What to worry about
Here’s a list of things you should spend your time and energy worrying about when you book a session with me..
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Oh wait - spoiler alert… it’s NOTHING!
Literally nothing.
Just in case you don’t believe me though, here are some things you miiiiight be stressed about but I’m going to try to convince you otherwise.
#1 for almost everyone is... what should we wear??
I got you covered.
My client closet is full of unique, one of kind dresses for women, tons of children’s clothes, options for men and loads of accessories. You likely don’t need to purchase anything additional for your session at all! I just had a mama come to the studio yesterday who spent over an hour with me, trying on dresses and finding the perfect one that made her feel beautiful and left feeling so much better about having clothes picked out for her kiddos she didn’t have to buy (or wash!) If you do want to purchase your own clothes I have an online styling site that will help coordinate outfits and help you create beautiful and shoppable style boards. Easy!
uncooperative kids
Giiirrllll… I’ve been training for this my whole life. I have 5 of my own (4 of which are boys - enough said). No one’s kids cooperate perfectly during a photoshoot. As long as we keep it positive and fun I promise you we’ll capture amazing photos and you’ll walk away having good memories to cherish along with the photos. I have yet to see a kid who gave me genuinely happy smiles after being threatened or yelled at. Just show up ready to love and snuggle and go with the flow and it will all work out. Let me worry about them - not you.
Bruises, scratches and scrapes, OH MY!
I tell this story often - in fact I just told it yesterday to a mama on the phone who was worried about her upcoming photo session and the (of course) scrapes and cuts her kids had just gotten (of course).
The first year we had our family photos professionally done I planned for everything to go perfectly. Instead my oldest kid broke his arm and had a bright orange cast on, the 2nd kid got a black eye the night before in the parking lot after his championship football game. The 3rd kid has special needs so was just her own entire book I could have written. The 4th cut a chunk out of the top of his beautiful blonde curly hair only a few days before the session (the first and only time he’s ever done that) and the 5th was SO shy that I swear to you if anyone he didn’t know made eye contact with him he would freak. It happened every time we went to the store and a nice old lady would look at his sweet cherub face sitting in the shopping cart, smile and say hi, only to immediately regret her decision and apologize profusely while he screamed and screamed. I told our photographer to completely ignore him and pretend like we had 4 kids. Not kidding.
Oh, and then we missed our turn, showed up late and locked our keys in our car.
I tell you this, because most things are fixable, I still LOVE those photos and we can laugh now about all the things that went wrong. And since we kept it positive I still have sweet memories to look back on.
an entire gallery of halfway decent photos
Every photographer runs their business a little differently and that’s ok! I choose to give out a limited number of digitals in my collections because I put a lot of time and care into each and every one. I would never slap a preset on and deliver the entire gallery. I LOVE photos. Obviously. My walls are filled with them. But I would personally rather have 1 amazing photo of every single person looking great than 10 of the same variation of pose but none that I love. I would rather print and display 20 photos I adore all over my house and fall in love with all over again every day than 200 of us looking mediocre that live on a zip drive because I don’t even want to print them.
Inconsistency
When I first started out there was a lot of inconsistency in my photos. I would have one session I loved where everything seemed to work, and then the next where it felt like it all went wrong. It took years to figure out the right combination of location, lighting, styling, camera settings, lens choice, editing, posing, prompting, session prep and allllllll the things. You should feel confident showing up to your session that your photos will look similar and have the same vibe to the ones I post online.
Never seeing your photos
I’ve heard so many horror stories of photographers not delivering photos and I’ve had my own experiences of memory cards failing, external hard drives not working, computers crashing and cameras breaking mid session. Just like everything else I’ve learned and grown and built over the years. You’ve probably never given a second thought on what memory card or how many your photographer is using or how they’re backing up their photos. And you honestly shouldn’t have to if your photographer is doing their job! But sometimes things go wrong. You can always rest assured that I shoot with dual cards so I have a backup of every photo immediately in case a card fails (they do) and I have enough cards that I never delete a session until it’s delivered (extra insurance). Everything on my external is backed up online so if that fails (they do and they have) I can easily retrieve them (extra extra insurance). I always carry an extra camera body with me in case the one I’m using breaks (it just happened last year). I make sure to have extra charged batteries in case of emergencies (literally just happened last night that my battery failed while I was 2 hours away from home at a photo shoot - never had that happen in 8 years! - thankfully I was prepared.)
I promise you - the best photo sessions happen when you relax, let me do the stressing, and just show up with the intention to capture exactly where you are in life. Everything else will fall into place.