I sat down at my desk with a gingerbread latte and an ounce of determination. No, no... two ounces. This was long over due.
Sitting idle in my mail box was a folder called "to do-photog emails" and it had been neglected too long. Way too long. It had been over a month and it was now overflowing.
I took a deep breath and I went to work. Except the thing is..."work" was the last thing that it felt like.
As I read through the emails one by one, I couldn't help myself from smiling back at my screen. A big toothy, goofy, yea you can see all my fillings smile.
And I felt so lucky.
Lucky because it's not your questions that you are sharing with us. I get that. It's your lives. Your hearts. Your dreams. Your fears, your failures, your strengths, your victories.
And you're sharing them with us. Little old "who the heck are they" us. And I thank you for that.
I want you to understand that I know the courage it takes to write someone and ask for help. To put it all out there, bare bones and all. To be vulnerable. To say you're on the brink. To risk looking stupid or reveal yourself as not having it all together. I know all to well because I've been there. I've asked for help. I've felt stupid. And I've had people make me feel so small.
But more often than that, I've had people reach out a hand and help me. And that's really what it's all about. So I just want you to know that I love each and every one of you. And I know that it's an honor for us to be the ones that you write to. So I never want to get too busy to be able to write back to you or to start taking what you're sharing for granted. Because it counts. With us, it always counts. We love you guys!!
And as always....thank you for sharing life with us.
Now on to the Pancake Session!! For those of you who are new to the blog, you can check out how the Pancake Sessions got started HERE, and you can also go under categories to pull up all the past Pancake Sessions.
KATE CARMACK: Wow, guys. Your photos are just breathtaking...every time. I look at your blog ALL the time...I don't know how you have the time to consistently crank out incredible imagery day after day. I am an aspiring photographer just out of college...and I'm not kissing ass when I say this--I aspire to be YOU. To be so successful doing something that you are passionate about...and to have such a strong partnership built on that passion...is truly one-of-a-kind. Thank you for all your inspiration. When are you coming to DC or Richmond? And can I still get a ticket? Also, just out of curiosity...what camera(s) and lenses do you use to shoot your weddings? I am about to buy my first REAL ($$$) professional camera and would love to know what equipment is responsible for that AMAZING sharpness and quality!!
Hey Kate!! Ooooh GREAT question!! We actually have a very exciting week planned around here as far as Spread the Love in concerned! I will tell you this: you're going to want to tune in tomorrow with your calendar ready! For our gear, we are 100% Nikon shooters (I got a Nikon camera....love to take a photograph!). Right now we're shooting with dueling D700's and a D2Xs as our back up. I think we'll probably upgrade again in the Spring to the D3s. For lenses we mainly use the 50 1.4 (my personal fave and it is tack sharp!), Justin's favorite the 85 1.4, the 70-200 2.8, and a Carl Zeiss 25mm 2.8. You can read more about our lenses in this Pancake Session HERE.
KATELYN JAMES Can I just tell you that you guys are officially on my favorite "gotta check daily" list!! You're right up with with j* and Jessica Claire :) I love your style and your spunk! It's so refreshing!! So I am a full time college student. I started InspiredDesigns one year ago and have had 23 weddings since then! I honestly don't know how it happened! It's like I had this blurry idea of a dream and step by step it has become clearer and clearer. I want to do this after I graduate in May! However, I'm still doing about 2 weddings a month while I am still in school full time and to top it off, I got engaged as of a month ago!!
:) Needless to say, I'm overwhelmed and I'm trying to keep doing what I love and delegating out other work. I want to try outsourcing and I would REALLY love to know if you guys outsource your weddings. If so, who do you use and do your tweek portraits afterwards? I don't know if this is a smart move but i really just need a way to cut my editing time! Thanks so so much for your time! You guys are an amazing team!
