Buy, Wal-Mart, or Target, I’m sure you’ve seen the cameras on display and think “damn $700 is a lot of money for a camera” it might be a Canon Rebel or a Nikon D40, but I’m here to tell you, it’s not a lot of money.

My main camera cost me $3000 easy and that’s not including the lens, flashes, batteries, and other equipment. And that’s just my main camera, I also carry a back up camera worth $1500 and an extra camera worth about $1200. You may think, “What! Why!” I’m serious about my job and my passion, and I’m serious about taking the very best photo I can, and whether it’s for your wedding day or a family beach portrait, I want to make it the best I can.

I carry around backups, because equipment fails. Batteries fail, lenses malfunction, flashes break, on the that one special magical wedding day, you can’t announce to the crowd, “Hold on, I’ll be right back, I have to buy something”. And you can’t just leave either, you will miss everything you were hired to capture.

I like to bring along multiple lenses because different lenses do different things, which also ties into Education. I like my standard low light lens, F2.8, to capture as much as I can in low light situations. Its considered a mid range so I can’t be too far and I can’t be too close either. Another Lens that is fun to use is my 85mm prime lens, it’s really cool and artsy, to take a photo of the cake all in focus and have the couple in the background all blurred out. Or what if I want to take a really detailed close up image of the rings in the flowers, then I have my macro lens for that. Rather than switch lens on to camera body and back and forth, which means you might have dust enter the camera or you might miss a shot because you are messing with your camera or lens, I have several lenses on multiple camera bodies.

Does your amateur photographer do all that?

Experience

What does shooting hundreds of weddings and thousands of portraits give you?
Ding Ding Ding DING!
You guessed it, Mad Experience.

Well you come to rely on that experience at various weddings, events, portrait sessions, whatever has happened to you and you learned something from you, makes you a better photographer. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a church photographing a wedding and I see the bubbles ready for the bride and groom to walk out through, and time and time again, based on experience I know a lot of times it doesn’t work without the proper planning. So with me, I know from the past to help organize the people, get more people on one side or the other based on how strong the wind is blowing. Helping those family members and friends with cameras, to come down by me so they can get the better shot.

Experience wins out more often than not and that’s why I go to events, even when I’m not the photographer, sometimes I’ll help out a DJ friend, or maybe video tape a minister friend, every event I can go to brings me more and more experience.

And you don’t want an Inexperience amateur photographer at your wedding do you?

Knowledge

Where experience will only get you so far, it’s the knowledge that will carry you further. Its why I got to professional photographer classes, why I read books, subscribe to photographer magazines, attend big photographer conventions, and why I never stop learning. I often consider myself a “White Belt” (To use some martial arts terms) in photography but my definition might different as we all know a black belt is way higher than a white, I think of myself as constantly learning. I don’t want to enter into a conversation or class and think of myself as more knowledgeable then the rest, I’d rather go there with an open mind and clean slate to learn with. Because even though you may have years of photography knowledge, you may miss something the new beginner might have picked up. And then you can add that to your knowledge base.

A lot of classes and seminars I attend cost a couple of hundred dollars a pop, but its paid for itself time and time again from what I learned. And you’d be surprised with all the free education online that you can learn, and the biggest difference is that I take the time to learn it. Some people might say “I don’t have the time”. I’ll let you in on a trick that will help. MAKE THE TIME! It’s that easy. But that’s for a whole other article.

Does your photographer friend find the time to learn more about their hobby?

Attitude

If you thought Experience and Knowledge will take you places, I’m here to tell you, Attitude will take you places you never thought possible. And not any attitude will do, it has to be a positive one. When I show up to an event, be it wedding, senior shoot, or beach portrait, I bring on the Fun and I bring on the FUNK. I think of myself as the eternal optimist and it pays to do so. One of my classic, I know, cheezy sayings “where there is a WILL (me) there IS A WAY”. I don’t like to take “it’s impossible” or “I can’t do it” to heart, I think all the time when I encounter opposition or a difficulty, there has got to be a way around this. So many a times I’ll show up on location with the attitude “this is going to be fun” “and nothing is going to stop this from being great”.

I’ve interacted with people not in the very best of moods, but I’ve been able to turn it around by being positive and fun. I am all the time reading people, their tones, body language, and their attitude, and when I need to, I’ll kick my attitude up a bit to make it an Awesome event.
It’s no fun having a silent, burnt out photographer showing up to your wedding, there to capture smiles and all they do is bring the place down.

Check to make sure your guy is at least a little fun or has a pulse.
And well that’s all I have to say on the subject.
Nuff said.

Center Stage Photographer

I have found there are two types of wedding photographers out there:

The good ones, who are seldom seen, doing their job well, un obtrusive, and moves with the flow of the wedding.

And The bad ones, those who are right up in your face the entire wedding, and what ends up happening is your guests end up seeing the back of this photographer more than they get to see you, the couple.

