Short Stack: Prepping Clients for the Engagement Shoot
Good morning & Happy Pancake Day!!
On our way up to Nantucket yesterday, I was emailing with our bride Jamie, whose wedding we'll be shooting up in Maine later this year, about scheduling their engagement shoot and what all they should do/bring. We've sent a lot of emails just like this to get our couples ready for their engagement shoots. And at this point, we've SHOT a lot of engagement shoots, so we've learned what really helps make for the best shoots. So a while back (sometime last year) we finally just put together an email signature of everything, so we could make sure we were getting all that same info to each of our couples.
Because what we realized is that if we were getting couples who were just showing up without putting a lot of thought into what to wear or bring, in part that was our fault for not at least planting that seed. We're a lot more experienced in engagement shoots than they are, and as the experts it's our job to help them out with some recommendations and a little inspiration. So in our email signature we address things like what to wear, what to bring, "golden hour" and what time to show up, leaving extra time for getting there, and the possibility of getting hair & makeup professionally done.
So for this Short Stack, I thought it would be helpful to go ahead and share the exact language of the email signature we put together to help get you guys started! Feel free to use/adjust as needed! :)
Hey {Bride}!
Oh that's awesome! We'll put you guys down for the 16th then! What we'll do is have you guys meet us at our place before we head out, so we can help style everything. Here is our addy:
Justin & Mary Marantz
700 Nikon Lane
New Haven, CT D4D4D
Also, here are few of our tips for having the best shoot!
In general for clothes, gray, navy, light blues, cream and pink paired with brown leather make for the best pictures. Stay away from anything with patterns or colors too heavy in the red/orange range b/c they don't register as well on camera. We recommend one "dressed up casual look" like a sundress & cardigan and one "fancy" look like a cocktail hour sort of dress. Would love to see {Groom} in a button down & vest/ blazer with dark jeans or gray pants. But above all we want these pictures to feel like you guys, so think of it as your style just dressed up a little. We've included a board for a little inspiration! And finally, think about a few of your favorite things that you could bring with you like wine, maps for travel, a picnic basket, desserts, books, records, etc. Just whatever feels like you!
What we'll do is have you guys meet us at our place first with a few different options for outfits, and we can help you style it! To be able to get the best light (the hour leading up to sunset which right now is around 8pm) we'll have you meet us at 6pm so we have plenty of time to style it before we have to head out. To get that golden, pretty light we do have to time it right....so be sure to leave extra time for traffic and hair emergencies in getting here! :) And finally, speaking of hair, my last tip is that {Bride}, you go ahead and get your hair & makeup professionally done on the day of the shoot. I know it's an extra cost and more to think about, but in our experience it makes a HUGE difference in how the pictures turn out/how confident you feel during the shoot. And you can also use it as your makeup trial for the wedding day! Let me know if you need any recommendations for someone!
We can't wait to see you guys!
xo
M:)
PS: If you can find a horse to bring, that would be AWESOME! :) j/k!!
As always, we hope that was at least a little bit helpful to someone out there! And if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comment box! Or just say hi!
Pancake Session: When a Client Wants to Change Your Style
A little while back we got an email from a sweet bride. Like we talk about in The Guide, we use a lot of the questions on ourinquiry form to help us filter our clients to make sure we're only taking the weddings where we are truly the best fit for that couple. Because, of course, what we've found is that when we're only taking those couples where we're truly the best fit for what they're looking for....they're a lot happier & so are we!
One of the most helpful questions on that inquiry form to help us figure that out is just an open ended comment box that says "Tell us what you're looking for." There is no character limit, so that couple can tell us as much as they want. And in doing so, they're really giving us an idea of whether we would be a good match with them or not. This particular, very sweet bride filled out her answer and when it was all said & done, it may as well have said "the exact opposite of what you guys do!" :)
To give you an idea, one of the things she mentioned was that she didn't want a lot of "dark, black & white photography." I don't know if you guys have noticed or not :) , but we LOVE us some black & white photography around here. It's become a huge part of our style and our work. And for us the moodier, the better! So I pretty quickly knew we were probably not going to be the best fit for her. I wrote back letting her know, and she responded asking if we could just change up our style for their day and then go back to how we shoot after. I responded with a very kind, but firm "no," and I did it for three major reasons.
*In the heat of the moment, we're always going to shoot the way we see the world Even if I promised to change up our style and go for more of what they were looking for just to get the job, the truth is in the heat of the moment, when push comes to shove, and when things are happening a mile a minute like they always do at a wedding, we're always going to revert back to how we shoot naturally. When that moment is unfolding right in front of us, we're always going to end up shooting from the gut....from the heart. The way that we see the world. And that's always going to lead back to that style we have already.
