Each image and each client can need or want different lighting. There are many ways to light your portrait; natural light coming from the sun, artificial light in the form of light from your environment, photographers professional lighting gear or a combination. None is bad, it is just how you use them. I personally use photography strobes or flashes, and when I shoot outdoors I use them in conjunction with the sun. Depending on how you use them, you can create a dark/moody image or you can create a bright/light image. Dark and moody is a bit easier to do when shooting in a studio setting as you can control all the light in an image. When shooting outdoors you are competing with the sun and trying trying to balance it. In the example below, the same backdrop choice is the same, it was just a matter of where my client stood in relation to the backdrop and how much and where the lighting was placed. This is a very dramatic difference, but if you look closely you can see the same pattern in the background. For your session we can use many different lighting set ups depending on what you want your image to look like. Barb on the right wanted a very bright and light gray background while Sherry wanted a darker gray. We also highlighted Sherry's hair on the left with a "rim" light. The next image has "clam shell" lighting and the backdrop has a medium tone. It is totally up to you on how you want your images to look. For a look at the different back drop choices I have please see the Backdrop Album I have on my Facebook photography page at www.facebook.com/dianakinkorphotography
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About 2 months ago model & actress, Suzie Juul, contacted me about if I'd like to do a creative photography session. Once I saw her inspiration image I was hooked! She gave me a few more inspiration images from artist Duane Bryers (wikipeida linken.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Bryers ) Wow... I just had to create with her. Luckily she had some wonderful family props from her Grandmother's family home including some of her Mother Pamela's Nancy Drew books. a nighty, a pitcher, a cookie jug and an old fashioned iron and a few other things. We had so much fun with our "pin-up" style shoot. We laughed the whole time. In fact she has come up with another idea that I will be photographing, once we have the all clear from the Covid19 pandemic. If you have an idea in mind for a creative shoot, please send me an email from the contact page, and we can chat about your ideas and expound on them for a fun and creative shoot. ****You will be seeing some changes coming to my website in the next few months. Please come back to see them and share your thoughts. I'll leave you with a few images to inspire your next photography session. Diana What do you do when the makeup artist you photographed for personal branding images posts on Facebook that she is looking for a photographer that would be willing to shoot a concept series with her? You raise your hand, jump up and down and say "ME PLEASE!!!!" on her post. Then when she is so happy that you would be willing to do it, you get down to business and start the planning phase. Meet Lisa Hong Nghiem! Her website is: www.lhnbeauty.com She does great work. I highly recommend her for your wedding, special date night, or anything in between. Lisa and I worked on her original concept of flowers; a flower wall with a model standing within it, a high key image of another model from the shoulders up with flowers around her face and lastly a tub shoot with floating flowers. Here are some of the images from those 3 sessions. This row of images was the flower wall with the beautiful model, Taylor Callahan. You can see more of this beauty on Instagram as: tlc1795. As Lisa and I were discussing about doing a flower wall and how we were going to accomplish that, something I'd seen online somewhere popped in my memory. The Michaels Challenge. Do you know what that is? It is where you purposely take a portrait in an unlikely place...... For us it was at Michaels Craft Store in my town. We brought lighting gear that I hand held while Lisa helped out where ever she could. She found a frame to hold up in front of Taylor and also held up some greenery behind her. We had so much fun trying out all the flowers along the shelves and trying to make sure that none of the tags showed up. It was a lot of creative Photoshop work to make the price tags invisible. We never harmed anything in the store and put everything back in it's place. The customers hardly noticed us, except for the giggling now and then. These images are of the lovely Krissi Glover. You can find her on Instagram at: krissaygirl and out hair stylist is Lauren Graves and you can find her on Instagram as: lauren.hair.design With Krissi's session, we decided to shoot the images in my home, making it a temporary studio. This was the 2nd in The Bloom Series; all about the face and flowers. Lisa found our wonderful hair stylist Lauren and told her we needed more of an avant-garde style and that we needed to place the flowers she found around her face and in her hair. So we put up my background stand and loaded it with a roll of white paper and got to work. With Krissi we did our shoot to music. It was so much fun with the music, that I will have to do that again! This is the gorgeous Analisa. You can find her on Instagram at: analisas28
