Hi guys! Sophie does a bit of modeling and I had met her and her mother when I taught a natural light workshop in Nashville this past spring (she was our child model for the workshop). They were out here in my neck of the woods for a commercial project and asked me if I could do a shoot in my favorite location - the Valley of Fire. I hadn't been there in months and thought it would be fun.
Two quick notes before I post these - 1) If you don't like light makeup on kids, please keep your opinions to yourself. It's common practice in the modeling industry to use a touch of mascara and lip gloss to help bring out the features, yes, even on children. 2) If I had *wanted* any gaping, cheesy smiles, I would have gotten them. I, as well as mom, prefer serious expressions and therefore, that is what I asked for here. This shoot was different than a regular client shoot and therefore, I had leeway to make these decisions and not mess with undesired expressions. Thanks for understanding!
Probably my favorites would be 2, 5 and b&w #9. Just my preference but except for #8 the purple dress just doesn't work as well for me as the turqousie and pink dresses. All in all the model hiit the expressions and you've done both the subject and location justice. Lovely work.
These are really great as your usual. The girl either has unbelievable smooth skin, has heavy make up on, or you've done some skin smoothing on her face. Whatever it is I really like them.
Given that a fairly significant part of your "look" is in the post production - which takes time, I'm wondering what your business model is.
Do you have a basic fee for the actual photography on the day with a commitment to purchase $xxx retouched images as prints or files? Or perhaps you have an all encompassing package(s). Maybe you offer a main retouched image with additional ones at $xxx each?
I ask because I'm starting to do more family work and inevitably my "look" requires a reasonable amount of time in post (maybe an hour or two) for retouching and finessing. I'm considering what the best model is for offering my services. (My market is the slightly wealthier end, so I aim to max out on print and framed sales, possibly for a select number of images rather than a mass of LR adjusted pics on a disc).
I know what my clients like, harder to tell what their spend expectations are... I know what they can afford - but that can often be different from what they want to spend. (Precious to us can be a trinket to some of them...) If I can come up with a better way of presenting options then I think this market could work out better in time for me.
Given the quality of your work and the success of your business, I'm guessing you have an excellent business model.
Amazing as always. Would you mind sharing where some of the clothes come from for some of your photo shoots? I know some of them are of your children. I agree with you 100% about the expressions. They look much more natural to me than the cheesy smiles.
I find my wardrobe pieces everywhere - I order many things from China (DHGate) and have several vendors here in the US that I order from also. I love hunting for things to use.
@leethecam, right now I'm not even taking paid clients. I'm doing a bit of creative shooting on my own and doing a lot of fun stuff with my own kids, but I'm on break indefinitely from paid senior/family/etc shoots. I continue to bring in an income however by working with photographers (I do the occasional workshop, have some editing tutorials for sale, and a black & white action set that I sell). I have 10 kids so something had to give - the client work was taking up the vast majority of my time but was a tiny fraction of my overall income, so it had to go.
