Q&A WEDNESDAY

This weeks Q&A is devoted to this HUGE question that every photographer has at some time...

Do you have any hints/tricks for photographing children? Every age has their difficulties. Namely 2-3 year olds? Sometimes they are shy, too rambunctious, won't look at the camera, crying. Also, young siblings are my ultimate nemsis at the moment. I can't seem to get a 1 and 3 year old (general ages), to do any sort of interacting together without one or both of them crying, running away, etc. Let alone look at me and smile. Any great tricks that have helped you?

Hahaha! I don't know if I'd say I have GREAT tricks? I'm constantly reaching back into the bag to try something else. Okay lets see... A lot of these ideas came from other photographers and often their wonderful books too.

1. You gotta EARN IT FIRST! Before you even take out your camera become friends with the family and kids. Learn their names, give them high fives, compliment their cute dress or awesome hair do. Kids love compliments just as much as the rest of us. You have to get them back into their comfort zone. Go down on their level and look at them eye to eye. If you are in their home ask them to show you their room. When you feel like the ice has broken a bit, and you've become friends, then take out your camera. Instead of being scared or shy, they may be interested and excited. SOMETIMES taking a quick picture and showing it to them can help break them out of their shell. Sometimes things would be better if you didn't give them that privilege, all just depending on the child. :)

2. SILLINESS! I have found that the best thing I can do is be ridiculously and utterly silly! You may feel embarrassed but the kids will love it and the parents will eat you up because of it. When you're shooting just the children have a parent (the sillier of the two) stand behind you and tell them to pretend to do silly things to you. Don't be hesitant to bring toys or puppets to make them laugh. I placed a squeaky toy on my lens for a shoot this Saturday to keep the attention of a 6 month old but I soon had the whole family laughing as they watched my uncoordinated attepts to squeak the toy, press down the shutter and hold the camera still.

3. The NEW factor! Kids LOVE bubbles and it can make for a good prop too or a clean duster to tickle the kids' noses. It doesn't have to be fancy, sometimes all you need is a new element. When kids are having fun they tend to get along with each other better. Before you ask the siblings to pose together use your Jedi mind trick. You love your brother don't you? I bet you're a good older sister huh? Show me how much you love each other. Give them a hug! Children want to please adults and it helps if you tell them how much it would make you happy to see them hug. Something else I've learned is that you need eyes in the back of your head. While you're taking pictures of say, mom and dad, be on the look out for the kids in their natural state. You may just get a better picture while they are least expecting it than if they were posed. With all this said sometimes everything you try still doesn't work. You still can get a great picture of a child crying or running around. If that's the child's personality then what would be more fitting?

4. PREP THE PARENTS! It's also important to prep the parents and tell them not to get stressed out. Once mom's stressed the whole family is. I've seen so many shoots go south fast because mom starts getting stressed about the kids refusal to sit, hug and love on each other. Next time the kids are starting to act out, pay attention to the parents and see if thats whats setting it off. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to ask mom and dad to step out of the room for a few moments. Politely explain that you've noticed that kids often open up best when know one else is watching. When they see the results they will thank you for the suggestion! Plus when mom and dad are out of the scene you can talk to the kiddos about making a really great picture to surprise them with... This always seems to work for at least a few frames.

5. PERFECTLY PEZ-ERIFIC! I'm not kidding, the Pez machine is magic!! I'm working up quite a little collection so that the kids can pick who they want to smile at. You have to trim down the sides just a little and they fit right into your hot shoe. Just make sure you have a large supply of the yumminess to go with it!

6. Know THE LINGO! It helps a lot to know the really popular songs and characters that kids are in to. Sometimes I will email mom before the session to ask what the kids fav characters, movies and shows are. I become EXTREMELY cool when I start singing the song from their favorite morning cartoon!

7. SHARE IT! Let us know what works for you!!!

Show me your Bokeh!

Here are our bokeh submissions!! Thank you!

...................

From Claire...

From Leah...

From Noelle...

From Heather...

Sent from Kalli...