Hey Katelyn! First off, CONGRATS!!! Booming business, graduating school AND getting engaged? Uh yea, it sounds like you've been busy!! Holy moly! So you are definitely going to want to find a way to take something off your plate and I think editing is a great place to start! What we actually do is "in-source" all of our editing with a full time editor through our busy season. What's been great about that is that while she was already very familiar with Lightroom, we could "train" her in our style of editing and what we look for in color and exposure. It's been so amazing to have that off of our shoulders. But then what we do is keep our 100 or so faves from every wedding and really go through and fix those up for the blog. That way we feel like the best ones and the ones that really tell the story are getting our full attention. It's been great so far!
NELZ I'm a beginner in photography and i absolutely LOVE your work! Truly inspiring! It would be really nice to see before and after photos on here somewhere too. That always helps me understand the style of editing you conduct, and it may help me with my own style :)
HALEY: I follow your blog like crazy and have been wondering lately about what post processing actions or techniques you use? You are both extremely talented photographers - and although you probably already know that, its nice to be reminded right? :)
Oooh great questions!! Although I *will* admit that the idea of showing all the before's out there for the whole world to see kinda makes me wanna throw up a little bit!! I am definitely not the world's most technical person, so I tend to edit the way that I cook. A little of this, a little of that until it tastes pretty good. Or is at least edible!! Justin on the other hand is one of the world's MOST technical people having been taught that way, and tends to cringe at my total & utter disregard for all things histogram-y. But somewhere along the line, just like in our kitchen, we've found a common ground that has evolved into our style. But trust me, it was a process!! :) So....here goes!!
We actually shoot RAW so *most* of the work we do on our pictures for the blog is done right in Camera Raw when we open the files in Photoshop. Here's an example of a before. You can see all of the adjustment tools that Camera Raw offers, and we usually get the picture pretty close to where we want it to be with exposure, temperature, contrast and vibrance (vibrance is pretty cool because it's more subtle and natural than saturation. it's just a fun little boost!) Here's the before, with no adjustments at all. (Go easy on me now!!)
You can see that I underexposed it a bit, which I do tend to lean towards so that I have a cushion for the next set of processing coming up. I also cooled the picture down, added a smidge of green, brought the blacks down ever so slightly (that was more Justin with his histogram again!), boosted the contrast, and added a couple pinches of vibrance.
Once we have the picture looking pretty much where we want it, we'll do some fine tuning with some of our favorite actions. From the Totally Rad Actions set we love Pro Retouch for any skin retouching, Claire-ify (we owe this one 100% to our girl Jasmine for talking about on her blog. She's the bomb dot com!), Lux Soft, Oh Snap, Punch Out, Yin & Yang, and +Contrast. But we use all of those pretty sparingly.
For this one, I did Clarify at 23% and Oh Snap at 10%. For the Clarie-ify, we run the action and then add a layer mask so we can erase it off everything but the subject. I usually leave a nice circle around the subject rather than trying to perfectly erase around the edges because it ends up being less noticeable or looking like a bad dodge job. Here's the after:
CASEY FIGLEWICZ: Man your guys Black and White photos are amazing! Can I get some info on what you are doing in you post production to make them so amazing. Software? Plug-ins? Keep Rocking it and I hope to see you in Long Beach, Ca soon!
Hey Casey!! Thanks so much for that! For our B&W's, we're pretty much doing the same thing where we're making a custom adjustment in Camera Raw for each image. The first step, is to just take the saturation out! :) Then from there we play with contrast, exposure and black point until we're feeling pretty good. Here's the image with just the saturation taken out:
Again, underexposed a bit so that we can use Claire-ify later just on Nick. We get the exposure pretty close to where we want it to be (still a little under) and boost the contrast.
Then we'll polish it up with some Claire-ify (45%) & Punch Out (10%). And we always finish every image up with a healthy dose of Magic Sharp from Kubota's actions. And that's pretty much it!
