Have you guys seen that game on Facebook where you get assigned a number and have to share a given number of tidbits people don’t know about you? I already did one on my personal page so I thought it would be fun to do one about me as a photographer. The number I got was 15 (yikes!): 1. My favorite all-over accessory in the studio is a stretchy wrap. It’s a lifesaver for awake babies, and so perfect for posing my sleepy ones. 2. My favorite prop is a bowl. It doesn’t matter which one; I have a bunch and almost all are antiques. Hand carved teak, wooden trench, woven basket, porcelain basin…you name it and if it’s a bowl I probably have it and I will want to put a baby in it. 3. In my studio, my main light source is daylight. Nothing beats the real thing when it comes to pictures. To reduce shadows and soften the studio, I use four filtered daylights as fill. 4. My prop room is one of my favorite places to be. I walk in and instantly feel a connection with the memories from all the precious babies I’ve worked with, and the happy anticipation for the babies to come. 5. My lens of choice is 35mm. For pretty much everything. I love that it tells a story, and it helps me make the most out of my small studio space. 6. I’m Nikon all the way, but I really appreciate Cannons. Personally, I think Canons get softer colors, (love!!) but Nikons always seem a hair sharper (to me at least). Since I can fix color in post-processing, I’m a Nikon girl. And yes – I know that every photographer has a different opinion and the debate can get fierce! 7. I shoot with a Nikon D600. It’s faster and lighter than the D800 and produces simply incredible full-frame images. I was on a wait list for the camera before it even came out. It’s crazy how much I love my camera!! 8. If I had to pick one photographer who has inspired me the most on my journey from amateur mommy-tog to licensed business owner is Margaret from MPH Photos (https://facebook/MargaretPHallinan.Photos). She has spent hours of her life answering questions, encouraging me, picking me up when snob-togs shot me down, teaching me tricks, and of course constantly wowing me with her incredible art. While she was in Germany she was our family photographer for all the major life events of my son: newborn, christening, first Halloween, first Christmas, first birthday, and even an 18 month shoot before she left. 9. My very first shoots were done in my backyard with a mid-grade DSLR, little to no props, my clunky old deployment laptop, and a free editing software I’d found online. I’m still proud of so many of those images. It’s amazing what you can do when you’re following your passion and determined to mark your own art. 10. I’ve never taken an actual course in photography. I prefer mentoring. I always tell people: Seek out the artists whose work you admire and learn from them. One-on-one time with someone who is doing what you want to do will be so much more valuable (in my opinion) then a generic classroom where you learn styles that don’t fit you and techniques that won’t get your art where you want it to be. 11. I’ve been using LR and PS for less than a year. I’ve never taken a course in either of them, but I sought mentoring from the artists I know who were using them well and the one-on-one training was incredibly valuable. That, and hours and hours and hours and hours of practice, trial, failure, and then hours and hours of practice more. Understanding the tools is easy; getting them to give you what you want is where it becomes art. 12. I never use PS actions. Ever. My favorite brushes and presets in LR are the ones I’ve made. My favorite overlays are the ones I’ve created to match my workflow. I can’t use a “canned” preset without tweaking it and making my own. The first day I was able to edit a session with just my own “tools” was one of the proudest moments in my photography journey. 13. The pictures I edit the least are of my own son. I think I see him with Mommy goggles. For a client, I am careful to “clean up” a bruise or a scratch or a pimple or spit-up on a shirt…but when it comes to my baby boy I just don’t see any flaws. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to an old image I posted and thought, “How did I miss that?!” 14. The pictures I edit the most are my own – if I bother to process them at all. The exact opposite of my son, I see very single flaw in myself. I will invest hours trying to “fix” me in post-processing and generally give up without every sharing the image. It’s super, incredibly hard for me to do self-portraits. Those of you who have followed my journey will appreciate even more how hard it was for me to submit a self-portrait to Vogue; I still can’t believe it got published!! 15. And I’ll close with a very personal confession: I’ve started to come full circle about my reaction to pictures online. Before I dedicated my interests to studying art, I used to look at pictures people posted and loved them simply because they were faces that were special to me. As I began to understand more about lighting, shadowing, post-processing, focus…I really struggled with seeing images friends had paid for that were painful to look at. It hurt my head to think someone I cared about had invested their hard earned money for a product that was so shoddy. And it was especially difficult for me to see all the starter artists on the yardsale pages advertising “special deals” with images that even my toddler with my cell phone on auto could top. BUT (Thankfully!!) the snobbery phase was a short one. Because the more I grow, the more I see how much I have yet to improve, and the more I learn to appreciate that art is subjective. Any image that captures the face of someone I love is beautiful, because it tells the story about that person. Technicalities will differ from artist to artist and as I learn to appreciate differences, I can see the faces again – and that’s what really matters.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 09:21:14 +0000
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