Lessons

Lesson Info

Existing in Photos for your Children

Now we want to talk about I want to talk about genre specific because I feel like it's the question everybody asked you know, am I shooting babies in my shooting beauty my shooting glamour machine but why am I shooting wedding so my shooting newborn and how we deal with that? Because something that a lot of people don't know about kelly and I is I advertise myself is a beating glamour photographer, but I also have I spent twenty years photographing weddings, babies in families, but I do not advertise that and you're the same. So when did you make the decision to go to newborn? Only about three years ago. All right, so why it just fitted it's what I enjoy doing I was spending all my time working awakens and away from my family and it just I wasn't happy, but I found a comfortable place working with babies they fitted into my life of being ableto work nine to all three school hours and it just what? And I haven't looked back I'm I still like photographing other things and I occasionally ...

do weddings and I do a lot of commercial work and and I photograph older babies and I did a family shoot the sunday before I flew over here so it's great to be able to do those things, but I actually get so much enjoyment from doing my newborn work so I've no, I haven't looked back from from saying that I was going to specialize it's just been a massive twenty turning point in my business all right, so what I think is really important is on the third day on sunday I've written up the twelve points off your business that I think other twelve most important parts of your business from naming yourself teo delivering your portrait I have given that I call it the twelve step program on and of course you just have to admit there's a problem first that's the first step and then you have to go through the twelve points when I, uh all of a sudden applied it to marketing and branding I realized that every one of the twelve steps which it is all business and marketing comes into every single one of them. So I believe with callie being so genre specific is what makes you stand out from everybody else it doesn't mean you have to be entirely general specific in what you're shooting just in how you're presenting yourself to the world. I'm very genre specific, but do you honestly think when people made us but they don't come into our studios and then say, do you photograph weddings? Would you photograph my family? Would you come and photograph my you know, my son, I'm always asked to photograph outside of my genre and I think it's really, really, really important. Okay really important so I want to do something today there's two things that that is a huge similarity between kelly and I both of us have a very, very, very controversial genre because both of us have a very loved and very hated jonah all right? So on facebook and on our social media newborn gets attacked a lot. Why would you pose a baby in a part? Why would you one of you know, pose a baby with their hand on the chin? Who would want their baby like this? And yet the irony is they're photographers often saying that because there's how many babies born in america just there's one born every fourteen seconds, so over four million babies every year in america. What about you two hundred ninety, two hundred seventy, five hundred ninety thousand? Every babies a year okay? And most of them belonged to women who want photographs of the children. All right? And I think when I fist saw this newborn genre I likened it to glamour photography. To me it was so strongly branded is a genre specific and I felt like that's what makes kelly so amazing? Because to me she was the baby vision of what I do now, my jonah also the criticism okay, lots of people love it lots of people still see this old style glamour lots of people criticize it for one of this and I could tell because when I first met kelly it amazes me how much she defended her jonah like you defend your genre off photographing babies, you have to defend that so my idea is this when you have something that's that strongly branded that people actually hate it, it means it that good because it means it's that identifiable in your market all right? So what we're going to teach you over the next three days is with god tomorrow we've got families coming in so we're going to show you how to pose mom and dad with the baby and my role is to post mum who role is to post the baby, okay, so my job is to make mom look incredible, we're gonna tell you why in a few seconds because we're gonna start this campaign could cold exist in photographs for your children and I can't we want everybody to start doing it a kate women need to understand that when you have children, you go to the bottom of the shopping list. We all know that you know it's called family first your demographic marketing internationally is called family first, okay, as soon as you have a child, you leave independent woman and you go into family first me way but it's a lot of fancy oh so it means that the independent woman demographic or internationally is that I am the highest inning demographic off all four demographics, and I also have the highest date, so I have the largest amount of money on my credit card, and I am and I'm not one of the biggest spend is, but neither his family first. One of the biggest spenders is the fifty plast ima graphic, which is fifteen fabulous now she is the grand mother of your newborn shoot and she's the mother and daughter off the glamour shoot, which is why we include here in the marketing. Okay, you understand now the family first demographic is pretty famous for being at the bottom of the shopping list. She is also the highest internet user of all the marketing demographics, which means and of course, the biggest researcher and the one that is most connected to any stories relating to children. So you had this incredible opportunity because I believe photography is based, marketed when it's event based and what better event than having a child. So last night we're sitting down, we're writing out the keynote, and we started to talk about existing and photographs for your children, and I'm going to be really honest with you every time I said it makes me cry, it makes women crying the audience because it touches a chord with women more so than men not that mean don't want to exist in photographs for the children but for some reason the women find this incredibly emotional and if I'm explaining this to male photographers would say why why is this so emotional to women who in the audience his kids right away but one ah okay, how many of you when you hear about existing in photographs for your children think about how often you're behind the camera and now in front of it all right? How many if you still have your mom's in your life very important right there lucky that you all have your mom's so we started to think about reasons that you could market to your audience and talk about existing in photographs for your children because I feel like mom doesn't feel good about her body post baby so I've just spent the week with four incredible photographers okay? Susan strip playing just mr justin a garrote myself kelly and we talked all week weddings, babies portrait we talked about a business we talked about being women and business, we talked about photographing woman and we came to this common thread all women it doesn't matter who you are with, you're in a glamour shoot good where shoot with your bride or whether you're a mother wants to look gorgeous and they want to look slimmer, okay? And they want to look younger so tomorrow it's all about slimming ma'am making her look gorgeous because as soon as you build a folio around mom looking hot they will not be a family that you can't photograph no more just photographing kids all right? So we've got a little surprise bonus video and we're going to play it for you kelly has done the spanish video I'm gonna let you tell them about it and then