Winter Planning

Unless it's a winter wonderland out there I have noticed many photographers (who have yet to get a studio set up) struggles to keep the business motivated and running during the winter offseason. Today we'll talk about how to survive this low time in business and what you can do to pass the time!

Planning is Key! 

The best thing you can do during the downtime is plan out your next photography year. This includes many time-consuming tasks that you might not have the time to update during the busy times. Here are 5 ideas to pass the time! 

1. Make sure you are up to date on bills, expenses, and quarterlies: Any expenses that might pop up for the next year (ex: domain costs, equipment costs, upgrades, etc.) This is the time to plan out your money and put dates in your calendar so that you don't miss out on renewal times. This is very important because you don't want to rush around or be without during your busiest sessions.
2.  Update your Social Media Sites: We try and try to keep our websites and facebook updated but after awhile they become outdated. This is the time to update any blogs, photo sites, websites, and all social media sites. This will help with client input, and keep everything looking professional. For our website, we use Ehost.com for those of you looking for a good site to host your website through. They give you the freedom to completely customize your site.
3. Create Advertisements: When working towards the upcoming year it is beneficial to consider your advertisements for the year. Creating these and your templates will drastically reduce the time you spend on them and if something pops up you'll be prepared. We found this very amazing site called Canva.com that saves all your templates to the cloud and you are able to completely customize the flyers/advertisements you are working on. 
4. Take Lessons or Give Lessons: Many times we don't think about it, but there might be others in your area that would like to become a photographer themselves. Taking the time out to help them would really benefit your business and you may even get some collaboration experience. You could also take classes from other professional photographers and work on your own skills. Winter season is the best time to focus on advancing your skills as a photographer. 
5. Do Pro Bono Work: Many photographers are hesitant to do Pro Bono work because they are basically giving their skill, time, and art away for free. Doing this type of work, however, is very beneficial to your business. Consider working with your local nursing homes to set up a "Generation Day" where families can drive in and take pictures with their relatives that couldn't normally travel or leave the home, or work with your local animal shelters to take pictures of animals in need of adoption, 

To Sum It Up: The 12 Steps to Photography

In previous posts which you can find: here, we discussed the first three elements to great photography. Impact, Technical excellence, and Creativity.
There are many more categories that we have yet to cover so let's jump in!

• Style: This category describes how you make your images uniquely yours. It may be that you enjoy a particular technique such as vintage, black and white, or technicolor. The way you apply all the aspects into your images creates your style. 
• Composition: This category is how the image is made up as a whole. By putting all the elements together into one image you have created something that guides the viewer's eyes. 
• Presentation: Is the way you can give your images an extra something at the end of the process. Be it textures like a glossy finish, or a matte, or by framing your image on a canvas. 
• Color Balance: The balance of color within your photography is extremely important. It can make an image warmer or colder. It can also complement each other, by using primary and secondary colors to make things pop. It can also bring a sense of emotion to an image. 
• Center of Interest: Is the point(s) in the image that the photographer wants the audience to focus on. Similar to how the composition allows the viewer's eyes to flow through an image, the center of interest is a point where we want the viewer to stop and contemplate. There is no rule here, there could be one overall point, many points within one image, or the entire image could be the center of interest. 
• Lighting: The use and control of lighting for any photographer is a key aspect, but how a photography can change the lighting around them, be it natural or manmade, is hard. If you can master this skill it creates a new dimension and shape within the image.  
• Subject Matter: Any portrait photographer understands the main focus is the subject you are capturing, but all photographers must keep in mind the story being told. If you are capturing a wedding shot, you must try and tell the story of love within your image. 
• Technique: Similar to presentation, technique is HOW you made your image. Posing, lighting, what media you used, how large you captured your image, using RAW vs JPEG, and more can all be explained with your technique. 
• Story Telling: To me the most important aspect of photography is the Story. Story telling defines someone with a camera and a photographer. As photographers we can capture a hidden emotion, meaning, or story to express in a stilled image. It invokes imagination, creativity, and inspiration. I will forever be working on the story and evolving who I am as a photographer. 

These 12 elements are a TON to keep in mind when capturing any image. To be honest, they are all very important to creating the perfect image, but we are still human behind the camera. The last step and one of the best things to keep in mind: HAVE FUN! No matter how skilled you are in photography, you must always have fun with what you do. 

Things No One Tells You...

When running a business, any type of business and not just photography, its hard to tell yourself and your clients when you need to take a step back. Sometimes situations let you prolong the inevitable  but often you have to be blunt and say to yourself "hey, I need a break to focus on personal things".

Fellow photography bloggers, I needed some personal days. I'm grateful to have a partner during moments like this because they can often pick up the workload and the business goes on, but when you're both sick (or have sick families), going to school full time, and working another job on top of your amazing photography career, life seems way too much!

How do you manage all of that, and keep the photography business afloat?
You know the saying "blood, sweat, and tears"? Sometimes, I think this is what they meant. Honestly, some days I think that we just can't keep it going. You take your step back, you blink, and you haven't picked up your camera in 6 months and your partner resents you for doing all that work for so long. Sometimes you lose the faithful clients you once had because you just can't keep up with your now busy, crazy workload to fit in another photo shoot.

For any business owner out there, you just have to tell yourself to grin and bare it. For those of you who are considering starting up a photography business (or any business) keep these thoughts in mind. If your future changes, what will you do?

Creativity

Hey Photo-bloggers, 

We've been diving into the amazing 12 elements of a photograph based on The Photographic Exhibitions Committee's standards. We have gone over impact and technical excellence and today we will discuss one of my favorites and in my opinion, the most important, creativity!

