Danielle was the second person involved in my latest duo super session, along with her friend Shelley. These are her images and story.
I love helping people see themselves in a new light. I truly believe we are our own worst enemies when it comes to our self image. When we look at ourselves in the bathroom mirror at 7 am all we see are the “flaws” and “issues.” We never see the truth, the good.
Yep, it’s time to take the show on the road. Time to hit local and regional locations to use as backdrops for your portrait session. While I love working inside, the great outdoors appeals to me in so many different ways. We use the power of different environments to add depth to a scene and to inspire us as we work.
Most importantly, we use it to awe the viewers when it’s all said and done.
So let me take a moment to remind everyone what I offer. I have extensive experience in the following: Continue reading
I would say that the biggest challenge any professional photographer faces today is the thought that anyone with a camera, hell a cell phone camera even, can do our job just as well as those that have been doing it for many years. So many people look at our work, think it’s easy to get the same results, and don’t hire a pro.
Now, this is not an entry where I bash those with cell phone cameras or do it for fun on the weekends. Not at all. Heck, I even offer photo classes where people can learn how to get better images from the cell phones or point and shoots.
This is, however, an entry to show that there is a lot more that goes into a “simple” photo session. Let me take you on a rare, behind the scenes, look into my world behind the camera.
So many things are swirling around in my head right now as I try to write this entry about my session with Kristin Smith. She was amazing. Stunning. Graceful. Gregarious.
But I have to be careful as I don’t want to set this up as a rare occurrence with a one-in-a-million kind of person. Which she is, don’t get me wrong. But the reason why this session was such a success was because we both came prepared.
Sometimes a session goes so well, you can’t wait to do another one. Such was the case with Jennifer Pascual. She’s an up and coming model based in Virginia Beach. She’s currently in New York City working Fashion Week and working with photographers up there as I type this.
We teamed up for her first ever beach session earlier in the season. During a review of the images we discussed what worked and what could be worked on in terms of posing, et cetera, to do better next time. This woman wants to be tops in her craft and is like a sponge, absorbing as much information as she can get to improve.
Valerie is no stranger to the local modeling scene as she has walked in numerous shows and worked with several, very talented, photographers. Sadly, I wasn’t one of them. We have several friends in common and but our paths never crossed until I got a message from her recently.
During our chat she revealed that she had never done a beach portrait session. It was something she has always wanted to do but never got the opportunity. Talk about a match made in Heaven. We quickly set up a time to meet up.
A typical conversation between someone looking to do a session and myself involves several texts, phone calls, and/or skype sessions to establish a rapport, cover topics like expected outcomes, limits of exposure, outfits, make-up and hair style appropriate for such a session, availability, and so on. I then get everything set up, go over last minute issues and such right up to the start of the session.
The whole point of that is to point out that setting up a session takes some time. Days. Weeks even.
When people like Carrie contacts me, our messages typically go like this:
Carrie: Hi Mark, I was wondering…
Me: Let’s do it. When are you free?