I'm currently editing some video I have taken at a wedding for a friend and its bringing back a flood of bad memories of that day. And I'm not one for photographer bashing, but it really irks me that it happened like this at all. With any luck this experience could help others when choosing their photographer for an upcoming event.

Now I classify myself as an unseen photographer, I watch the flow of the event from the side lines, I end up trying to blend in with the wall as much as possible. I will spring into action when something is going down that might need to be captured by my camera. I like to wear darker colors to that i might blend in to the shadows if at all possible. To me there are certain boundaries you shouldn’t cross while at a wedding and some photographers know this, and others don’t care.

I have noticed at various events when I’m not the photographer but maybe a spectator, that some photographers are very possessive of all the photography going on all around the wedding couple. I’ve seen photographers blocking other people deliberately who are trying to snap a shot or asking the guest to “not take the photo” with their personal point and shoot camera.
Now me on the other hand, I like to treat others as I would like to be treated. So as soon as i grab my shot, I step back and allow others to grab the shot as well. There have been times when I’d take the camera from the guest and say “get in there” as I can see they were a group and I would snap the photo with their own personal camera. I’ve enjoyed helping out grandmothers working their camera as they are trying to capture an image of their precious loved ones.

If nothing else is taken away from this little rant, when you meet with your photographer, see what kind of person he or she is, and maybe bring up the question: “How will you handle our wedding day?”.

With any luck you will have a photographer that will become your friend and will be a joy to be around on your special day.

Family Beach Photography Tips and Information

For you the client, this information is for you. I wanted to educate you on some helpful information that you might enjoy before we actually start shooting your Family Beach Portrait. By now you might have contacted me and we would have discussed some date possibilities.

Choosing the Date!
If you are arriving on a Saturday or Sunday and staying for the whole week, get settled and let’s aim for a Monday or Tuesday at the start of your trip. This will give us the rest of the week as possible backups to your shoot incase it rains or something comes up. As both my wife and I both shoot, we can easily accommodate people on the day they are requesting. Just try not to ask for a Saturday as we are Wedding Photographers and will most likely have a wedding on Saturday.

Location, Location, Location.
We would like to direct you to one of our many beach locations that are closer to where you are staying while vacationing. However if you have viewed some of our work and would like to request a certain location, base on the photos you saw, please let us know. I like to get you to one of our closer locations to where you are at, to keep any children happy and from staying in the car for too long. I’ve included a google map I’ve put together to make it easier for you. And if you have GPS unit you can easily put in one of these addresses to get you there.

Arrival on the Beach photography Scene - To be late or not to be late?
Now you might arrive before I do, or I might arrive before you do, don’t feel as though you have to rush for this. We want you happy and relaxed as this will be a fun experience. If I were to show up late, its not to keep you waiting, but to move with the sun as I say. A lot of times I’ll get there when the sun is just too high and then we may feel forced to start. I delay my arrival to avoid starting too early. And I anticipate sometimes clients being late because they are often from out of town and don’t know all the little beach photography spots we drag you out to. If you arrive a little late, don’t worry, be happy, it’s all good. The flip side to that is – if you have a large family and we are due to start shooting at 7pm then if you show up 45 minutes late, then it will put a damper on the amount of time we have left to photograph you. What I aim for is to get there and meet you at a location an hour and twenty minutes before the sun sets, that will give us a good hour of shooting time for before we run out of light.

Your clothing options – No speedo’s please.
You can choose to wear whatever your heart’s desire. It’s your photo shoot you can do what you will. However if you are looking for my opinion and what experience has taught me, I’d like to make a few suggestions. I’d recommend solid colors, nothing with a lot of stripes, dots, or wording. A nice white shirt or nice white sundress would work. And you can go the other way if you would like, with a black shirt or black sundress. If you have a couple of different families together in the shot, you can keep them all in the same colors or use different color variations. Like a light blue on one family and Light green on another. But the safest bet is to go with white or black and you can’t go wrong. An issue with black clothing – once you start rolling around in sand, the sand will show up more on the black, where as you don’t have that problem with white.

Parents with Children or Children with Parents – Depends on who’s in charge.
Try and allow your kids rest early on, like a nap. As we are shooting around the evening time, they could be tired by the time we shoot, and you will want them to smile but they will be cranky and tired. So nap time if at all possible. Brings snacks is always a good idea, as we can the little ones to smile with little treats when all else fails. When I first walk up to a new family, before I take out the camera, I say “Hi” and introduce myself. With kids in the portrait too, I’m getting to know them as well, and allowing them to get to know me. There might be a little bit of bonding before hand, as it will make getting them to listen to me easier.

Parent Tip – when time to photograph the children and you aren’t in the photo, you would be best to stand behind me, so that the child’s attention is focus in my direction for the picture. I could also recommend, allowing you to take a back seat, behind me so to speak so that I can talk and work with the mini model. Sometimes they may cry for you or you may want you to pick them up, but we want to give them a chance to listen to my instructions so I can grab the shot. One of the best things you could do is stand together behind me quietly so I can chat with the little one or you want speak softly you can if it helps. If my attempts do not work we can try another approach. I defiantly know that screaming and yelling behind me to capture the child’s attention doesn’t work well.