Thank you SO much for submitting images! This crew has got bokeh down! It's really appreciated. Our next one is going to be all about colour!! I will do a few tutorials in the next 2 weeks to help with really popping color, so start looking for color and thinking about what YOU want to submit!! We may even make our next one a contest with a PRIZE!!!

FREE ACTIONS, TUTORIALS, TEXTURES, STORYBOARDS and more

You have one more day if you were thinking of showing off an image with Bokeh! Thanks to me not getting the images sized down and having to much on the plate today. Instead... I'm sending you off to another FANTASTIC blog, and if you have not found this one yet, ooooh. You are going to love me for it!!! It's called CoffeeShop, and it is a sinfully delightful little place to explore, so get some hot chocolate (I don't drink coffee) and enjoy!

It's ALL FREE textures, actions and more. It's awesome. I have so many actions lots paid for, lots free... The one action I use the very most is Coffee Shop Powder Room. Just a side note with powder room, I often use it (and ALL my actions for that matter) in completely different ways than intended. For example, I might use the soften skin layer just to blur my background a little more (hint, hint for Bokeh), or the eye pop to bling out the jewelry! What I'm saying is don't be afraid to play!!

Inspire Me Friday Interview #3} WENDY WHITACRE from Blue Lily Photography

Oh yes! We got Blue Lily!

Your life is art, the site reads as I'm scanning over all the websites I've pulled into my spaces. I'm supposed to be doing a million different things but when I read that, I forget about the deadlines I've set, and start reading their blog. Before you know it the beautiful pictures have drawn you in and you're finding it hard to return to the real world. Simply stunning, these photos can speak for themselves but where would these photos be without the photographer behind the camera?

Meet Wendy Whitacre

1. How did you get into photography?

My husband Tyler got me into photography- he had the awesome camera and I, one day, stole it out of his hands and never gave it back :) I found that once I started to learn the ins and outs of the camera's technical aspects, and then turn technicality into artistry, I just couldn't put the camera down. I always grew up feeling like I should be an "artist", but I couldn't for the life of me paint, draw, sculpt or anything else. Photography is my one and only creative outlet!

2. Are you self taught or did you take any formal classes?

I am self taught, with the exception of my husband and father-in-law who would sit with me and the camera manual and explain a few things I couldn't grasp. I learned a vast amount of photo knowledge from the web. There are so many videos tutorials, etc... it's amazing!

3. What inspires you as a photographer?

I find inspiration in the strangest of places. Sometimes I find it in the location I'm shooting, sometimes through the subjects and families that I photograph. But mostly I find inspiration from color. Color in the scene seems to get my creative juices really flowing- it's what makes me go crazy and giddy and start acting like a kindergartner on a sugar high.

4. What's in your camera bag? Off camera flash?

We are some of the rare photo teams that use both Nikon (my favorite) and Canon (Tyler's getting quite into Canon these days). For both systems we use a 50mm 1.4, a midrange like the 24-70mm or 28-70mm 2.8, a 60mm macro, the lovely 70-200mm 2.8, wide angle lenses and a few other more rarely used lenses. We have plenty of backup camera bodies, which is a MUST in this biz! We use Sb800s for flashes or Alien Bees in the studio setting.

5. How long have you been in the photography business and how did you get from where you are now to where you were then?

Blue Lily Photo has been in business since April 2007. I started it out as a hobby- which quickly, very quickly, turned into a part time job, and then I blinked and it was a full time job and Tyler joined me in business. We have arrived where we are through a few ways, the most important of which are:

a) we decided to sell digital files, which helps spread the work about us immensely through blogs. Our clients post their images on their blog, their friends see them, book with us, then do the same thing. It's a lovely trickle effect!

b) we've never been afraid to do tons of free work, either charity or otherwise. Doing photography for free has been the best way to give back and at the same time see the word spread about our work.

c) we always put the clients first. Sometimes this is quite a trick. :)

6. Tell us about Blue Lily photography.

Blue Lily Photo is all about fun, family, emotion and connectivity. In our family photography, our goal is to show the true nature of the family- to show how each member of the family interacts with others. For weddings, we strive to capture the raw emotions and color of the day, through details and again, relationships between people. Sometimes this is really hard. Sometimes it's very easy. The longer we're in business, the easier it is to help our subjects loosen up and have a great time. And I guess that's what it's really about. Having fun and letting loose, and creating little works of art. We LOVE our job!