Again thank you guys for writing SOOOO much! You guys are the best!
xoxo
M:)
We held hands and strolled down cobblestone side streets. The whole world smelled of fresh bread and chocolate, and in the distance you could hear the faint "Meee-Maaaw" of a Parisian police siren as a sleepy city collectively yawned and stretched its arms over its head. A new day had indeed begun. In front of us a delivery van lumbered out into traffic and sat crossways in the street. The driver, who apparently couldn't seem to understand why anyone would ever have a problem with this, began shaking his fist and hurling obscenities at the flower stand lady whose tulips were now wilting in the heat of the exhaust. She gathered her skirt tails around her and wound up into string of expletives so raw and unfettered, that I felt a hot embarrassed flush start to creep up my neck and onto my earlobes as I looked away. It was angry and muddled and marred in broken French...and I don't actually happen to speak French...but even I knew it was naughty.
He grabbed my hand and we ducked into a nearby cafe, past a young woman shaking the dust out of a rug on the steps below. The tables were covered in vinyl tablecloths with a red checkerboard pattern, and a single daffodil drooped in a vase with no water. The sun beamed through the doorway and lit up a million specks of dust floating up through the air, apparently from a half-beaten rug below. The same young woman sashayed over to our table and pulled out a flip notepad from her apron.
"Qu'est-ce que vous voulez manger?"
We both smiled up at her blankly and batted our eyelashes in that same "I'm sorry...we're American!" stare that had gotten us by all week.
She stared back.
"Uh.....voulez vous....uh.....have an American menu?" We smiled sweetly and pushed our heads together. You could practically see the *ting* from our pearly whites bouncing off the windows.
She just shook her head and shrugged her shoulders... and continued to stare.
I started getting flustered and frantically looked for something familiar on the menu. Baguette, croissant...Lady Marmalade. C'mon, give a girl something to work with here! I pushed my eyebrows together in my most concerned "I'm SO sorry" face and barely eeked out an "ummm....crepe?"
"Ah crepe, Oui."
I sighed audibly with relief and handed the menu to Justin. Who, with some solid 7th grade French under his belt, was decidedly more confident.
"Glace, si vous plait."
She cocked her head to the side. "Glace?"
"Oui, glace."
She shrugged her shoulders as if to say "well, ok" and headed off to the kitchen.
We passed the time sipping our cappuccino and wiping away the drool dripping from our bottom lips as the smell of chocolate and bananas filled the air. It was almost too much to bear. When she finally came back, she sat down in front of me the most perfect golden brown crepes ever made, filled to the brim with all things delicious.
And in front of J.....well in front of Justin, she sat....ice cream.
Yes, ice cream for breakfast. Glace, parfait, gelato, tofutti....any way you slice it, it was still ice cream for breakfast.
And it was HI-larious! Uh pardon, hilarant!!! :) :)
So in honor of that story and all things hilarous, I thought today we'd serve up some ice cream crepes instead of our usual old boring pancakes! What do you say? See, I feel like this story goes to the heart of what pancake sessions are all about. About the funny mistakes we make (well, maybe not so funny at the time, and when they're happening to US!) when we're just learning to speak a new language, and we're not really sure how to get our questions answered. Because it feels like everyone else around us already speaks the language. Fluently. Native speaker, even. And they'll think we're stupid if we don't yet know the translation. Well, that is NOT the case around here!! You can just consider us your walking, talking English to French dictionary!! Uh, photographically speaking.
Now, let's get to conjugating!
This installment of the Pancake Sessions is all about lighting. And I've got admit, I've sort of gone all zen with lighting this past year. I've really started thinking about it in a different...um y'know....light. I guess I always used to think about lighting in terms of just getting a good exposure or being able to get your camera to fire at all. Room's too dark? Fire a flash off at the ceiling and then you'll be able to get the shot. But now, I've got this whole new understanding and appreciation of light and how it impacts a photograph. It breathes life into our work. Creates depth. Makes you feel like you could walk right into that moment in time. Gives you the feeling that you were actually there. This is the power of light. So let's dig in.