This session concluded our Bloom Series. The beauty in the tub with flowers. We did half of the session with plain old warm water. The second half we added milk to it to be able to get some different images. These were shot in a studio in St Paul with and old fashioned claw foot tub. It was real hard to find a studio with a tub that could be rented out. I even got on a ladder for this last set in the series. A first for me. It was so worth it for the images we got. Lots of fun too. In all three parts of this series, I've learned some things. I learned that you can shoot almost anywhere and still get gorgeous portraits that are wall worthy, but you need to be prepared to do some extra Photoshop work.....hiding price tags, taking another persons fingers out of the shot, etc. I also learned that to make sure all the things that you want in the shots, will stay in the shots. We only wanted Krissi's bare shoulders in the image along with her full braid and flowers. Well her braid kept falling past where we wanted the image to finish at, so that we were not showing a lot of cleavage. Afterward I learned that if I would have put a thin wire in the end of her braid and then bent it into a curl, I would not have had to cut some of them off and had all the work in editing to curl that end up and to fix skin where the braid had been. In the last of the series, I learned that it is good to try things out before hand, like seeing if fake flowers and petals would actually float and not flip over or sink. I had read that you can place the flowers on top of a small chunk of bubble wrap and that they would float. Not so much...lol! Some floated, some had to be edited out and some put back in during the editing process. It's always good to learn things though isn't it. You grow personally and professionally that way. All in all we had a lot of fun, I met some great women and got gorgeous images out of it. If you'd like to book a more creative session like these, click the contact page to reach me. Have a great day! Dani came to me needing photos of herself that would show the world who she is and what she does; she is a blogger. She wanted to show off her fun flirty side while also demonstrating that you need to take other's perspective, see the world thru their eye, walking in their shoes. Basically having empathy for those around you. Her website at the time of the portraits was titled "Step in Her Heels". It is a work in progress.
It was perfect timing as I am just adding another type of photography; Personal Branding, to my arsenal. What we started out with was a good conversation via Facebook Messenger, as that was easier for her. We discussed what her vision was and what she wanted to "say" about herself as a blogger. We discussed clothing choices and she wanted to make a point of her being in heels, like the name of her website, so we made sure to have most of the images with her in heels. One of the images has more focus on the shoes as a way to point that out. She also wanted to have fun with our session and take advantage of all the beauty surrounding us, so we went to a beautiful garden near where she lives. We also had to show off her love of coffee and that she takes her blogging tools with her while she is on the go. Personal Branding is all about what you want to show the world and how you want to do it. If you are a lawyer, we would have you in a great power suit with great accessories that are slightly on trend without being too overpowering. We photograph you in your place of business or wherever else you conduct your business. If you want a few images done in the traditional sense, like a traditional headshot, we have a portable studio to use for that purpose. Some of the images could include you talking on the phone at your desk, gathering swatches if your an interior designer, delivering product if you are in sales. There are many ways to do this and I will help you find the right way to help tell your story. If you are interested in a Personal Branding session, now is the time to get in on the best deal while it is still at the "The Singles" Session pricing. You will be getting more session time; 3 hours instead of 2. More consultation time. Special additional digital products to fit your needs, like a banner/cover photo for your businesses Facebook page, a collage of images for your website, text on the images, etc.... all perfectly sized for web presentations. This is good only if booked and booking fee is paid for by the end of July 2017. That is when my new pricing guide will be out with higher prices for Personal Branding. ***See images above for a sample collage. Why are Professional Photographers so expensive?