7. How do you market yourself?

We market ourselves mostly through our blog and the blogs of others. It never ceases to amaze us how blogs can spread word like wildfire. We do have ads through google, which helps for getting weddings booked. For our senior photography, we hire student reps in the schools to spread the word. Basically, word of mouth is the best way to market, hands down.

8. How do you find your locations for a shoot?

This is a great question. Finding locations around our city is really easy. You just drive and look! It's the travel sessions that can get really tricky. Clients are always willing to suggest places, so that's great- but also we've been known to cyberwalk the streets of googlemaps to find something great. And of course, several times we've randomly picked a place and it's turned out absolutely wonderful. We always, always look for color and texture in our locations because that's the central theme of our pictures- COLOR!

9. Describe your typical day at work.

Our typical day at work is more like a typical night at work. The only work we do in the daytime is the actual shoot, which is around dinner time mostly (weddings obviously take all day). We put parenting first during the day (again, excepting shoots) and edit and reply to emails at night. This works for us because we love to be together editing, watching shows online, joking around, etc. It's the perfect way to spend an evening (and during busy times sometimes we spend all.night.long editing). We recently hired an assistant to help us in the office and she is so, so invaluable... don't know why we waited so long to do that.

10. Tell us about a challenge you met at a shoot and describe how you dealt with it.

The biggest challenge we meet at shoots is that sometimes, children just don't want to be photographed. Either they are shy, just woke up from a nap, or just plain uncooperative- whatever the reason, it's sometimes really hard to get them to change their minds. So Tyler and I generally act like complete idiots to get the ice to break. You know once you have that first crack of a smile that's it's smooth sailing from there on out. I bet if you asked the parent's of families we've photographed to describe me in one word, most people would say "silly". Kids love silly. The camera loves silly. Of course, we have had a few times when a child just won't budge, and though that's so frustrating for the parents, it's understandable and completely ok to reschedule. We've never had a kid say no to having fun with us at a reschedule and we hardly ever reschedule.

11. Raw or JPEG and why?

Raw. Our editing style pretty much requires it. We have nothing against jpg at all. We just like more flexibility.

12. Your photos are so crisp and bright! Any tips or tricks you can share with our followers?

We do love bright, vibrant pictures! The key is proper exposure straight off. Oh, and a complicated post-processing routine! It's pretty funny, actually- I think most beginning photogs go crazy in photoshop trying to cover their mistakes and whatnot- but we actually started out in business editing very little. Over time our style has changed dramatically- and the processing has become more dramatic. I find that in striving to make each picture a tender memory, I like to pull out the color and texture more and more every day. And the response has been terrific. We also highly recommend the TRA Revenge actions for several reasons- number one is their sharpening actions included in the set.

13. What is something you know now that you wish you knew when you first started?

That's a hard question. I think my answer will be this: sometimes a client will come along who just doesn't match your style and/or vibe. It's ok to point them in another direction, help them find what they are truly looking for.

14. What advice do you have for photographers who are pursuing a career in photography?

I always give one specific piece of advise to those looking to be professionals, and that is: Be the kind of photographer that YOU want to be. Try not to be influenced too much in the beginning. Listen to what your soul is saying to you- and let it show through the lens. In this digital age, anyone can operate a camera. But it takes personality, soul, and artistry to truly succeed.

I was seriously doing the happy dance when Wendy agreed to the interview. Let me tell yah, she did NOT disappoint! Again, thank you SO much Wendy and Blue Lily Photography!

Adding a little style to your blogger blog.

When it comes to photography blogs and websites, I have to say that I prefer to read and look at someone's blog compared to their website. I personally believe that you get more of a feel for someone's personality and style when reading their blog. So while a website is great for showing off the photographers best work and capturing peoples attention, a blog is there to keep their attention and perhaps seal the deal in choosing a photographer. So what I'm trying to say in a round about way is that you, as a photographer, need a good blog. And because everybody's budget's are different, Blogger may be the right fit for you. FREE is always great! I'm going to give you some tips and share some websites that helped me when I first started blogging. This post is all about blogger, but I have to say, for photography quality I highly recommend WORDPRESS. That account is free too, you can get a domain name for under $100 for the year and a free template to really spice it up, I wrote about it a while back here. For $100 you can have a very professionally styled blogsite!

