T H E M O N T H LY
#ISSUE 12
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A NOTE FROM BETSY: THE FACEAPP FREAK OUT
AU G U S T 2 0 1 9
the stories our clients are able to tell because of them. Your photo could be technically perfect in every way, but you’ve GOT to remember: your client isn’t looking for technicals, they’re documenting moments.
By the time you’re reading this, chances are you have already forgotten about FaceApp - the app that went viral for painfully aging all of our faces with a single snapshot. (Take a look at mine - it’s a geriatric nightmare. Someone send me copious amounts of wrinkle cream and a medical-grade hydration plan, STAT). I know, I know. You guys are like, “Betsy, that was so July 17th!” But - the fact that this craze is over and we’ve all moved on by the time this article goes to print proves an important lesson for us photographers: Your pictures don’t matter as much as you think they do. OUCH. Sorry. That was harsh. Let me explain. I’m certain that each of us would argue that the photos we provide to our clients are highly valuable; priceless works of art, even. After all, generations from now, that’s all that will be left behind, right? But maybe that’s not the whole truth. Sure, photos will be passed down. But it’s not the photo alone that carries value. What brings those photos to life are the stories behind them. Two weeks ago, the internet was bursting with millions of geriatric faces because of a single photo app. But today no one really cares, because while it was fun for a hot minute, those photos don’t actually represent anything. They’re fake, without any real history or story to tether us to them for any length of time. And so, we all moved on. If we aren’t careful, our photos will have the same result. The reality is that the photos we provide to our clients will only be as valuable as the memories we capture and
Never settle for merely taking good technical photographs. Dig deeper, learn how to put your clients at ease, and capture stories. Commit to cultivating an environment in your sessions where clients can create memories instead of just snapshots; study ways to evoke emotion so you can capture your client’s truest selves. Because the photograph by itself doesn’t matter. But what your clients feel and the stories they remember when they see it DOES. A photograph without a story will be tossed to the side, no different than the viral app you had already forgotten. But documented memories are held onto, cherished, and relived for generations. Betsy
WHAT’S WORKING: COMMUNITY BRAINSTORM RECAP B Y K AT E G U E R T I N
WHAT TO POST ON FACEBOOK
PRODUCT CREDIT WINNERS: ZEE BEE LY N N C E E
It’s a struggle...day after day thinking of content to post to your social media pages. It’s a necessary evil, something we’ve been taught so many times. Be consistent. Be active. Engage your audience. But with what?!
2. PROMPT YOUR READER!
If you’re booked solid and shooting a lot, the answer is easy! Fill that page with your gorgeous work, client sneak peeks, behind the scenes shots and videos and session slideshows. What better way to reel in wall sitters than to knock their socks of with some of your most recent gorgeous creations right?
“This was a fun interaction on my page. I also shared to my personal page. Most of us have fur babies & animals that are part of our family. This created a chance to show off our baby dogs & see everyone’s extended pet family,” says member Zee Bee! Check out her “share your pet” post on her page here!
But what about when you’re not booked solid? Maybe you’re brand new to this, maybe you’ve taken a break. Whatever the case, when you don’t have photos to post, things get tricky. Ever sat there trying to schedule next weeks posts and drawing a total blank? Our members weighed in with some awesome ideas for what they post to keep their page on Facebook’s radar and out of the dark depths of the Facebook graveyard in this month’s community brainstorm. Check out some of their ideas below!
1. GET PERSONAL! “Quick real life stories about something you did/saw with a photo. I usually share something about one of my kids,” says member Angela Pope! Check out one of her most recent examples on her photography page here!
3. POSITION YOURSELF AS THE PRO! “I have a pro tip series I blog where I give clients advice on anything they may find useful from first looks, unplugged ceremony, why photography seems expensive but it’s not, etc.,” says member Carianne McElrath!
4. SHARE THE WORLD AROUND YOU! “I live in a really pretty area so I’ll post pictures of landscapes sometimes! I also like to take pictures at local events and post some of those. Like the 4th of July parade or rodeo,” shares member Val Fastenau!
5. TAKE YOUR FOLLOWERS ABROAD! “I travel a lot so I love to post a photo or two of where I have been,” says member Lynn Cee!
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Get creative this month and think of ways you can keep your page active and engaging! For more ideas check out lesson 4 of our Facebook breakout course, Let’s Get Social and the bonus “filler fodder” folder that comes with it! We can’t wait to see what you post!