The beach portrait family - breakdown and rebuilding – Basic shoot outline.
As you are there for a beach family portrait, what I like to do is take a group shot of the whole family together and then break it up into other family configurations. This is a basic outline that I’m about to go into, and as it might not fit with all families I’m sure you can fill in the blanks as needed. Say you have a family – set of grandparents and those grandparents have 4 sons and those 4 son’s have wife’s and each one has either one or two kids each. You can imagine that as a large family photo there, and we like to start with the center of the family, the grandparents. As I sit the grandparents down in the sand, I like to get them comfortable as possible. For all of remaining family members standing around, it might be nice to pay attention to what I’m showing them because I’m setting you up with way to make you look good. Once the grandparents are seated, I like to take a few shots of them to get them going and to show the kids, “Hey nothing to worry about”. I’ll grab a few shots and then get their children in the photo, in this case the 4 sons. Snap a few photos, and then I’ll call the wife’s with the children on over, to add to the over group shot. Snap, click, captured, done. Chances are I’ll snap a few photos like 10 – 15 to make sure all eyes are open and we got a good shot.

Parent Tip – Don’t focus on the children in front of you, try and keep your attention on me, and allow me to get their attention because as soon as I have the child’s attention I snap the photo, and what I end up with is the child looking directly at the camera, and the top of the parent’s head, or a blur of hair. So try and keep looking at me. Once we have the group photo, great, we can now move on to individual shots of families, and what better way to start then with the grandparents with all the grandchildren. The parents get up, leave the children around the grandparents, and step behind me, you may want to stand beside or off somewhere, but what you might end up with is the little kiddie, looking at you or for you, and everyone else is looking at the camera. Moving on, we can get Son #1 with his family, and then Son #1 with just his wife, Son #1 with the kids, and then switch, Mom #1 with the kids. We can even do so far as to do a little “toddler tossing”, where the parent’s are throwing the children back and forth. Just kidding, checking to see if you are still reading. But whatever other ideas you might have, we can shoot them. And we would go down the line with all the families shooting in different combinations. I’m out there, and we are having fun, why not snap some more fun photos, and so we can walk on down to the water, snap a few pictures with the waves coming in. If your family feels up to it, we can get some photos of you all running along the water, jumping in if you want, it’s towards the end of the shoot, you can get wet if you want to, or crazy if you’d like.

The Beach portrait is done, Dude – now what?
As we finish up some last shots of the portrait session, we are walking back to our cars, and hopefully no one left anything on the beach. Try and keep all items close together so it’s easy to collect at the end. We’ll chat back to the cars I’m sure, but your images can take up to about 7 or so days to process. If we are doing beach portraits then it must be summer, and if it’s summer that means it is also wedding season, so processing of the images takes a little while. Once the images are online, you should get an email from me letting you know where to find them, and if you are on facebook, I like to add a link to your profile that will easily take you to your gallery. Your package would include various prints, as you go through your images keep track of the numbers below the photos, and write down the pictures that you love. This way, when it comes time to let me know which images, you want as per your package you can just email them to me. For those other family members that were part of the group they can order directly from the gallery, or if they have any special requests, you can email me or call. Your gallery should remain online for the duration of the year, as you might not have had a chance to purchase extra prints, because you might be paying off the vacation itself. You can also look at your gallery close to Christmas time and order some Christmas cards to send out to family.

Tip - Just give us a call early before the mad Holiday card rush starts happening. You can order more than just prints from your gallery too, from playing cards, to T - shirts, to coffee mugs, and even bags, all from the gallery and shipped directly to your home. If you ever have a problem with your order, if the prints turn out bad or something, ship them to me, and I will re order you new ones. As an artist and a business owner, I take great pride in my work, and it’s just good business practice to treat people right.

Something Rare – Something Cool!

A lot of times I photograph weddings and events with an assistant or second shooter, someone I’m training or a newer photographer wanting some tips. Well my buddy, Matt just happens to be one of my “Padawan learners” and the poor guy had his camera stolen from the beach in Lewes. It just so happened that we were photographing a wedding a week prior and I needed his camera card with the images on it. I did not want to leave him without a card, just in case he wanted to so some shooting on his own, and so I gave him one of my compact flash cards.

Anyway, his camera was found by a guy and his son at a skate park not to far away, and because my camera cards are all labeled with my name and number they were able to contact me and let me know they had found it.

What is rare about this is that most people would have kept a $700 camera and not thought twice, but this gentleman was super cool and called wanting to return it. He mentioned that he would not have been able to do so if my camera card wasn’t labeled with my name and number. I had picked up that little tip from the Digital Story Show, and with his podcast “Inside Pro Tips”

Thank you “good Samaritan”
And thank you Derrick Story!