Pro Photographer's Quick Tips: How to Prepare for your Upcoming Family Portrait

I am often asked about the best ways to prep for photo sessions, so I thought I'd share a little advice to help you get ready for your time in front of my lens.  Lots of people can take great pictures, but if you are investing the time and money to hire a professional photographer to create artwork for and of your family, take the time beforehand to prepare for your portrait.  

Prepare yourself for your portrait ahead of time:


Prepping ahead of time allows you to be relaxed the day of your appointment.  Gather your clothing, press it, make sure you have everything you need ready to go.  Ahead of time.  If you are planning on a haircut, schedule it a week ahead so that your hair has time to relax (are you seeing a trend?)  Avoid drinking alcohol or smoking a few days before, instead, drink plenty of water to hydrate your skin which will minimize lines and wrinkles.  Make sure everyone gets adequate sleep the night before to appear rested and you guessed it...relaxed!


Decide what everyone will wear, ahead of time:


I think the rules about what to wear are flexible.  Everyone doesn't need to match; would you all go out to dinner all matchy-matchy?  Didn't think so. Do think about making sure that everyone GOES together--I like to tell people to pretend you are preparing one BIG outfit.  But if you are a bright and bold family, then be bright and bold.  More importantly, choose clothing that fits well, is clean and pressed.  Lay out your clothing and accessories ahead of time.  Choose the colors that look best on you--everyone has something in their closet that is always complimented.  Compliment your body--if you'd like to appear slimmer, keep in mind that darker colors tend to be slimming.

What about hair and makeup? 

Makeup is subjective; if you don't normally wear makeup, don't apply it like Lady Gaga!  However, a concealer matched to your skin tone can provide an even skin tone. Stick with matte foundations, powders and eyeshadows: shiny makeup reflects too much light and can be distracting in camera.  For hair, put a little a smoothing product on your hands and lightly smooth down any frizzy strays.  This is a good time to use a professional makeup artist or hair stylist.  Important things to check for in the mirror before we shoot: stray eyebrows and nose hairs, dry lips and inner eye gunk!


The day of your portrait:


Try to plan a relatively calm day.  (That's where all this advance planning will help out!)  Many times, our portraits will be scheduled at times that may be meal times.  Try to keep sweets and sugar to a minimum, as it can wind kids up quickly, then they can crash just as quickly! It helps to fed the kids prior to our meeting time.  Feel free to bring along some snacks and drinks, both for you and the kids.  Think of this as playtime for your family--be ready to have a great time!  Most times, I've scheduled your appointment time based on the light, so it's really important to be on time.  Plan your arrival accordingly. 

When you schedule your appointment, we'll also start planning your session--location, clothing, props, everything that will make your session great!  Great sessions require a little planning-don't worry!  I'll help guide you through it all. 

Have more questions or ready to schedule?  Send me an email or give me a call!  Talk to you soon!

How to Care for your Printed Images

Last week, I delivered print images to a corporate client.  How cool is that?  Normally, when I'm working for corporate clients I'm delivering digital files (along with licensing terms).  This particular client wanted to do something special for it's employees and offered a print of their favorite image to keep or give to a loved one, which in some cases, was not the same image chosen for their professional image.

I always work with my portrait clients to create custom images that they can live with everyday, whether on the wall or in an album and discuss how to care for their images when they receive them, but it's rare that I am talking about it with corporate clients!

I'm a big believer in living with your images and I work with professional lab partners to produce the highest quality archival images possible on photographic paper, art paper, photographic albums, canvas and metal prints.  Here's a quick primer on caring for your printed images--with proper care and handling, your printed photographs should last a lifetime and beyond.

Images that I create for my clients are printed with archival quality inks and on mediums that are chemically stable and will not deteriorate quickly. My images are printed on high quality archival papers, canvas or metal.  Images 5x7 and larger printed on photographic paper and all canvases will have a protective coating applied to the surface.  Album pages also have a protective coating applied.  This will help prevent fingerprints as well as provide some protection against UV light.  Exceptions would include images printed on photographic art papers or fuji's deep matte paper.

