But here’s the real point of this morning’s blog – it’s a great way to remind you of two things – spring seasonality and senior photography.

In terms of seasonality in the professional photography business this is the first big opportunity of the year. You’ve got proms, graduation, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day all coming over the next 6-8 weeks.  So, what are doing to capitalize on every family’s need for an updated portrait?

Have you utilized your local network and looked for partners to help expand your reach? Limo companies, tux shops, florists, venues that specialize in a Mother’s Day brunch and graduation dinners are all ideal partners.

Doing a mailing together with a local restaurant and offering a portrait sitting creates an opportunity for you to reach more people while at the same time increase your brand awareness in the community.

A mailing together with a limo company providing a portrait sitting with a limo reservation is another chance at something out of the norm during prom time. Get the florist to also participate and you’ve got three partners splitting the costs for expanding your reach.  Holidays like Father’s Day, create the opportunity for you to plant the seed with Mom. After all, when was the last time Dad got an updated picture of the kids?

But I don’t want to waste you laughing at my senior shot without reminding you of the potential for senior work. It’s still one of the fastest growing specialties in professional photography and if you think about it, it’s probably one of the most fun. Back in the days when my mug shot was taken, that was our only option. (It’s right here that my buddy Scott Bourne makes a crack about Matthew Brady taking the photo for me! LOL)

Nobody did environmental portraits. Nobody cared about our interests and hobbies. Today you get to explore what your senior client is really all about. For many this is the first real experience with a professional photographer. If you’ve done your job promoting who you are in the community then you’ve got a chance to establish a relationship with several hooks – the parents, the seniors and their friends.

Kirk Voclain is one of the finest senior photographers in the country, but he goes far beyond just a head shot. The following two videos are of two different seniors he photographed, both posted on YouTube. The seniors share the videos with their friends, but most important of all, notice a lot of the expressions.

Every video Kirk does for his seniors is a little different, capturing their personalities and creating an incredible experience.

Here’s a secret Kirk has shared with hundreds of photographers in his programs and workshops about getting good expressions. He just gets them talking about their friends, their senior year, their hobbies. Before you know it they’re relaxed and just enjoying the experience. During those conversations he looks for natural expressions and that twinkle in their eye when they talk about something they’re passionate about.

It’s hard to imagine what my own session would have been like had photography progressed a little beyond a posing stool and two lights!

I also love the fact that he’s one of the few photographers with blog posts that often take you through the complete process. Doug’s posts aren’t just about the why, but the “how to” and the “with what”.  All the bases are covered in this post about low key portraits.

If you’re interested in learning more from Doug, join us at Summer School next week. And, if that’s not in your plans, keep track of where Doug is teaching and pick up one of his workshops!

I love doing low key imagery, especially of kids. This image will be a part of our new Children’s Core Deck being release in the next few weeks. What makes this image even better is that it is a person of color. One of the keys to good low key imagery is clothing. When a family and I choose to go this way, we usually have a detailed conversation about the clothing and what is required. I find the best results come from black or dark clothing. This allows me to just pinpoint the face. Once all that is in place, the rest is simple. This is lit with two torch lights.

Details: Camera: 1dMark IV

Lens 70-200mm IS II, 2.8

Exposure 1/50 sec AP 2.8

Lighting: Torch Light from above camera left and tungsten filter, approx. 3 feet from the subject and a torch light from 4 feet above subject, low power tungsten cap. Used as hair light aiming at subject’s head

Camera Height: Above Eye Level

Camera Tilt: 45 degrees to Camera left

Tripod:Flashpoint 1428 w/ jiffy grip head

Actions Used:Daily Multi Vitamin 71%, Lord of the rings Everyday 63%, HDarrgh, Digital Dark

Keys to the Art:The most important part of this is the light. I am using a torch light from camera left. I have it set roughly 1 stop above the existing ambient light. I want to overpower the ambient. This makes the torch the main light and allows the light to be my paintbrush. The dark clothing I feel creates the spot light effect on the subject. The second hair light is just a little kicker. The image has been burned down with Kevin Kubota’s digital dark action.

Image copyright Doug Gordon. All rights reserved.

I’ve written a few posts related to photographers, new to the industry especially, talking about how they wish they had a great studio. Over and over again I’ve heard the words, “If I only had a studio like ________, I could create images like that!”

This post today from buddy, Joe Farace, is a terrific reminder if you know what you’re doing and as he suggests, use your camera like a sketch pad, you can create beautiful images anywhere. It’s a short reminder about the beauty of good old, totally organic, natural light!

Remember, Joe is the guy out to save the world, one pixel at a time! You can check out his entire stash of educational material with a quick visit to his blog! In the mean time, here’s a great post to start the week!

The best way to improve your photography is to practice. Make sure you shoot at least every week, or at best every day! Your goal is to get to the point where you don’t have to think about how to operate your equipment until you can as Yoda urges, “There is no try, just do.”