Joe & Tiernae wrote to ask about what kinds of lighting we're actually using.
JOE HENDRICKS: I love your passion and your work and that you shoot Nikon! My question is, do you two ever shoot with a flash? You come up with some great pictures that I can't tell if you dodged them or used a flash... which is a great compliment to your work of course. Every time you guys post something on your blog, it makes me happy, because I know I am going to see some great work :)
TIERNAE SALLEY: Hello Justin and Mary, I am a huge fan and an aspiring photographer. Your photographs are the kind that I want mine to look like. They are beautiful, absolutely gorgeous and creative. Do you use studio lighting, fill lighting, no extra lighting? And do you have any extra advice for a photography student? Or intern positions? Haha. (Doesn't hurt to ask). Keep on shooting.
The answer is that we have, at one point or another, played around with all of the above. Everything from bouncing a flash to using a reflector for fill to a full on studio set up. But I would say that we are primarily natural light photographers and prefer most of the time to go with found light rather than "artificial" light. That being said, anytime we're using any kind of light (i.e. ALL the time), we're thinking about how to use and manipulate that light to create a deeper image. Just because we walk into a getting ready room and see that we have big, beautiful window light doesn't mean our job is over. We have to think about where we're placing our bride and where we're positioning ourselves to get the most out of that light. For example, for most of our makeup/portrait shots we like to have the bride sitting facing a big, soft window light straight on about five feet back so that the light is even across her face. Then we'll position ourselves in the corner beside that window, so we can shoot from the side. I'm going to come back to this point at the end, so more on that to come!
But if we're shooting something like the dress being put on, and we're aiming to show more movement, moment, and emotion, then we like to use that window light to create directional lighting. So we'll place the bride & her girls about ten feet to the left of a big window light. We put them this far back so that the highlights don't get too hot (blown out) or the shadow detail doesn't get lost by exposing for the dress. Stepping them back just a little bit, lowers that contrast so you can keep both. Then we'll usually start with the bride facing the window and the girls behind her helping her lace up the dress. That allows us to do two things: 1) shoot the wider side angle view, with really beautiful directional light adding depth to the image and also creating wrap around light on the details of the dress and profile and 2) we can swing around front and get awesome portraits with nice even light on the bride's face.
The point is, whether it's window light, reflector, flash or studio light, we're setting that light up in a way to create either soft, even light for portraits or awesome directional light for our more candid stuff. If I'm using flash, I actually hardly ever bounce it straight up and down off the ceiling anymore. I'm usually bouncing it at an angle or off a side wall to make it directional and bring in more depth to the image. And I can really see a difference now, because the ones that were shot straight up and down ending up feeling pretty flat in the finished product.
Lisa, Navy Sou & Yuka Photo Art all had questions that come back to what I was talking about with even window light for portraits:
LISA CHANG: Hi Justin and Mary, let me just say I love your blog - both the pictures and the personality. I'd love to meet you guys some day, because it's easy to imagine what great people you are. :) I have a question for a future pancake session, and it's basically about lighting. For example, I love your photos of Lindsay, and so many of them simply *glow* - how are you able to work that lighting magic?
NAVY SOU: Jimminy freakin' Christmas!!! How in the world do you get such creamy complected skin??? Inquiring minds wants to know!!!
YUKA PHOTO ART : Wow! Amazing photographs! How do you reach this warm skin color?!
The answer to all these questions about a "glow" on your subject and achieving really creamy skin tones really has three parts: sharpness/shallow depth of field, lighting, and post-processing. I've already talked about it in terms of sharpness/shallow depth of field in this Pancake Session. So now I'll pick up with lighting. Whether it's a bridal portrait lit by window light or an engagement shoot in a parking lot, what we're looking for first is to find and use nice, even light. We get that with window light by having the bride face it straight on, and we get it with our engagement shoots by finding open shade. But then we want to go the extra step and use the light (either the light from the window or in an open shade situation, we will either bounce light in with a reflector or use the reflection from another building as a natural reflector) to start creating depth. What we'll do is either have the bride face the window but then turn her face slightly toward us to create some direction & depth like this:
Or in an outdoor/open shade situation, we'll use a reflector to bounce light in ever so slightly from the side. That light just comes in and creates shadow and depth on the cheek, and also bounces in a little hair light on the side to make it feel like the picture has dimension. And then what happens is that capturing that nice even light, with just a little bit of depth sets us up to really bring out a beautiful skin tone and "pop" to the pictures with post processing in the final product. We'll be doing a follow-up Pancake Session on post-processing very soon! So stay tuned for that.