Okay, sorry, if I were trying to plan my blog I would have wanted to know about wordpress, so I had to add that in. Of course blogger is not bad ;) after all this blog post you are reading is up because of blogger.., so thanks Blogspot. Now back to blogger...

This first little tip I had no idea I could do until my sister told me about it. Did you know that you can read other people's HTML? There was a background that somebody had on their blog that I loved and I wanted to know where they got it from. You click View on your tool bar and then View Source. Their whole blog's HTML will come up. DO NOT and I repeat DO NOT copy anything from somebody's HTML unless they give you permission. I only use this method to help me find out where that person has downloaded a certain template, button or something else.

To be able to really understand what you are reading to get the information that you want from that persons blog you kinda need to know and understand HTML. Ourblogtemplates.com is a great site to help you learn to read your HTML. Plus they have over 170 wonderful pre made templates to choose from that will make your blog look more professional in an instant.

Blogbulk.com is another blogger savvy site that can help you from downloading pictures to changing the layout of your blog. I'm a very visual person and if these tutorials helped me, they can help you!

For a great blog you want big pictures! Did you know that blogger has added some features to make it easier to post pictures? Got to Settings>Basic and scroll down to Global Settings. Select Updated Editor and save your settings. It won't change your blog at all just, how you use it for the better. Now when you upload a picture, after you've uploaded you can change the size from small to X Large. Even after you've selected the size you can still size it down by double clicking on the picture. There's an 'undo' and 'redo' button. At first I actually thought it was a rotate button. :) So don't make the same mistake I did. Play around with it and you'll quickly get used to how user friendly it is.

My last tip is to Google. I LOVE googling. It's a big world out there with billions of people. Chances are somebody has had the same question as you and has found the answer.

I'm leaving you again with saying that Blogger is FREE. We can all save a little money but we don't have to sacrifice style. I hope these tips help. Now go out and supe up your blog!

Q&A WEDNESDAY

OK - This one is going to have to be very short. Yesterday was my hubby's birthday so I had no time to get this done and I'm swamped in editing right now... If I didn't get to your question this week, I'll try for next! Thanks for understanding!

For your phone consultation/get-to-know-you before the shoot, do you have set questions that you ask? I think I am guilty of jumping into the photographing too fast. But I really don't know what to say. Can you help?

I too was very guilty of this same thing. Recently I realized that I'm only an email name up to the day of our shoot when we actually meet and once again after our session. I didn't like this at all, and I wanted to make things much more personal. So thats the reason for the change. Everything usually starts via email (because thats how they contact me 99% of the time). Once the deposit is received I give them a call, introduce myself and just reiterate to them a little about my style and talk about the emphasis on how clothing makes such a statement, I ask if they have chosen wardrobe and if they have any questions. They want to tell me what the were thinking and ask my opinion. Of course this is a great time to give it! I really don't have any set questions. I'm a chatty one as it is so it's pretty easy to just go with it. Really my main two prerogative are this; 1. have a say in what they wear and 2.

help them get a little taste of my personality and get excited about the session!

For your cd that you give to clients, you said that it is high definition. What does that mean? Is it a special kind of cd that you purchase? A certain way to put them onto the cd? I just download files to the disk. Am I doing that wrong? You also give pictures that can go up on facebook and other sites. What do you do special for those pictures?

Hmm? This is news to me! ;) Where did I say high def? I don't even know what that means? I should probably take that off! ;) I use Cd's sometimes but usually I just use DVD's. Here is an awesome tip for buying your DVD's and CD's. Day after Thanksgiving Sales! I absolutely hate doing the day after sales, but that is one time it's really worth it!