*We've spent a lot of time figuring that style out & we believe in it Our style doesn't just come from what aperture we use or what photoshop actions we put apply. Our style is driven by a fiercely believed in Why that guides every action. A belief in the beauty of light, a belief in the truly authentic moment, and a belief in what these images will stand for over the test of time. We've spent years figuring out exactly why we do what we do & the how that goes along with that. And for me, I would rather lose a job than ever waiver on that.
*The clients who love us for US are going to help grow our business much faster anyway. I could say yes to this bride, knowing full well that I'll probably disappoint her in the end anyway and tie ourselves up in knots in the process. Or I could say "No, but let me help you" and help her find someone who really is a good match for her. And for me, that move has way more integrity because we're looking out for her interests as much as our own. In doing so, we'll keep a good referral from her if any of her friends do happen to love black & white photography. And it keeps the door open for us to hold out for those clients who truly love us & the work we do just as it is. Because those are going to be the clients that we work the hardest for, get the best work at their weddings, remind us of why we love what we do, and they're also the ones who go out shouting our praises for the world to hear. Those are the clients who will go to bat to make sure we keep getting inquiries from people just like them, and that we have a calendar full of clients who were looking for exactly our style. So in the end, it works out best for everyone involved.
I know that whatever stage you are in your business, it can be really hard to think about turning work down when there are bills to pay & mouths to feed. But if you could see it from above & over the long haul, trust me being willing to hold out for the clients who love you for YOU (and will help build the business with their two hands alongside you) is the far less risky move. And...the MUCH happier one!
Pancake Session: How to Deal With Bad Light (Part II)
Happy Thursday & welcome back for another installment of the Pancake Sessions!
As promised, today we have for you Part II of dealing with bad light. In Part I we talked about using our camera settings to cut out bad (tungsten, fluorescent, mixed) ambient light until we had the "black box." Now, in Part II, we'll show you how to add light back in using our "one light" set up, so that we have directional, dimensional and one clean color temperature light.
First let's take a look at a set up in our meeting space, featuring the Vogue Living book that our ahhh-mazing clients Shannon & Luke just sent us (seriously, we have the best clients EVER!) As you can see we have a cool set up to work with, but the overhead tungsten light in the room is killing the shot.
So following the steps from Part I, the first thing we did was dial in our settings until we had a virtual "black box" on the back of the camera. I wanted to keep my aperture wide open at 1.4, so after I raised my shutter speed to the max of 1/250th the only thing left to do was lower my ISO. I brought my ISO all the way down to Low ISO and that got me close enough to blacked out. As you can see, there is still just a little bit of ambient light hitting the Vogue book, but I'm ok with that because I know that when I add the flash in it's going to overpower most of that.
This is the shot where I added in our "one light set up" (you can find everything that goes into making our one light set up by clicking HERE to see What's In Our Bag). I set the one light set up off to the right just outside of frame, and fired it using our Pocket Wizards. By placing the one light close to the subject (just outside of frame) and off to the right, I create both soft and directional light respectively. (In other words, closer/larger light source= softer light & off to the side=directional light that gives me more dimension from the highlights & shadows it creates). Note that the awful overhead tungsten light is still on in the room....it's just no longer affecting the shot!
For my taste, I felt like there was a little too much going on visually in that above shot and I don't like seeing some of the light spill on to the wall, so I went in closer. Another option for the light spill on the wall is to just feather/shift the one light set up away from the wall a bit. So this became my shot.
As one final note, let's take a look at why we have that 1/250th shutter speed max in action. The reason why we can't sync our flash at faster than a 1/250th has to do with the "focal plane shutter" that most of all of our cameras have. In the dSLR's, the focal plane shutter goes top to bottom, and what that basically means is that there are two "curtains" to the shutter: the first starts moving to open the shutter and then the second starts moving to close it. 1/250th of a second is the last time that the front curtain is fully open before the rear curtain starts closing Anything faster than that, and as soon as the front curtain has started moving, the rear curtain starts closing behind it. When the flash goes off, it can only illuminate the part of the shutter that is still open and the rest is not exposed, resulting in a black bar (not to be confused with the black box!). So if you've ever gotten the black bar when you were shooting, the first thing to check is that your pocket wizards haven't just gone to sleep and the second is to make sure that your shutter speed isn't too fast. This is the black bar you get at 1/500th:
This is the black bar from 1/640th.
And this is 1/800th. You can see that the faster the shutter speed, the faster that rear curtain is moving and the less of the image is exposed when the flash fires.
As always, we hope that helps! And if you have any questions at all feel free to leave them in the comment box. Or just say hi! We love hearing from you!