In this digital age where everyone has digital cameras, scanners and home “photo printers”, when people upload their photos to a local drug store website and pick them up a few hours later, we hear this all the time – How in the world do Professional Photographers charge so for an 8×10 when they cost just $1.50 at the drug store? Here’s why......... Simply put, you’re not just paying for the actual paper photograph/portrait, you’re paying for time and expertise in creating the image itself. First, let’s look at the actual time involved. For a two hour portrait session: – one hour of travel to and from the session depending on location it could be more – two hours of shooting – 30 minutes of setup, preparation, talking to the client etc. – 30 minutes to load the photos onto a computer (2 – 4 Gb of data) – 30 minutes to back up the files on multiple external drives plus DVD’s – 3 – 6 hours of Photoshop time including cropping, contrast, color, sharpening, saving a copy for print and a copy for the internet and backing up the edited photographs, depending all on how extensive or creative the editing. If you were to wear white socks with black pants and they show in the photo, we have to either darken the socks, extend the pants, etc. Or if you wear too vivid of colors, we have to edit them in a way so that you can get prints made. Some colors don’t print well without special editing. Also if your hair is messy, we have to get rid of fly-a-ways. Teeth whitening is another editing step that may be done. Etc….. – 2 – 3 hours to talk to the client, answer questions, receive their order and payment, order their prints, receive and verify prints, package prints, schedule shipment and drop off. – For local customers, we meet with them to review the photos and place their order. Meeting and travel time averages 2 hours. You can see how one two hour session easily turns into ten + hours of work from start to finish. So when you see a Photographer charging a $300 session fee for a two hour photo shoot, you are not paying them $100 / hour. Now let’s look at the expertise in creating the image itself. Did you know that the average 3-4 day “workshop” in the photography world will cost the photographer an average of $1,700 for the workshop plus air fare, plus food, plus hotel, plus, plus, plus, easily adding up to $3,000.00. And this does not take into account the cost of the time spent away from the studio and most importantly the time spent away from my family. Make no mistake, getting “good” is not an accident, it takes a huge investment of time and money on the part of the photographer and it involves a lot of practicing and a WHOLE lot of dedication to be The Best. That why SO many photographer either do not partake in top level workshops or will only do “local” workshops that in my experience are only valuable to the brand new photographer. A photographer’s price is going to be your first clue as to their experience, education and talent level. For an eight hour wedding: – I won’t bore you with the details, but an eight hour wedding typically amounts to at least one full 40 hour work weeks worth of time. Again, if they are charging you $4,000 for an eight hour wedding, you are not paying them $500 / hour. The typical wedding will have 40 hours of work going into it after the wedding in post processing and editing time, upload time, back up time, album design time, revision on the album design time, etc., etc. In addition, all of the little “things” you want in the package, the album, the proofing, the prints, the parent albums, are not only expensive for the photographer to buy, but also require a lot of time to handle and produce. I've only shot 1 wedding & don't think I will ever shoot another because of the stress involved. You should get hazzard pay for that....tee hee Now for the expertise. Shooting professional photography is a skill, acquired through years of experience. Even though our camera bodies average $4,000-$5,000 for just a (brand new) body, and most of our lenses are in the $2,000 category, taking professional portraits involves much more than a nice camera. Most Professional Photographers take years to go from buying their first decent camera to making money with their photography. In addition to learning how to use the camera itself, there is a mountain of other equipment involved, as well as numerous software programs used to edit a photograph, back up photos, run a website etc. When we have your portraits printed for you, we have already made sure that our photographs will match exactly what comes out from our pro print labs. We have samples of paper available for you to touch, and to see the quality. If the prints come in and they look off in anyway, we get the lab to reprint them till they are correct. I even have a sample of a photo from my lab, compared to the same print from Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart, and online retailer ShutterFly. None of the colors are exactly the same…and that will also depend on which exact store you go to as well. That is why it is better for us to control your prints. And let’s not forget that you actually have to have people skills, be able to communicate, make people comfortable in front of the camera – and posing people to make them look their best, yet completely natural in a photograph is a skill all by itself. Think of it this way – the next time you pay $100 to get your hair done, a regular pair of scissors only costs $1.50. But you gladly pay a lot more to hire a Professional to actually do the job. What about the cheap studios at the mall? Or the cheaper photographers on Craigslist? Or