The question: How do you get a good family portrait?
The answer: Use a professional.
Today I am doing a joint blog post with my friend and colleague, Amy Tripple. She is posting the same images with her views on family portrait photography. You can read her thoughts here.
It’s important to know that Amy and I started our businesses at the same time in the same town. So we were instant competitors.
The first year that I was in business I checked Amy’s website all the time, constantly comparing my style and pricing to her style and pricing. I was so dumb. Amy is super, but that wouldn’t help me take better pictures. Eventually, I emailed her and we met up for wine and sweets and we realized it was a lot smarter to be friends and support each other as we developed our own ways of working and shooting.
She has since moved a couple miles away and her business continues to flourish. We have faced similar challenges in building our businesses in a market that is over-saturated with inexperienced photographers but I know we have now both come out the other side with our own stable, loyal clients and our own recognizable styles. We have watched many photographers come and go from the market. Without standing on the soapbox too long, I simply want to thank all the families I photograph for trusting me to be the one to work for you.
Naturally, when it comes to my own family pictures, I call Amy. Last year we started swapping family sessions with each other and it worked so well that we did it again this year.
Except this year it was not so great. Or was it?
The weather was abominable. We arranged to shoot late in October in order to catch the last few bits of leaf color. The skies were dark with rain. We decided to forge onward and I unloaded the grey chair quickly. Amy and her ADORABLE family piled onto the chair and we shot for, no exaggeration, 3 minutes. Amy also wanted an image of herself with each child and we did those too. That took another 3 minutes. Rain now totally pouring. Camera rushed to dry safety. Chair rushed back to car. Photographers squeezed into back of minivan to dump images and quickly review them on screen.
Smiles all around. The leaf color was awesome, the rain did not show and most importantly, Amy’s three small children totally ROCKED IT!!! Here are the images I took of her family:
Amy graciously shot us in the rain after that, but by then we looked bedraggled and arranged to shoot again next week. Instead of rain, this time we got blasted with arctic wind!
Amy tolerated my less-than-helpful children very admirably. She always lifts up the spirits of her subjects to be as happy and engaging as herself. This is part of why you hire a pro. Here are Amy’s wonderful images of my family:
I especially love these, which I asked her to take from the overhead angle. The quilt was handmade by my mother as a wedding present.
This shot is going to be printed very large, probably 20×40, and hung in our kitchen over my desk area:
Finally, after living with the images in my head for a few days, I started to work on holiday cards. Do you know the terrific pressure on photographers to deliver a decent card?
The first card I did was a hanging ornament, but it was so last year… (we did hanging ornaments last year, literally.)
I played around with some new typographic cards instead. I really liked this one, but felt it didn’t have enough of a wow factor…
Ultimately, I went with the ultimate in luxury: Letterpress. I know my graphic design friends out there have now just let out a small, agreeable sigh. The lines of red dots in our design are actually indented into the thick cardstock, so when the recipient opens their card there is a tactile happiness added to the whole shebang. Our cards this year are simple, elegant and timeless and they combine the best of old technology (pressing thick paper to make indentations) and new technology (digital press printing).
I wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season and I thank my clients again for making my job so wonderful. I’m done shooting families for 2011 and I look forward to wrapping up this year with a photographers’ party at my studio, delivering the final print orders, posting a few more catch-up blog posts, and spending time with family!
show hide 1 comment
[...] doing a little “blog share” with Heidi Peters Photography in LaGrange. Click HERE for the other side of the story! : ) If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand [...]