Happy Thursday!
To all of those who are tuning in weekly, welcome back! & If we have any new faces this week, I want to thank you for seeing what’s up! This week I want to touch base on what the process of a session looks like for me/my client. From talking about what kind of session you’re interested in all the way to receiving your images!
1. The First Interaction:
LOL did that sound formal or what? Majority of my clients are coming to me through social media, whether that be Facebook or Instagram (5% Facebook & 95% Instagram). In most cases I will have a potential client reach out to me with a basic understanding of what they want to get photos taken of! This would be things such as family, headshots, couples, etc. On the other hand, I do have a handful of clients that just want to get creative and don’t necessarily have a set plan/idea and leave it up to me to decide!
Basically, whether you have a set-in stone idea of what you want or if you’re just looking to have fun and take some cool photos the first step of a session with me is chatting about ideas for your session! Once we decide what the focus of the session is I will talk location and tips that I have for my client..which brings us to step 2!
2. Location:
Location can truly make or break a photo session! One question that I find myself frequently asking (especially to my couples) is “What type of setting best represents who you are, or in the case of couples, your relationship?” With that I will come up with a few different locations that I think fit what my client has shared with me and have them choose which they would like most! Sometimes I will even send a mood board I’ve created over to the client so they can see what the locations “vibe” could potentially look like for them!
3. Set a Date:
I like to wait until after the focus of the session is decided and location is talked about before setting a date and here is why…
Location is going to play a part in when a client is able to make it there and what time will work best when accounting for driving to the location. We love when everybody is happy and not stressed on time so having this talk after we can keep location in mind helps everyone out.
4. Wardrobe:
Now that we have location figured out, its time to dive into wardrobe! You aren’t going to wear the same thing you would wear to a beach session as you would a city session, or a city session to a lake. We want the wardrobe to make sense with the scenery of the location that we decided on and I am here to give my clients the tips! I will let my clients know what colors to avoid and what colors go well with the setting. I also have built mood boards that I send over to my clients to take a look at and get an idea of colors and fabrics that flow nicely with the environment. This is the time that some of my clients send me photos of their clothing options if they have pieces that they’re torn between so I can help make a final decision! Along with wardrobe comes hair and makeup. Most of my clients will choose to do their makeup and hair on their own instead of hiring an artist. I would say 9/10 this works out nice! We can touch base on all that in another blog though 😉
5. Shoot Day:
It’s the big day we’ve been waiting for! On shoot day I try to show up to the location earlier than my client to get a rough idea of what areas are going to work best with the lighting and such! Once we’re all ready to go, we have some fun, get some good shots and take in the moment! During the session I will take charge of positioning my clients, giving them poses or actions to follow with, and most of the time I will have to chance to catch candid shots as well. I’ll grab a variety of photos so the clients aren’t left with little options to choose from. Before we wrap up the session, I always ask my clients if there was anything that we didn’t hit during our session that they would like photos of before closing up.
6. Post Session Editing:
What my clients don’t get to see! I have been doing things a little different lately, but honestly, I’m loving it. I will upload all of the images from the session and open them up into Lightroom. After they’re all uploaded, I use my presets to try and find the happiest fit to the photos. I will generally make tweaks in things such as: exposure, highlights, and shadows…once I’m happy with how the adjustments look, I will apply it to ALL photos. If I find that the lighting differs throughout the session due to location change or cloudiness I will go in and try to fix those up so they look close to what they will in their final edit. (Keep in mind this is just the set of Proofs). I will then export them all back onto my hard drive with my watermark, and use GoogleDrive to create a folder of the proofs!
Then, I will create a link and share the folder of proofs with my client! They will get to explore through the images (all of the images from their session, now with a soft edit on them) and select which of them they would like me to fully edit and purchase!
After the client sends me the images, they would like I get started on the detailed editing! Detailed editing for me can mean a variety of things:
-I can again be adjusting setting in Lightroom to make sure they still represent my style but also compliment my client
-Light skin retouches (the only time I find myself doing skin retouches is for blemishes)
-Use photoshop to remove unwanted objects in the foreground or background
-Some occasions I will photoshop a nicer looking sky into my photo as well (mostly for when it is a pretty blah day and the sky is overcast)
7. Final Steps:
Now that I use Pixieset for my website I have the ability to upload clients’ collections to it! I am truly obsessed with how much easier it is to use, not only for me but my clients as well. I will create a collection, aka a place where all of the complete edits are (with no watermarks applied), for my clients to access through a link. Each collection will be given a unique passcode so only the client can access the images! This is where they can download their images as well as have the choice to purchase prints of the images!
Wow, I truly didn’t expect for this blog to turn into something this long lol. I think it’s great to share information like this because if you are on the client side of this or you’re a creative its nice to get perspective on what a session may look like all the way through! I think often times clients may see a photographer’s only job as taking the images the day of the session and putting a “filter” over it lol. I don’t blame you, before I started taking photos I had absolutely no clue what was behind the scenes! & even for other photographers, you may be able to take-a-way something from my routine to benefit your routine (or you can let me know what might be a great idea for me to try incorporating! I love learning and advice)
I hope that todays blog post was able to help put things into perspective and get you excited over your next session, whenever that may be 😊 Have a beautiful Thursday, I hope you all had the chance to get outside and appreciate the Earth today for Earth Day!