But for now, the short answer on lighting is that we work with all sorts of light, but the point is to go in and make the light work for you. Make it become a part of the image. Let it breathe life into your pictures. If you can do that, if you can start thinking about light in that way, then it will totally change the way you shoot!
Bonjour!!! And Happy Pancake Day!
**OH! I almost forgot! I can see from our little stat machine that there have been a lot of new people to the blog the past couple months. We just wanted to say thank you so much for dropping by to hang out with us. Feel free to say hi and introduce yourself. We can't wait to meet you and I promise we don't bite! Well, y'know...unless you ask us to! :) Also if anybody has a pancake question you wanna ask, feel free to email us at justin@justinmarantz.com
Oooooh we are mixin' up the batter and TODAY'S batch are these jam filled pancakes from Williams Sonoma. See, we picked these because we are hoping this post is FILLED with good advice! Get it?? wink wink :) Oh who am I kidding....it's because they look DELICIOUS and I really want one of these pans! Anybody out there want to buy me one?! AND make me pancakes while you're at it? Anybody, anybody....Bueller?
Alright...down to business: Lenses.
What kind? How to shoot em? What's important?
Let me first start off by saying that Justin & I prefer to shoot only with all prime lenses (aka fixed lenses like an 85, as opposed to a zoom). As of now, we only work with one zoom lens and that's our 70-200mm 2.8. The reason that we prefer all prime lenses is because we've just found them to be sharper and produce those crispy-creme images that we all love to get. They also tend to be faster (open up to a wider aperture, ie. 1.4, 1.8 ), and Justin & I like to shoot wide open 99.9% of the time. Those two things, the crispness and the low depth of field from shooting wide-open, are a HUGE part of the look of our images. We're going to do another pancake session soon on post-processing, but really a lot of what those questions are asking about starts in camera with some good lenses. So let's start there!
NAVY SOU: Jimminy freakin' Christmas!!! How in the world do you get such creamy complected skin??? Inquiring minds wants to know!!!
The answer to this question really has three parts: sharpness/shallow depth of field, lighting/exposure, and post-processing. So I'll come back to it in those pancake sessions too. But for now, the first step for us is shooting wide open and using single point focus on the eye. Because of the quick fall off with the fast lenses, the eye is really sharp and the rest of the face & body just naturally smoothes out a bit with the shallow depth of field. The other two steps of lighting/exposure & post-processing are probably more important, but this is the base we always start with so i just wanted to touch on it here!
KIM: Ok...lets say you were going to a shoot and you could only take one lens..which one would it be? And why?
Ooooh HANDS DOWN it would have to be the 85mm 1.4. We are both IN LOVE with this lens and fight over it often. It did take me a while to get used to how spot on you have to be with your focusing, but once I did it was so worth it. It produces the creamiest, dreamiest shots ever. Seriously. One more thing...as one sort of rule we always like to put out there to people: if you are going to invest in a fast lens like a 1.4 or 1.2, spend the time learning how to nail your focus so you actually shoot it that wide open when it counts. I've seen so many people drop a ton of money on a 1.2 lens and then shoot it all the time at 2.8 or higher because they're scared of the focus. That's no fun at all!
ANA REBECA: I have a quick question...I want to buy a wide angle lens (not a fisheye) but have no idea what to get :(
Any suggestions??