Don’t worry about producing masterpieces each time you get out. You can use your camera as a sketch pad to explore possibilities.   Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Sometimes these “sketches” will be successful and sometimes not, but don’t worry about it.  Learn from your analysis of the images. For example, if you’ve discovered when working in the shade you need to dial in some plus exposure compensation, make a note of that for the future. 

Look for indoor locations where the best light can be found.  While it seems obvious, many portraits are made in locations where the photographer or subject decided to make it with no consideration given to the lighting. This works great for an interesting looking location, but for portraits made in a home setting where the subject is the person not the location, place them where the light is best. Look for simple backgrounds too. If a background is busy, work with wide-open apertures to soften and blur the background to focus attention on your subject. 

One of the most traditional forms of available light portraiture is window light. The second image here was captured using only the light from a narrow window next to a fireplace that’s in the living room of my former home. (Interestingly, there is an identical location and window in my new home.)  The model was posed midway between the window at camera left and a sofa at right, a distance of less than three feet away. Camera was a Canon EOS 50D with EF 85mm f/1.8 lens and an exposure of 1/180 sec at f/2.8 and ISO 400.

You may have similar locations in your home, and never bothered to think that it would be a great place to make a portrait or two. Think about it now. Joe Farace

All images copyright Joe Farace. All rights reserved.

All of the ingredients necessary for making great outdoor portraits are easy to find: All you need is a subject, a camera, and some light, but like any good recipe it’s how all these elements are combines that goes into cooking up a delicious portrait. Just like Emeril’s secret ingredient, Essence, I’d like you to add your own special spice to the outdoor portrait—flash.

Portraits are all about light, so you should begin the process of creating outdoor portraits by looking for locations where there’s plenty of natural light but I’d also suggest that you bring along a Speedlite. Even the small pop-up flashes that are built into most digital SLRs can be used to perk up your outdoor portraiture.

The key to improving your outdoor portraits is knowing when it’s the right time to use flash. Start by looking at the light that’s falling on your subject and evaluating the range of shadows and highlights that appear within the scene. Learning to see light is not difficult, but takes practice and using your camera’s LCD screen will help you analyze outdoor flash photographs to see if your efforts were successful. My guess is, with a little experience your answer about when to use flash outdoors will be “most of the time.”

When there’s plenty of ambient light as your main light source, the best way to use your on-camera flash is as fill. This helps separates your subject from the background and focuses the viewer’s attention on the subject. In fact, when you have too much ambient light, using flash lets you control contrast and add dimensionality to the photograph. Andria was photographed with a Canon EOS 60D and EF 28-135mm IS lens. Exposure was 1/200 sec at f/3.5 and ISO 200. To soften the light from the 550 EX Speedlite I attached a Sto-Fen (www.stofen.com) Omni Bounce diffuser. 

Using the camera’s built-in flash as the sole source of lighting for people pictures will produce a portrait, but the lighting may be flat and a bit contrasty. Nevertheless the small pop-up flashes found in many digital SLRs do a surprisingly good job in delivering well exposed outdoors pictures—if you are careful not to exceed the maximum flash distance. To avoid the dreaded flash-on-camera look for this portrait of Devra (above) who is standing just inside the entrance to a barn, I used LumiQuest’s (www.lumiquest.com) Soft Screen that’s designed to work with a digital SLR’s pop-up flash and soften shadows and reduces hot spots. Exposure was 1/60 at f/2.8 and ISO 200. 

This playful portrait of Tomiko is my homage to the work of the late Peter Gowland and features the kind of poses seen in his photographs made during the fifties and sixties: backlighting that can produce beautiful rim lighting on the subject’s body and is easy to do.

Place your subject in a pose with the sun on her face and then turn her around. Now that the subject is more relaxed because the sun is behind her, she won’t have to squint! Next turn on your flash. Be sure to use it, otherwise she‘ll be a silhouette. In order to get an image you can live with, you may have to open the lens a few stops over the metered exposure just as you might with any back-lit subject. Exposure for this portrait was 1/160 at f/3.2 at ISO 200 with a plus one-stop exposure compensation.  Joe Farace

 All images copyright Joe Farace. All rights reserved.

About three months ago a group of friends and I were discussing how we could “give back”, we wanted to do something different, we came up with the idea to photograph families of soldiers serving overseas and then sending the soldiers the pictures. As I began sending out emails to the Utah National Guard, Air Force and Military, something much bigger happened, and has become the single most rewarding thing I have had the opportunity to work on.

I received an email from a contact at the Utah National Guard asking me if I would be interested in photographing the soldiers and their families during their deployment. 11 of us went to a deployment in March and Photographed 87 soldiers and their families.   It was 2 of the most humbling and emotional hours I have ever had as a photographer.

The reality of what the soldiers and their families are giving up really hit home when I took a picture of a soldier with his 4 month old daughter, the same age as my youngest.   He placed an American flag in her hand and cried as I took his picture. Each photographer involved called me the day of the deployment asking if they could be involved again. Everyone had the same awesome experience.