on your neighborhood “buy/sell” page? Please don’t compare us to those. That’s like comparing Apples to Oranges!!! But if you must, consider all of the time and work that we put into our photographs, compared to what they do. And of course, look at our work compared to theirs. Look closely….does it look cheap or tacky? Are the colors correct? Is anything important cut off? Are they posed well? Do they look fantastic or only OK? Do you want to be proud of that portrait that hangs on the wall in your home... You get what you pay for.... choose wisely....do your homework If you've never had professional portraits taken, treat yourself to a professional makeup artist and get your hair done. Trust me it is worth it. Your makeup needs to truly match your skin tone so that your eye color and hair color look right. A professional will make sure any decolletage showing is covered as well, as you don't want a hard transition from the color of your neck to the color of your face. It needs to be all the same color or it will stand out in your portraits....and portraits last a lifetime. Makeup artists, like my associate and friend Dawn, know how to make you look your best by contouring your facial features to their best advantage. She knows how to help your eyes "POP" with out looking out of place. Our goal is to make you look your very best, so that people notice YOU...not your makeup. You can go for a minimalist look or all out glamour; it's up to you. One of the greatest things about photography is you get to be CREATIVE! Two weekends ago I got to go photograph a sweet young man named Cam. He was scheduled for his senior photos. Those ones that everyone gets at the beginning of their senior year in high school. He was fabulous in front of my camera. Such a natural. It made his session especially fun. I got to try some fun camera tricks. Check out his session in the gallery for one of the fun things we did. I have his football in full focus; meaning it is sharp and clear, and the rest of him gets a bit fuzzy the farther you get away from the ball. THAT trick brings full focus on the ball....one of the sports he loves to play. At the end of editing, I got to have more fun. A great way to proclaim your senior year is with word overlays. Check out some of the photos for fun additions to portraits. You can even turn a portrait into a Christmas card with the right overlays or fun fonts like the fun graffiti font see below. As a photographer you are not always lucky enough to get the perfect weather, the correct lighting or cooperative kids; during your sessions. Sometimes you may not have the right props. We can't always think of everything because we are human too. Even if you get the "money shot" as we call it, it can be fun to play around with an image for fun.
I recently found a company for photographers, that has fun little add-ons; you could call them embellishments. Well they added another one recently that I just had to have. They have digital backdrops, word overlays, etc. They can add just the right touch to an already fantastic image. It can even turn your image into a card. The little boy in the basket was such a delight to shoot. You can see him and his mom and sister featured in my gallery. I knew he was the right model to try my new digital drop with. I will also post a photo with some word art on it. If you like what you see give me a ring or an email and we will see what we can capture or create for you! Do you sell cosmetics or skin care? Do you want to help your client see the difference good skin care and makeup can make in their appearance? Do a before and after portrait shoot at the studio. Gather 3 other team members and set up a "Before & After Mini Session" of your very own. When you want to set up your appointments, see the Contact page to book your session. You can also contact me if you have any other questions or have an idea for a mini session that you would like to do, let me know.
We have been extremely lucky this year with the weather. I can't believe how warm it has stayed for so long. I actually wore flip-flops earlier this month... and it's November in Minnesota!! Because of that weather we were able to get out and make use of that wonderful golden fall sunlight for a family portrait session. What a wonderful family to photograph. They made it super easy for me. So natural in front of the camera. We even got little Andrew to giggle!! His big sister Ariel was a wonderful helper for mom Sheena. If you look at the photos here on my blog, you may notice that in the upper 2 that the sun is coming in from behind them. A normal snapshot taken in the same spot at the same time would have had dark faces from being in shadow. If you would have faced them toward the sun to have bright faces, then they would have been squinting. Neither of those makes a good portrait; meaning you would not want to hang it on the wall. The bottom left photo was taken in full sunlight, but with creative touches; i.e. a professional lighting system, you can get creative and dramatic shots. The bottom right portrait was taken on a path thru the trees in the park we were at. It was pretty dark, but with that same lighting system, you can get a well lit portrait. These are few of the reasons to hire a professional photographer to take your family portraits! |
Diana Kinkor : Author
I've always loved taking pictures. It's only been in the last few years that it's become a passion of mine. My husband teases me that I am always looking at my surroundings as if I was looking thru my viewfinder. He's right! Archives
December 2021
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