BETSY JO: The veil - oh. my. Was that one with the new Zeiss lens? I am amazed by that shot- gor. GEOUS. I literally said, "Wow." out loud. (And I rarely talk to my computer screen, so that's saying something!)
Well as you guys know, we've been LOVIN our 25 2.8 Carl Zeiss lens. That lil' guy is TACK SHARP. And it has the focusing capabilities of a macro, so it's really a duel-threat lens. The only hitch is that it is a manual focus lens, but we actually like that because who among us HASN'T been trying to shoot something with an auto-focus macro and it just keeps making that dreaded "zzhhhhhht zzhhhhhht" sound (that's my impression of the focusing sound....can you hear it? :) And everybody in the room is looking at you and you're like "I swear, I'm a professional!" Yea....we've all been there. For more info on the 25mm 2.8 we did a post HERE and it was also responsible for most of the shots you see HERE.
Other than that, for Nikon we also love the 14mm 2.8 which has very little distortion for a super-wide and the 24mm 1.4 for Canon which is just a SWEET fast lens!
Happy Pancake Day!!!
PS: Don't forget, if you have any pancake questions you can leave them in the comment box or email us at justin@justinmarantz.com
Pancake Session: How do I even know where to begin??
Well, as they say, it's always best to begin at the beginning. The early beginning. The humble beginning. And trust me, if any beginning was humble...it was mine & Justin's.
Picture it. September 2006. Los Angeles, California. Pictage PartnerCon.
We got on the flight heading to our very first wedding photography conference with little more, business-wise, than what we had packed into our carry-on luggage: one D100, two Apple i-Photo books, and about 50 one-sided business cards that we had printed ourselves the night before.
I had just graduated law school to the tune of $120,000 in debt, and on top of that we were in the process of planning & paying for our own wedding, which was adding up quickly. It was at the point where just paying our bills had become a struggle.
Walking on to that flight that day, I carried with me two offers on the table from big name, high power law firms in the city for $140,000 to start. Plus bonuses. Plus benefits. That was a set life right there.
And the answer to all of our problems was just a signature away.
AMANDA: Okay, so here's a wide-open question....how did you know you were ready to start a business? What made it clear that it wasn't just a fun hobby?
As we landed in Los Angeles, we were wide-eyed and more than a little terrified. For the next few days we took it all in. Everything that we were seeing and hearing, we were seeing and hearing for the very first time.
And we got SET. ON. FIRE.
We barely slept for three days straight. Took notebooks full of notes. And we just decided that in that moment...we were going to leap, and the net would appear.
So how do you know when you're ready to start a business? When you can't imagine living your life for even one more day any other way.
When everything in your mind, body, heart and soul tells you that it's time. When you're willing to go out and try, fall flat on your face, get up the next day and try again. Because you would rather try and fail, than never try at all. Sure, there are plenty of other things that go into building a business, like business plans and financing....but if you don't have that hunger first, those other things will never get the chance to matter. Because it's going to be that hunger that carries you through the tough times.
And believe me, there will be tough times.
DAWN MCKINSTRY: I love this!! And I can absolutely picture the entire pancake cooking fiasco (mostly because I've had similar cooking experiences when my husband and I were first together. But none as entertaining as this!). And thank you so much for these Pancake Sessions!! My question is one that I'm sure you hear often - how did you get started - financially, how did you fund it? And how did you start getting the word out about your biz?
By the time we were ready to leave L.A., we knew that we were going to change EVERYTHING about our business. We ordered a new Nikon D2Xs, a couple good lenses, and several sample albums...and this was all before the conference was even over. I turned down the law firm offers, we both went full time, and we headed into the dead of winter with no money coming in... just living on faith.
So how did we do it? Well...the net appeared.
Earlier in the year, I had lost someone very close to me...someone who had spent her whole life building mine...and it was right around this time that we got a call that she had left me a small, but very generous inheritance. It wasn't enough to cover everything, but we took that money and used it to start building this new life.