Working with a local print shop, I delivered 2 4×6’s of each family to the Utah National Guard, one for the soldier and one for the family. I was honored to be able to meet the General and was able to talk about future deployments, all of which I am hopeful to be involved in. As fate would have it, the unit I took pictures of was my fathers unit when he served in the military!   Sometimes you can’t help but be amazed at how things work out.    In June we hope to be going to a deployment of 300 soldiers and we are in talks to photograph the same soldiers when they return. Brady Withers May 3, 2010

1) Mother’s Day:  There isn’t a mother on the planet that doesn’t want new portraits of her family.  Even more important there isn’t a grandmother who doesn’t complain about not having up to date images of her grandchildren!   So, when was the last time you did a Mother’s Day promotion?  When was the last time you planted a seed to get people thinking about how outdated their family portraits are?

2) Father’s Day:  Dad’s got the same needs and complaints.  That photograph of his family is so old the one that came with his wallet is better looking!  He needs a new portrait of his wife and kids, but unless you plant the idea, Mom isn’t going to think of it herself.  It’s the perfect Father’s Day gift and nothing could be more unique.

3) It’s Prom Time:  I’m always amazed how few photographers go after this segment of the business.  I know it’s not big bucks, but it isn’t always about the direct revenue – some times you have to focus on the publicity you can create to build brand awareness.  Here’s where it would be great to team up with a couple of partners like the local limo company and a florist.  Put together a Prom-Pack with the limo, corsage and two 5×7’s.  The three companies can share the cost of the mailing as well as the revenue.

4) Graduation:  It’s family time again and while many schools already have a photographer doing the traditional cap and gown diploma grab shot, I’m suggesting something more.   Grandparents sit through every event they can, especially graduation.  Here’s an opportunity to promote the idea of a Cap ‘n Gown Family Portrait at a time when everyone is celebrating.

Creating awareness for concepts like these, especially if you’ve never done them before takes time.  You might not hit one out of the park your first time at bat, but remember to get a few shots of you working with clients for your own press releases.  Build your stash of images of you being involved in projects like these so you can create awareness in the community with more press releases in the future.

It’s too late to catch the Easter Bunny, now only a week away, but that shouldn’t stop you from going after these other important events.  And don’t forget to look for partners!  This is consumer bundling at its best and you’ve got limo companies, florists, venues and even other photographers to help you absorb the costs and create the excitement!

And in the words of Robin Williams:

Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”

Well, it’s Spring, and the opportunity to throw your own marketing party is right on your doorstep.   (Okay, so it’s a stretch for a great closer to this morning’s blog, but you get the idea!)

Personally, I’m in the second school of thought and it’s about diversity, but with a logical connection to your core business.  You should never stop working to build the main concentration of your business, but there are some terrific opportunities out there that are too often missed.   For you non-wedding photographers, my apologies this morning, but weddings make the easiest example for “Continuity Marketing”.

Continuity Marketing is nothing more than a ten dollar word for finding new products to sell to your existing customer base.  Camera manufacturers have been doing it for years. Once you’ve bought the camera body, there’s a long list of lenses and accessories you’ll need to keep building your stash of gear.  Seasonal sales, special kits and rebates are just a few of the tools they use to get you thinking about adding more to your equipment list. 

Well, switch applications and think of a wedding the same way.  If you did a great job on the wedding then why not be there for all the other important events?  If the bride and groom loved your work a few years ago, why not contact them today and remind them your second greatest love in photography is babies?

Let’s assume you’ve been a wedding photographer for the last five years.  Between brides, a few bride’s maids and the families you probably have a couple hundred names and addresses in your data base.   Unless you really screwed up their wedding album, these people know you, they know your work and the trust level with potential clients is already established.

There’s a great line that goes – screw up a portrait shoot and you can always re-shoot it, but mess up a wedding and you need to leave town!  So, assuming all of you have lived in the same location for the last few years, then think about the winter slow season, with only a month left, and do a  mailing to your past brides and their mothers.

Why is Mom in the mailing as well ?   Because women make an estimated 98% of the purchase decisions when it comes to professional photography for children, family, pets and weddings.  Very few people are thinking about photography right now, so you’ve got the spotlight all to yourself.

Dear _______:

I hope this letter finds you and your family doing well.  I really enjoyed meeting your family and friends at the wedding and find it hard to believe it’s been ___ years since I saw all of you.

I know you’re familiar with my wedding work, but I’m not sure you realize my second love in photography is photographing families, especially children on location.  There’s a wonderful look and feel to portraits of kids when they’re photographed in their own environment with their favorite toys, pets or friends.  Plus, I’ve just added a whole new line of frames and albums that are perfect for displaying family portraits.

Now, add in a special offer that’s running for the next 30-45 days and close with all the warmth and gratitude you displayed when you delivered their album.   And, if you don’t like my approach, that’s fine, write something else, but the key here is to take advantage of the slowness of winter and create some business opportunities that might help even out the peaks and valleys!

Slightly modifying a quote from Robert G. Allen, author of “The One Minute Millionaire”…

No matter what your product is, you are ultimately in the education business. Your customers need to be constantly educated about the many advantages of doing business with you…and taught how you can make never-ending improvements in their lives.