Most damage to photographic prints is often caused by acidic materials (like non-archival matts, backings or tapes), temperature changes, humidity, UV light and physical damage. Avoiding these will go a long way to preserving printed images.

Handle photographs with care to avoid bending, denting or scratching their surface.  Avoid touching photographic surfaces with your fingers.

Don't write on the back of your photographs, as inks from pens can penetrate the surface and cause damage.  Label the outside packaging with a soft pencil.

The images I deliver to you will have a protective coating applied to the surface, but can be protected further by framing them behind glass with Acid free matting or glass spacers and acid free backings. Archival quality mounts should be used to attach the photographs.  Canvas and metal prints will be delivered ready to hang on your wall.

Don't laminate photographs as this can cause permanent damage to the emulsion layer.


Display images in an area that is cool, low light and dry.  Avoid direct sunlight or rooms with high humidity.

Avoid contact with water or liquids.  Here's a really helpful tip:  if the photograph is framed, clean the glass by putting glass cleaner on a soft cloth first, then cleaning the glass so that liquid does not come in contact with the photograph.

Canvas prints may be dusted with a soft, dry cloth.

Metal prints are the exception and are very durable and maybe wiped with a damp cloth to clean the surface.  Use caution with a metal print with sharp corners--they are extremely sharp!  Infused onto thin aluminum, the metal print while durable, can be dented if dropped.

Do you have more questions about how to care for your images?  Drop me an email--I'd love to help!

My first camera and tears of joy.

It started with putting away the Christmas decorations, followed with a full blown organizing frenzy and ending with a huge realization.  I'd forgotten that I’d signed up for Apartment Therapy’s The Cure.  “The perfect excuse to kickstart the process of getting our home (and, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, our lives) back in order.”  (When the heck did I sign up for that?? AND why???)

The first assignment was in my email box early January 1.  Loved the first part: reward yourself with flowers, houseplant or a bowl of fresh fruit.  Easy Peasy.  A friend had given me a small olive tree a couple of months ago and I hadn’t potted it yet.  Out I went, potted it up, put it in a basket and felt super accomplished.

But there I walked back in the house to all the Christmas decorations and the hardest part of assignment—clean ALL the floors.  I boxed up all the decorations, got them in position to go into the attic and hit not only the floors, but the baseboards too (!) of the bottom level of the house.  Heading upstairs, my husband opened the attic.  And there's where things took a left turn.

I have to tell this part of the story so you'll know why I spent the next several hours sitting in the attic.  A couple of months ago, I wanted to find a video project I did in college.  I’d searched everywhere I could think of in the actual house and still hadn’t found it.  It was on VHS and I wanted to have it copied to DVD so that I wouldn’t lose it to forward advancement in technology.  (Hmmmm.)  My husband thought perhaps it might be in one of the boxes in the attic.  (I hoped not, but was willing to take a look.)  We climbed up and spent the next several hours going through the boxes.  (In the end, I found it along side the other VHS tapes in the media center, happily NOT in the attic!!  However, Michael ended up bringing down several boxes of his work related stuff to purge—long forgotten and obviously not needed after 9 years in the attic!!

Going through his boxes, he pulled several brand new boxes of Microdisks that hold a whopping 1.44MB of data.  1.44Megabytes??  Whaaaat?!!!  AND we couldn't play them if we wanted to.  What if there were images on there??  I’d just held tangible pieces of my past in the form of photographs and albums (yes they were in the attic, but they are in AMAZINGLY good shape and now they're not!) and we had laughed and giggled at the memories.  

Today storage is ridiculously inexpensive and we can afford to keep the majority of our memories on 3TB disk drives or in the clouds somewhere.  But I encourage you to print those memories as you go along.  Put them on the wall, put them in an album.  Enjoy them, live with them, everyday.  You’ll be so glad you did.

I mean really, you'd want to miss out on something like THIS??