Because she was someone whose WHOLE life was spent building mine.
And then there was credit card debt. I'm not gonna lie. It wasn't ideal, but between the two we were able to breath life into this new business of ours.
So what do I think you should do? Start with what you've got and build from there. You don't have to have the best camera or the most expensive equipment or the sexiest website to start chasing your dreams. You just have to start. And realize that everything you have is already everything you need at this place in your life. Now take that and build on it. Book a job. Invest in your business. Book another job. Invest some more. And keep doing that piece by piece until you've built the business that you want.
And I guarantee you that that business... the one you've built with your own two hands from the ground up...yea, that buisness is going mean so much more to you than if someone had just handed it to you at the beginning.
Because that business....that's something that YOU created.
DAWN B: Questions???? Oh holy moly did you guys just open the flood gates for me! I am full of them (not IT!!!) I'll try to contain myself with only one....I'm new, still practicing with my camera.....after I feel more comfortable, what should be the next step?? OH, the pancakes rocked!
Two things. One, start building your portfolio. Shoot for free, ask some friends....just get some people in front of your camera. You'll want to get that practice working with people and making them feel comfortable, and you'll need some work to show prospective clients. Two (and maybe even more importantly), devote yourself to discovering your brand. Note that I said discovering, not building. That's because I think that the best brands are the ones that come from the inside out. The ones where the brand is so representative of the person that it's hard to draw a line between the two. Keep a box and every time you see something that speaks to your heart, tear it out and put it in that box. Those pieces are the beginning of your brand.
TREVA TRIBIT PHOTOGRAPHY: We have just ended our first year, and you guys remind me so much of my hubby and I!! Ok, so how do we take our business from word of mouth, to people know us? I mean, REALLY know us? Hear our name, and go "yeah, heard of them" Talking, marketing not advertising...what is the magic, sweet spot for getting that kind of name?
Take this word and burn it into your brain: MOMENTUM! Let it be the mantra of your life. (Ok, I just had a "rain-therapy" massage...forgive me for going all new-agey on you!) By starting your business piece by piece and building it with your own two hands, you are doing the hard work to get that momentum going. That's the thing about momentum, it's so hard to get it started but if you just keep going it gets easier and easier. The way that we built up our momentum in the beginning was by focusing on what we call our "triangle offense" of marketing: clients, vendors, and other photographers. We did everything we could to take care of those three groups of people and it always came back to us. Tenfold.
Going hand in hand with momentum is creating an "experience" of your brand that carries all the way through. We do this with everything from our first meeting to well after the wedding. But probably the single best decisions we ever made in our business was hiring the boys at Infinet to take the idea of what we knew could be our brand that we had floating around in our head, and putting it out there and making it a reality.
When you have someone who can do that for you....who can make your brand such a reflection of yourself...the best possible version of yourself, then people are going to feel like they REALLY know you. And the word of mouth just follows from there.
We sat on the couch eating brown rice and salsa. He prefers to smush the rice down in the middle and make a puddle a la mashed potatoes and gravy, whereas I prefer the mix & swirl method.
But either way you slice it, it's not your normal breakfast.
Pancakes would've been better. Warm fluffy pancakes with real Vermont maple syrup or some fresh bananas sliced over the top. And orange juice. Reeeeeal orange juice. And blueberries. Blueberries and raspberries and strawberries. Oh my. Yea that would've been better. But for now it didn't matter.
We sat on either end of the couch with our feet crossing in the middle, and we smiled. We were home. In dire need of going grocery shopping, perhaps. But we were home. And that was all the nourishment we needed at the moment.
As we scraped the last of the brown rice kernels off our plates, we talked about the past five days and what a whirlwind they had been. And we talked about what was on our hearts.
You guys.
You guys are on our hearts. All of you. We met so many awesome photographers this past week who were there at WPPI for their very first time, who are just about to make their very own leap of faith for the very first time. And boy oh boy, did you guys have some questions!
And we get that.