Happy Pancake Day!
M:)
**If you want to read more of the Pancake Sessions, you can find them by clicking HERE
Pancake Session: How to Deal With Bad Light (Part I)
We recently had the honor of writing an article for Click Magazine that was aimed at people who prefer to use natural light, explaining how even the most die-hard natural light shooters still need to have a working knowledge of their flash & one light set up. Like I wrote in the article, "Show me the wedding where the photographer planned to use all natural light, and I'll show you the wedding where it all went wrong." And whether it's happened yet or not, sooner or later we all find ourselves in those situations- whether it be a tungsten getting ready room, a church with mixed light, or completely dark reception room- where being able to rely on your flash can really save the day.
In this two-part Pancake Session, I want to talk about how we can use our camera settings to cut out really bad (tungsten, fluorescent, mixed) light and then add in our flash to illuminate the image with just one clean color temperature. Today for Part I, we're going to talk about those camera settings and getting the "black box." And then next week in Part II, we'll talk about adding in the flash. Let's get started!
So first, let's imagine a really tungsten (color temperature orange) getting ready room. There are lamps everywhere, the overheads are tungsten bulbs, and everything is just getting a really orange cast to it. If you try to bring the details over to window light to shoot them or if the makeup artist puts your bride by the window (which we all always hope that they do!), you're going to get really pretty clean daylight on the highlight side where the light is hitting. But the shadows are always going to pick up what's happening with the ambient light. So in our case, the shadow side of our bride's face would start to look really oompa loompa-ish. :)
Our first go-to solution, is always to see if we can just turn off those tungsten lights and use only window light. That would solve the problem right away. But, that's not always an option. Maybe there isn't enough window light to light up the room and the girls would feel like they're getting ready in the dark. Or maybe you're in a situation, like a church getting ready room, where you don't have access to the switches. And you need a Plan B. In our case, that plan is to cut out the ambient light with our camera settings and light up the image with flash. Let's take a look at that step by step:
**Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed. The first thing you need to know to be able to cut out that bad ambient light, is that there are three settings on your camera that affect how it reads light-Aperture, ISO, Shutter Speed- and of the three shutter speed is the only one that affects ambient light ONLY. Aperture is the amount of opening in your lens that allows more light to pass through to your sensor, both ambient light AND light from a flash. ISO tells your camera sensor how sensitive to be to light, both ambient light AND light from a flash. Shutter speed is the only one where even if you have a super long shutter speed, it won't affect the light from the flash because the flash is always that same blink of an eye duration. So if we did a 30 second exposure, for an extreme example, the flash would still only fire for that one instant while the ambient light continued to pour in the whole time. So what we take from that, is that if we need to cut out ambient light (or on the flip side, if we want to make sure we're including it like in a candle light reception)....shutter speed is our go to tool.
**But to sync your flash, shutter speed needs to be 1/250 of a second or slower We're going to get into this in much more depth in Part II, but for now suffice it to say that in order for your flash to sync up with your camera when we add that in later, the shutter speed can't be faster than 1/250th (and even slower for some flashes, depending on model). So what that means for us, is that we are limited in how fast we can make that shutter speed to cut out ambient light. If this weren't a problem, we could just go right to 1/5000 of a second and be done with it. But because we need to add that flash in, once we hit our max shutter speed then we have to go to either Aperture or ISO to get us the rest of the way there. Because we really love the aesthetic of a wide open aperture and don't want to stop that down, we always go to ISO. When we lower that ISO it makes the camera less sensitive to all kinds of light (both ambient & flash) and can get us the rest of the way towards that "black box" we're going for.
**Go for the "black box" Our goal when we're at the camera settings stage if we truly want to cut out all of the (bad, awful, tungsten or mixed) ambient light in the room is to be able to take a picture with our settings and get a "black box" or almost completely black screen on the back of the camera when we take a picture in the room. If I take a picture in the room and have no exposure at all, then I know that my ambient light isn't affecting the image anymore and now I can add in my flash for one clean, white balance.
Ok, that's it for now! We'll be back next week for Part II, talking about how we add in that flash, what we need to do to get it to sync up, and what our favorite transmitters are. But in the mean time, if you have any questions at all about what we've covered so far feel free to leave them in the comment box below & we'll do our best to answer them!
Happy Pancake Day!
M:)
**If you found this post helpful at all, we just ask that you help spread the love and tell somebody else about it! We're all better together!
***If you're looking to get more help with not being afraid of your flash anymore, our next J&M Lighting Intensive is May 14th in Rochester, NY and we only have FOUR spots left!
The Best Things We've Done for Balance in our Business
Good morning!