PRO MEMBER SPOTLIGHT:
CORVETTE BEHNKE WHERE I CALL HOME: Honolulu, Hawaii YEARS I’VE BEEN IN BUSINESS: Almost 9 Months MY NICHE / WHAT I SPECIALIZE IN: I specialize in couples and all things family. I’m currently working on adding adventure elopements and intimate weddings next. WHY I LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY: Photography first started for me as a love of taking photos of my babies. I have a creative soul and it fulfills that desire to create something emotional and beautiful. As a military spouse it’s also huge that it’s a craft that I can take everywhere and allows me to contribute to my family as well as be home for my three munchkins. ONE CHALLENGE IN MY BUSINESS THAT I’VE OVERCOME: I’m very shy and introverted. At the very beginning just talking and prompting whoever I was shooting was a challenge. Thankfully backstage pass had just launched and I had amazing friends who helped me practice at the very beginning. This entire journey has brought me out of my shell and made my client experience a million times better than what it possibly could have been like without those. If you haven’t watched the backstage passes, I highly
recommend them! They were a game changer for me! ONE THING I LOVE ABOUT COLE’S CLASSROOM IS: One word. Community. The community here is unlike any other. I had been a part of other photography groups prior to joining Cole’s Classroom. The way that people interacted made the thought of entering the field extremely intimidating. Here in the CCPro community everyone is so positive and helpful. They embrace you, encourage you and uplift you. I know for a fact launching my business would not have happened without this community.
3 RANDOM FACTS ABOUT ME: 1. I can’t walk past Auntie Anne’s Pretzels without buying their cinnamon sugar pretzels. It’s probably a good thing I’m rarely at the mall. They’re soooo good! 2. Target is my second home. I feel like I’m there every other day! 3. I’m deathly afraid of heights BUT I went skydiving for my 31st birthday with my hubby and it was AMAZING! I’m sure the Hawaiian views helped! It was such a peaceful experience and I immediately wanted to go again after we landed!
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THE 2 ELEMENTS OF AN IDEAL PHOTO SESSION LOCATION B Y B E T S Y D AV I S
When I first began taking clients, the only thing I thought about when picking out the location with my clients for their session was how the location looked. Was it pretty? Were there dramatic features? And it makes sense, right? Who doesn’t want the backdrop for their photos to be gorgeous? What I didn’t realize at that time was that just because a location was pretty, that didn’t mean it was going to translate well on camera. Gradually, I realized that there was more to a great photography location than what meets the eye. There are a couple of things we need to consider in order to be able to deliver gorgeous, consistent images to our clients.
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T H E M O N T H LY S N A P S H O T
LIGHT, LIGHT, LIGHT! Beautiful locations are nice, but the lighting comes first. The best lighting comes from areas with open access to the sky. This gives you an abundance of light and less color cast from your surroundings. When possible, I look for soft, even lighting. Even light will flatter your subjects and keep the eye drawn to them and not hot spots (or blown out areas) in your photo. This is especially important when the sun is higher in the sky, when you have a higher occurrence of dappled lighting. Dappled light is typically caused by the bright sun coming through trees, which can create hotspots on your subjects. When at all possible, photograph your subjects with the sun angled behind them to keep harsh highlights or dappled light off their faces.
NATURAL REFLECTORS Natural reflectors are neutral colored objects onlocation that can aid in bouncing sunlight onto your subjects. These could be sidewalks, gravel pathways, light neutral colored buildings, or the sand on a beach. I am always looking for natural reflectors at my locations. Because I primarily shoot alone without an assistant, holding a reflector while shooting can be challenging. I love to backlight my clients, so as often as possible, I look for natural reflectors at my locations to help bounce light onto their faces. Take a look at the comparison of these two images, taken just inches apart from one another, with the exact same camera settings. The first was taken on the grass, and the second on the
sidewalk. The grass absorbs the light and casts a greenish tint on the subject’s face, while the sidewalk reflects clean, even light onto her. A lot of my favorite locations, however, are in the grass, with no natural reflectors around. If you have no choice but to place your subjects on the grass, choose locations that have longer grass instead of manicured grass. The short, manicured grass tends to show up as more neon in photographs, where the longer grass appears less reflective under the sunlight. Next time you’re scouting for a new location for photos, keep in mind that light matters over everything else! When your subjects are lit well, the photo will turn out better, no matter what the backdrop is like!
