My First Paid Sessions

It seemed like a fun idea to let you in on the behind-the-scenes of two of my first paid photo sessions. In the fall of 2017, I did a family session for a family from my church for $25!! In February of 2018 I did a senior session - indoors! - for $60. I was not a confident photographer and didn't know how much to charge. To be honest, it's a little embarrassing to admit some of this, but there are things I'm proud of and they helped me learn. Read on to hear the full stories.

The family session was the first time I had done a structured family session. I had practiced on some other family friends at their houses, but those were for fun. This was official. I knew how to use manual mode on my camera but I knew next to nothing about lighting and locations. I was focused more on backgrounds than anything else. I'm kind of amazed looking back that I got anything good. Back then it was dumb luck, but now, I can look back and see why some photos turned out better than others. I know about lighting now and it's a fun exercise for me to look back on those sessions and plan out what I would do differently if I was doing them now.

I'm pretty happy with the backgrounds and poses that I did with this family. But if you look at these photos, you'll notice that their eyes are very dark. The eyes might be the most important aspect of a photo, particularly in images where the subjects are looking directly at the camera, and do you notice that you struggle a little bit because you can't really see their eyes? As nice as the backgrounds were, I would pay a lot more attention to the light if I could do it again so that their eyes would be bright.

Now they loved the photos! And it was pretty amazing that I got what I got with how little I knew. It's all part of the learning curve. The next lesson was a lot more stressful for me.

I was asked to do some senior photos by a homeschool mom that I didn't really know. I have grown in my confidence with strangers a LOT since starting this business (out of necessity), but back then it was not as good. The whole session was at indoor locations and right away, I could not get my flash to work. I had NO CLUE what was going on (it was still somewhat new to me) and I had to cover for the fact that I didn't know what I was doing! Can you say internal freak out? I adjusted settings and moved to the windows when I could (I knew that much at least to know that window light was better than artificial). What amuses me the most is that I didn't understand why some photos turned out so much better than others. I was unaware of light and just kind of stumbled around.

Another thing that has helped is my editing style and process. Back when I did these sessions, I tried to compensate for the shadows with editing. Not the best idea or look. So while I'm not exactly proud of my systems and methods, I am proud of what I could do with where I was. Some photos from my early days, while not the most amazing ever, are still favorites because of what they represent or the emotion they stir. I'll always love photos that evoke emotion.