When you decide to hire a photographer for various types of sessions, you should trust that they are experts at what they do. You want beautiful, quality portraits of your family and we want to provide that experience for you. We want you to love every shot that we take and become our regular clients. Why? Because when you find THE photographer for you and your family, you develop a bond with them that makes portraits a better, more relaxed and easier experience. We also want you to know certain things about our business. Here are 5 of those things that you should consider

1) When you are planning a cake smash, it takes a delicate balance of decorations to not overwhelm the portraits (or your baby). I will do my best to help you find this balance to create beautiful first year portraits of your little one. There are certain things that people who are not photographers don't think about. One of these things is the following, which can't really be put delicately, so here it is: Red frosting and/or icing does NOT photograph well. It tends to look like a bloody mess, and unless it's a zombie theme (which can be awesome), it's generally best to avoid this. And while we're on the topic, any kind of brown anything in the cake can look like poop. Literally. 

2) When you go onto social media, please stop asking for "reasonably priced" photographers or ones that "won't cost an arm and a leg". We understand that everyone has a budget, but saying these types of phrases comes across as you want the cheapest possible option. It also doesn't help us figure out if we're a good fit for your budget because you haven't listed one. Besides, an arm and a leg on the black market would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I'm confident that family portraits will cost you less than that. ;) And while we're on the topic of money:

3) Recently, many "big box" photography studios have begin to close their doors. While I do not know the specifics of each company's reasoning for closing, my assumption is that they are closing for financial reasons. The $19.99 deal that allows unlimited images from a 30 minute session is not a sustainable business model. Photography is an art, but it is also a business. Petapixel posted a fantastic article about what people think photographers do, versus what they actually do. In general, photographers work so hard to please their clients, but we cannot run a business without being paid enough to be sustainable. Everyone has a different budget in mind, like I said before, and photographers all have different price points for different reasons. I am always upfront about my pricing and will meet with people before they hire me in order to go over all of my products and pricing. If I am not in your budget, I am always happy to ask around and help you find a photographer who is in your budget.

4) PLEASE ask us for outfit advice prior to the session. There are certain things that just don't photograph well. Neon is something that immediately comes to mind. Although it is fixable in Photoshop, it requires quite a bit of extra work (that you may or may not get charged for), and is easier to just avoid entirely. I have a blog post about preparing for a family session that includes information on how to pick your clothing. We would so much rather help you to pick outfits that will work for your entire family than spend hours in Photoshop trying to get the bright green tint off of your neck and lower face (and off of anyone else that happens to be standing near you). Trust me on this one.

5) We, as artists, are our harshest critics and the first to fear what others think of our work. We want you to love your portraits, and sometimes the first time you see your portraits we aren't with you. Sometimes it's an online gallery, sometimes it's a sneak peek, but either way there are a few things that you can do to tell us that you love your portraits: You can comment on the images, like/love/share them, tag us in your portraits! These are all easy things to do on social media and they mean SO much to us. (Word of mouth is vital in this business!) These things will ease our fears about how you feel about your portraits and they also help our business because you are showing others that you support us.