T H E M O N T H LY S N A P S H O T
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PHOTO TIP OF THE MONTH A RT I C L E BY E D E L C L A R K I M AG E S BY J E N N A DA M S
GETTING IT RIGHT IN CAMERA HOW TO SHOOT IN KELVIN! Ok - so DON’T PANIC. Don’t skim read the title and decide that it’s probably best to skip reading this part, as you’ve never understood Kelvin, it’s just a bunch of numbers and it’s probably better to move on past quickly. Not this time! I’m going to be honest - I used to skip right past Kelvin on my camera menu. In fact, for a long time, setting the white balance wasn’t even on my list of priorities! I wanted to get sharp photos, and have good composition. The hardest part for me up to that point was learning the exposure triangle and how that worked. But I still wasn’t happy with my final photos - they just didn’t look how I’d visualised them in my head when shooting. But then I had to face it - I was out of shooting in Auto, but I wasn’t OUT of Auto. Auto White Balance was killing my images. Yeah sure, it was ok in daylight as it kind of guessed where the settings should be at, but the moment I was indoors, or it was after sundown, my images took on a heavily saturated orange tone or a morbidly cool blue tone. I needed to fix this - and fixing white balance in post took too long, and made it harder to know what photos to cull… I knew I needed to learn how to set white balance IN camera. And this is why YOU need to know how to do it too. So what are your options? Well - Auto mode is out… it’s just too unpredictable. The next options are semi-auto white balance presets that have a kelvin rating attached. You’ll recognize the symbols - daylight, shade, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, flash, custom, and Kelvin. They basically help you along in deciding the best white balance setting for a typical scene. But again - not always accurate. Choosing any of the first five will set a predetermined temperature setting. Choosing flash will help counteract mixed lighting temperatures in an environment, and the camera will automatically choose this setting when a flash is attached. Choosing custom is useful 6
T H E M O N T H LY S N A P S H O T
when you use another image in camera to set the white balance for the rest of your images you will take, which is how the expodisc works. And finally, choosing kelvin - this is where you simply dial up to warm up the image or dial down to cool it down. Sounds too simple right? Except it IS that simple. Really! Go to your white balance selection menu on your camera - on my Canon 5diii I can simply select it from my home menu - Kelvin is denoted by the letter K in the white balance menu. Then simply turn the dial to where you need it to go, depending on if the lighting in your environment is warm or cool to begin with. (I find it useful to slip into live view so you can see the white balance change in real time while turning the dial! There’s a button on the top of my camera to view WB in live view mode.) There are some basic guidelines which are helpful to remember (but not essential to memorise them as they’re mentioned in the semi-auto presets list):
2000K - candlelight 2800K - 3400K - Tungsten 4500K - Fluorescent 5600K - 6500K - Daylight from sunshine to overcast 8000K - Moonlight/Twilight This list tells you the actual temperature outputs from various light sources - so a tungsten bulb lets out warm light at around 3000k - that means that if you set your white balance in camera to 3000k, it will neutralise that warmth to white light - so your white balance is set. If you instead set your white balance to 3500k, it’ll look a little warmer, or 2500k, it’ll look a little cooler. This is because the white balance you set in camera using kelvin will look different depending on the light in the environment you’re dealing with. If I shoot in daylight, which has an average kelvin temperature of 5600, I’d need to shoot at 5600k for it to neutralise and give white balance accurately. If I tried shooting at the previous 3000k that I used inside with the tungsten light,
AS SHOT
CLOUDY
SHADE
because this is LOWER than the daylight temperature, it’ll cool the image down further. If I shot at 8000k outside in daylight, it’d warm the image up as it’s higher than daylight kelvin of 5600-6500. So really the only thing you need to know about Kelvin, is to dial up the number to warm the image, and dial down to cool it. Knowing the values of certain light sources, so you can match them in camera to get perfect white
FLUORESCENT
TUNGSTEN
balance, will help tremendously with reducing editing time and assisting the culling process. But also, like all rules, there are exceptions - and many photographers like to shoot on the warm side or the cool side to match their style. So have fun with it - experiment in different lighting situations, and examine how the white balance changes depending on location and light! T H E M O N T H LY S N A P S H O T
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GEAR HIGHLIGHT B Y K E L LY A C S
ARE FLEXIBLE TRIP ODS WORTH BUYING?
So if you love to travel or if you’re a mom (I see you not getting in those photos), a flexible tripod is absolutely worth the investment! You can easily throw it in your bag and take it everywhere (let’s be real, no one wants to lug a REAL tripod around these days)! It can
be placed on almost any surface, and will save your camera from falling off that rock when you try to take that mountain selfie. I find it’s always a great accessory to have in my camera bag or car! You can find my favorite option here!
CLICK HERE FOR MY FAVORITE FLEXIBLE TRIPOD!
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BACKSTAGE PASS EPISODE 11 THE NEXT EPISODE WILL BE RELEASED AUGUST 15TH! THIS IS A SPECIAL EDITIONI EPISODE, WHERE YOU WILL BE ABLE TO WATCH KIMBERLEE EDIT HER CLIENT’S FILM FROM START TO FINISH!
CLICK HERE TO RSVP TO THE LIVE WATCH PARTY! T H E M O N T H LY S N A P S H O T
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