Creativity to me is taking a form of medium mixing it together to express an idea, message, or emotion. When we talked about impact we mentioned something similar, where we intended to create a piece that gave the viewer a strong impression of emotion. Creativity is similar to that and can work hand in hand with impact because we use creativity to express impact. I have found that many of the 12 elements of a photograph can play hand and hand with each other and in fact, a photograph is only truly strong when it has all the pieces.

Here are some examples of my creativity this week:

Sometimes for me, my muse is gone on vacation but I was able find some interesting shots this week that anyone can manage in their backyard. The top is of our cat. I love this because I played with the lighting and illuminated her whiskers. In the bottom picture, I laid in the grass and angled the camera to get an almost mystical view of the yard.

The one thing I love the most about being creative is that anyone and everyone has a creative flare and each person brings something different to their art. You can not go wrong with your creativity and no matter how young or how old you may be you can always be creative.

************ 

Hey guy,
For those of you that check in every week I apologize for this week's post being pushed back a week, I was actually dealing with some health issues and could not get to the computer in time to upload these amazing pictures.
Next week we will be diving into Style and how it can affect your photo!
I have decided to switch my uploading days from Fridays to Saturdays. I hope this works out for everyone so no one misses out!
Hope to see you next week!
~Amanda

Technical Excellence

The second element in The Photographic Exhibitions Committee (PEC) of PPA's 12 elements of being an amazing photographer is Technical excellence. This usually means the print quality of the photo. Some think this is the physical quality of the print (such as those who deal in film and develop their own photographs). I deal strictly in digital so we do post production editing such as touch ups, getting all the imperfections out of the image, and creating sharpness. Some even go as far as photo manipulation by using programs such as photoshop that allow them to artificially create amazing and crazy scenes. 

At R.E.A.L. Photography we try to keep our images as realistic as possible and try to stay away from photo manipulation. That being said, we do touch up our photos and get the images as sharp as possible. I use lightroom first and then transition to photoshop if there is any big projects to fix. 

Two of my favorite ways of getting a sharper picture without using sharpness is to bump up the clarity and vibrance. Clarity can sometimes make the image darker without meaning too but it also clears up the image, and vibrancy enhances the color without over saturating the color.

Sometimes you need to bump up the sharpness because there is no other way to get fine details. Sharpness is great in small doses but be careful. It can cause a lot of grain in the background that you wouldn't noticed until after you print or blog up the picture. 

Try to fiddle with the luminance instead. This feature is a god send in my opinion. It reduces background noise that causes the graininess and blurs just enough while also sharpening the features of the subject. 

Fixing up the images isn't the only steps to make the images technically perfect. You have to print them properly. Some people think that going to Sears or Walmart is the cheapest way to go but sometimes this can cause your print quality to start lacking. As a photographer I do not recommend going to places like this. However, if you are starting up and need a place that is cheap but also has a good quality I would recommend Shutterfly. They have many more options than other places and allow for full customizations. 

Hope these tips helped up your photography game and maybe your Photography Technical Excellence will reach a 10 out of 10!

Check back next Saturday for Element 3: Creativity!

Impact

To have impact according to Dictonary.com is "to have an impact or effect on; influence; alter", but for a photographer impact is more of a strong impression on the viewer. Some type of emotion, be it happiness, anger, sadness, loneliness, joy, pride, etc. According to the Photographic Exhibitions Committee (PEC) of PPA, impact is one of the 12 elements that creates a successful piece of art, even photography. There can also be impact within the other 12 elements of photography as well.

Anyone can take a successful photograph, but capturing an impactful photo can be quite a challenge. My version of impact (keeping in mind my low budget, time frame, and space) is actually one I took a few years ago. It doesn't have the best quality but the impact for me is huge.

To me this image expresses a sense of loneliness but yet a light in the darkness. Hope when all may be lost. From an aesthetic point of view I found that focusing on the bright part of the wick and allowing only the top part of the candle to shine brought about this emotion.

Another wonderful aspect of impact is that each viewer sees the image differently. Some may not see my image as impactful like I do, but maybe this image:

Missouri Capitol Building- 2016

is more impactful bringing a sense of pride or wonderment. I took this picture for a school photography class a year ago. The nightshot light from all angles gives an odd look many don't see. Another image that spoke to me was this one:

Old barn from Fulton State Hospital

A sense of sadness, due to the buildings old exterior comes to mind.

All these images have a different impact for different people. You do not have to go far or be a super professional photographer to capture something impactful. Let me know what you guys think about how impactful my photos are, what I could change, some creative ideas, and maybe add some of your own.

Next weekend I will talk about Technical excellence and what that means for your photography.

impact. (n.d.). Dictionary.com Unabridged. Retrieved August 6, 2017 from Dictionary.com website http://www.dictionary.com/browse/impact

12 Step Project

Hey guys,

So recently I have been focusing the blog in a more educational/ How to do photography kind of way and I wanted to switch it up a bit by also challenging myself. I recently read in this Article about the standards of a great photo. I challenge you and myself to come up with a photo that represents each of the elements mentioned in the article.

Each Friday when I update the blog, I will go over one of the elements in detail and discuss my process and reveal my Photos for that week. I have limited time, money, space, and other resources so this will be a huge challenge for me. I really hope that you, my readers, will also participate in this challenging project! Comment with your images (even if they are from your phone!) and give me advice, professional critique, or just say hi! :)

~Amanda
R.E.A.L. Photography

Here are the elements:

1.) Impact 

2.) Technical excellence 

3.) Creativity 

4.) Style

5.) Composition 

6.) Presentation 

7.) Color Balance 

8.) Center of Interest 

9.) Lighting 

10.) Subject Matter 

11.) Technique 

12.) Storytelling 

Also here is a picture of one of my cats: 

Lara