So all I do is give them a folder with the final images, a folder that had all the sneak peaks (sized for web with my watermark and framed) it's usually only about 5 images. And a print release document. Sometimes I include a slideshow for them that I created from Animoto (just the web version). I use a Mac so I just create a burn folder, pop the DVD in and press burn (love how easy it is!)! I'm sure you are doing the disk properly I just need to make sense of my terms!

Do you have to resize your photos? My photo says it's 78 x 52 inches. That's huge right? What am I supposed to do to make my image smaller but not crop? And what about printing? Can you explain this to me?

First off. I have started trying to take images from my camera as I would want to print them, or in otherwords so I would not have to crop it at all. Not always possible but because I don't know what size a client will order, I want to keep it as large as possible. But yes, you can resize images. Lets say you have a photo - love everything about it (so you don't want to crop it) you just want to resize. Go into IMAGE --> IMAGE SIZE. And you have a box that looks like this. Now for this image the first thing I notice is that the resolution is at 72. So yes the image seems large at 54x36 but it's at a web quality resolution right now.

Lets change the resolution to 300 (where you want to print at) and check Resample Image (or if checked, just uncheck and recheck the box). This brings me to about 12x8. So for printing purposes it's much smaller. I could hit OK and it would than resize to the new 12x8
Lets say you want to change it to an 8x10 for printing. This is NOT the way to do it and let me show you why. Our cameras do not capture in a one perticular aspect that fit's to our printing (if it did the closest would be a 5x7 ratio).

Because this is actually (in ratio) closer to a 12x8. If I try to resize it as an 8x10 it will condense it. Notice the condensed image below. To change it to an 8x10 at 300 dpi you would crop the image and will have to choose what part of the image you want to loose the head or the chest.

This is why I have started trying to shoot so that I will not have to crop. Each size has a different look to it. If you have not noticed this, open an image in photoshop and crop it is a 11x14, 8x10 and 5x7 and you will see what I mean.

How to work your Canon Flash and which CANON Flash I don't like.

First comes the {camera} body, than comes the lens, next comes the flash so you can make some dividends. Being a Canon girl, I had esentially 2 choices the 430 vs. the 580. With about a $200 price difference I went with the 430. I really wish I hadn't. My number one problem has been battery life. Last Saturday I shot an event, I was shooting for about 6 hours straight, I needed a flash and was using my Gary Fong WhaleTail diffuser the whole night (I'll talk about the Gary Fong diffusers in another post). Before the event I sent my assistant (aka my hubby) out to buy really good batteries from the camera shop - he bought 3 sets (each $15) thinking this would be more than enough. I was changing out batteries about every hour because they got to hot in the flash, slowing the flash WAY down in between shots. I had thought it was because I was using Kirkland Signature brand batteries that I was changing them out so fast but after installing these high quality ones I realized it was the flash. Leaving me either missing the shot when I was shooting candid's or asking people to wait for it to power up when I was shooting portraits, both ways it was maddening to say the least. As far as I have found there is no external battery for the 430 like there is for the 580. If I'm wrong someone PLEASE tell me. Other than that I'm happy with my flash but this battery thing is a real deal breaker! Please way in your thoughts and let us know what you have and how you feel about it or if your in the market feel free to ask a question in the comment box!

Below are videos for the very basics of getting started with your flash.

And for my Nikon Friends... (I don't know anything about them but I didn't leave you hanging, so here is a video for you!)

If you happen to be a Sony user... Here is a link for your flash!

Better with Bokeh

We talked a little about Bokeh not too far back. Bokeh is the blurry part of a picture and it helps determine the depth of field. When your subject is sharp and the back ground is blurry, that blur lets you know that your subject is closer to you than it's background. A large depth of field. It gives your subject that 3D effect that makes you feel like you can reach out and touch him.

When your entire photo is crisp, with no bokeh, it's harder to tell how close or far away your subject is to her background. It gives a 2D feel, where your subject could be flush with her background.

Bokeh is a technique that I love! I'm definitely not saying you have to go out and make sure that all your pictures have blur in it but I'm merely describing the effects that it gives us. I love me a crisp photo too especially with great texture in the background, but for this homework assignment we want pictures with bokeh in it. YUP! Email pictures to go4pro@gmail.com and we'll posts your photos next Monday. Can't wait to see what you got!