This past weekend, we were lucky enough to be part of the Amazing Life Together webinar , and what an awesome time it was! Our particular section was on "Building Time Together" in the midst of chasing crazy big dreams. And it really got me thinking about what were some of the best things we've done to build that balance back into our lives when the business started to take over. I wrote down a few of my favorites & I thought I'd share them here with you guys too!
Y'know, just in case anyone out there is looking for a little more balance in their lives! :) (Who isn't??) Here they are!
1. Shut off by 7pm. Hands down one of the best things we've done for getting some balance back in our lives from the business, is shutting down for the night at 7pm. At around 5:30, we'll both start winding down what we need to do for the day. For me that might be email & creating my "Win the Day' list for the following day, and for Justin that is probably getting to a good stopping point on culling images. But we both start preparing to end the day around that time so that come 7pm, we can close down the computers. put away the phones, and get into "home" mode. One of our favorite ways to start switching into "us" time is to cook dinner together. We're usually still feeling like we're in work mode, so all that chopping, boiling, and grilling helps refocus us on being home.
2. Set an email hour. Like I mentioned above, around 5:30 I'll start tackling my emails for the day. I try to do one focused hour of email each day, and I've found for me that works best if I do it towards the end of my day. Most people are also winding down their days or making their way home, so I don't get a ton of immediate replies back right away. And I can also end the day with a zeroed out inbox, which helps me go into that "home" time without a ton of things hanging over my head. In the morning & throughout the day, if I see something come in that needs a faster response I will go ahead and get back to them. But for the most part, I like to do that one focused hour of email so that I'm not wasting the whole day in my inbox. And the flip side of my hour of email, is that this is the latest that I ever want to be sending out emails. I used to be on email til all hours, replying back at 10 or 11pm. But then I realized that people weren't respecting our home life & boundaries because I wasn't. It also didn't make me look like a very organized business woman if someone got an email from me in the middle of the night. So now, even if for some reason like we're traveling I do have to write my emails later than 7pm, I will save them as a draft and send them out the next morning. And I typically don't respond to emails on Sunday at all.
3. Walk it off. I've found that I'm most productive when I have a chunk of a task that I can complete from beginning to end in about 1-2 hours. And then that always needs to be followed by a mini-break of some kind. So when I have a big task to complete like a wedding blog post, I'll break it up into the culling, the editing, and the blog prep. At the end of each section, I walk away for a little while and do something fun. Which for us, is usually taking a walk on the sea wall with Cooper. We're really lucky that we have such an awesome place to walk right out our front door & we make a ton of use of it. I always find that when I come back from even a 15 minute walk, I'm refocused, recharged, and ready to tackle the next thing. When I just try to work straight through the day without stopping, I get really stressed out, cranky, and I find it really hard to wind down that night.
4. Create a work space. Another great trick that we've learned is to create some sort of space just for working that also has some sort of "off" signal. So for example, we each have our own offices and at the end of the day we can turn off the lights and close the doors. And just flipping that switch, also helps us mentally switch into home time. But if you don't have your own office (we didn't for years!) it can be as simple as having a lamp that you switch off or putting your laptop into its case. Just something that says, work is over for the day!
5. Find some brain occupying hobbies. If you're anything like me, even if you've wrapped up everything for the day and turned off work....your brain still keeps on running. And it can be really hard to get your mind to stop racing about all the things you still need to do. One of the only things I've found that works for me when I get like this is to either read a good book you can't put down or watch a show that really pulls you in (like Nashville or Revenge!) Basically, I just need something to distract my brain from work and sometimes the only way I can do that is by giving it something else to do until it calms down.
6. Realize that rest is a "to do" too. I've started to come to a realization these past couple years: rest is not a luxury, it's a necessity. It's as crucial to our business as workflow and marketing. And if we don't want to burn out then we have to have that balance. Given that we realize how important rest is, we need to make sure it's on our to do list right alongside the editing and the ordering. If we put priority on those things, we need to do at least the same for the rest that keeps us going.
7. Remember why you wanted to be a small business owner in the first place. And this is the biggest one for us. We got in to having our own business so that we could work from home and be our own bosses. So we could set the rules. Write our own story. And live Life Un-ordinary. And we need to remember that. So when things are getting a little too hectic or we've been working too much, we'll take off for a movie matinee. Or take a long lunch. Or start the day with brunch. We'll work from our backyard or the beach, or go off on an adventure somewhere not knowing where we'll end up. We'll enjoy being home. The fireplace and the couch and silver "M" that hangs on our wall. Because that's why we started this in the first place.
And it makes everything else that goes into running a business worth it.
Pancake Sessions