We totally remember what it was like when we were first getting started to have so many questions and no one to ask. And being that we KNOW what that's like, you would think that we would've been better about making sure that didn't happen to other people. But that's all going to change right now!
Introducing: Pancake Sessions with J&M!!
Why pancakes, you ask. WHY NOT!? I say. :) Maybe it was because all we had in the house was brown rice and salsa when what we REALLY wanted was pancakes. Maybe we were just really hungry. But the name seemed to stick.
For you long time blog readers, though, I think the name will make a lot more sense. Remember this lil' ditty about the first time I ever tried to make pancakes for Justin? Just to refresh your memory:
The first set I burned.
And not just that "oh look it's a little black on the outside but you can scrape it off with a butter knife kind of burnt." No...it was more like the sound stage of Backdraft where I alone am the heroic firefighter and Kurt Russell is nowhere to be found kind of burnt.
The second set... I burned.
Yea, we'll just call this one Backdraft the sequel. Y'know but this time with the not so cute Baldwin brother.
The third set actually fell on the floor while I was trying ever so diligently to flip them. Where, they were promptly swallowed up by a hungry golden retriever who apparently did not mind that he had to scrape one side with a butter knife before eating it.
But the fourth set. Oh yes, the fourth set.
They... were... perfection.
Golden brown and light as air. I proudly carried them to the table, and with a flourish of real Vermont maple syrup we were ready to dig in. Yes, practice really does make perfect. There really is joy to be found in the journey.
Yea...UNTIL... we cut into them with said butter knife and soon began to see pancake batter start bubblin' from the center like Jed Clampett a shootin' at some food. Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea.
Now maybe it was the three failed batches of pancakes that came before them, or MAYBE it was the look on Justin's face as he tried with everything he had to keep from laughing, or maybe, just maybe, it was a lifetime of "I want it all and I want it now" all coming to a boiling point.
But whatever it was...before I knew what I was doing I had grabbed that soggy pancake up by the bootstraps and chucked it, grenade style, out of my left hand, over my head, and onto a nearby wall waiting across the room. Where, as most soggy pancakes tend to do, it landed with a splat and began the long and painful descent to the floor below. Where a hungry golden retriever sat waiting patiently.
Butter knife in paw.
So yea. We know what it's like to want to do something that seems so simple and so obvious, only to be met with setback after setback. Frustration after frustration. Splat after splat.
Now, I could've called up somebody and ASKED them how to make pancakes. But I felt stupid. I felt like I may as well be asking how to boil water. It was simple. It was obvious. It was batter in a frying pan for crying out loud. And who was I NOT to get it? Not to be born with an inherent pancake making knowledge naturally built into my brain. Not to be perfect the very first time I tried.
And I felt so small.
And I think that pretty much sums up how we felt our first year in business. Small. Stupid. Unable to do the Simple. Unaware of the Obvious. But as it turns out, simple and obvious only come with time. With practice. And with having someone tell you "oh you just have to wait until the air bubbles come through before you flip it."
Ohhhhhhhhhh.
So there you go. Let the Pancake Sessions be born!!! This is the place where no question is too stupid, no answer too simple or obvious, for the question to be asked in the first place. Because chances are there are a LOT of people out there struggling with the exact same things you are. So we'll try to do one or two of these a month and post them up here for everyone to see and learn from. Because we're in this together. We're stronger together. And we all LOVE pancakes together.
So shoot us an email (we've already been getting a ton of these for a while now, so we'll try to go back and grab some of those as well), leave us a comment, or send us a video with your questions, and we'll try our best to answer them. They may not always be THE best answer or the answer that is going to work best for you, but one thing I will promise you is that it will always be an honest answer. Because I think you deserve that.
** We think it would be a lot of fun to have some of these be a video Q. SOOO fun in fact, that we are offering a free seat to Spread the Love to the first FIVE people to send us their question in the form of a video! Helloooooo iSight!!
Pancake Sessions