you could ask as many questions as you like um I've done a bonus video which I'm gonna play you tomorrow and then we're going to tell you a little bit more about what else is voting out around today and also I need to open up some time for you to talk about what you did today you know I feel good seeing any babies yeah I feel good I may have pulled a couple of mussels but I'm all right they had a week out so it's fun tell everybody about this primi shoot okay so I had five week old twins come into my studio they were born four weeks early so one week adjusted and they were big babies and they were hard to pose and but they wanted to sleep but it was like this incredible thing for me to be able to do this because I'm so used to working with babies under two weeks of age so to be able to create something beautiful for for the mom who missed out on that that shot because they were in hospital and she was at home and having two babies is pretty chaotic, so I got to create something pretty special for her and I wanted to share it with you so it's a little video on a set up and the image right at the very top up there of the twins that's the set up that I did and had it filmed so how old are they? They're five weeks old, okay, so the five weeks old but they're the size of a one week old baby a little bit bigger than a one way kobe because they've they've grown but they came early, so they've been out of the women for five weeks they've become really familiar with sounds and the smells around them and really sensitive to touch so they were they were hard so they don't move like newborns that's what this whole video isn't their flexible. So what I did was I put them into a pose and if there was just one baby in that shot, it would just be a baby lying on its side they're not posed any specifically way I just put them together and I put a wrap around them to make them stay together so there's nothing special about this in the aspect ofthe it's a you know, a tricky set up or oppose or something like that, it's just two babies lying next to each other head to toe, so I wanted to show you that it could be, like, done very simply, but still beautifully. All right, so this a twenty minute down lied with the course um, you can get on and download it once you bought the course if you've really bought it, of course it's downloadable now and he's a glimpse of what she's done so that you can see how amazing this bonus material is because we've got so much of it for you see him move every time I touch her way wait just about ready to take a short way positioning here because he's got his little leg up underneath, I'm gonna get a safe shot of this and then I'm going to just their little pans because they're very, very sensitive to my touch on getting a little bit uncomfortable and other obviously not used to sleeping next to each other. Okay, so I'm just getting my safe shot now I'm still shooting a two point eight because I want my field to be they're nice and soft and I'm gonna level per focal plane as well, so you can see that they're, you know, I'm shooting directly down, I'm not actually shooting on an angle or anything like that thea thank god I got the safes shop because I went back to adjust hands and it was all over all right, so the whole point of that wass they sometimes go in the skipper unit or the creamy enough for maybe two months yep we're leaning on when they're born yeah, so when they come out they're just tiny little things like they look like the size of your hand you know? They're turning all things and yet they moving like older babies yeah, they're developing their growing there they adapt to their environment so quickly. So it's it's important to take all that into consideration when you're working with them because they're not going to sleep soundly for four hours. You know, in saying that I could get a ten day old baby in my studio this it's quite sensitive to touch it and, you know, very alert and all those things but they're not curly those those little babies were we're quite strong and they were watching their backs and and I'd try to put them into position but they were just so physically strong and really hard to work with. All right? So I wanted to call this workshop babies that don't bend but nobody went for it um I also wanted to colin come of other things that were really funny and I have nobody else thought it was funny all right? So as you know, I'm just here for the women in the in the marketing when I started to watch this um I really considered one thing if I look at that wall off twelve months what she did today and this is not even with a family in there or pregnant women or a birthing video or nine months in the making um and I also have a wonderful surprise for you one of my friends who's a wonderful children's photographer and melbourne she photographs a lot of newborns and then she's photographed them through their fist up to seven years and she's created a marketing campaign in a book called little big and what she's done is she's put their baby photo next to the toddler photo and then next to the kid photo and created a book out of it because she's holding her clients for a lifetime and when I said have looked at this today I wanted this whole day just to be about babies so before we even move on to families and pregnant women and had a market them I just feel like there are multiple marketing points to this genre to a point where it's greater than any other photography genre in the world when you get married you maybe have an engagement session maybe here the glam the dress maybe have a trash the dress maybe have a bachelorette party glamis station and then you have your wedding but how many other touch points are there around a wedding? None and hopefully you won't get one waiting all right with a glamour position marketing a glam position my mac getting points come around your age and life stage so am I you know, photographing the senior girl on my photograph in the twenty year old girl the boudoir client the fission client the older client the mother and daughter shoot the fifty plus but still my marketing point sit around you know, five or six just like the wedding this one too may is so multi fest id I can't even begin to tell you where to start I mean it's so exciting creating macking for this so the two bonus videos that we've added to this course of the prim babies and um I wanted to do a sort of nude shoot where the pregnant women because I'm neither even photographed anybody nude she's wearing underwear but I wanted to show you how I removed here cloth and I couldn't do it life because if she's gonna be taking her clothes off it was easy to appreciate it for her safety as well as you know everybody else's because we wanted to be very aware that she had no clothes on all right so specialising genres um before you go on about today, can we ask questions around today because I don't want to cut you off and keep talking it you guys have still got lots of questions for kelly because what she did today was nothing short of amazing. I mean, you know, they were a little mini shoots, but they were still, you know, thirteen babies, and that is incredible what you just did and how many beautiful shots that you come out a little different ages? Absolutely. Before we ask questions, can I just the comments from the chat room watching just that little part of the video it's pretty incredible actually calls photo said, wow, I know that with experience, we can learn to shoot subjects well, but wow, she is so adept at keeping these newborns comfortable and, you know, everyone, basically, everyone was like that was so great latin photo said that was so great actually said absolutely amazing, tina rock. That is amazing, mrs miller. Wow. I mean, just they were completely brought blown away because you just make it look like it's so simple and it's just so hard. I know. I keep saying that, but it's so hard. All right, let's, ask some questions, kenna. All right, so I'm going to start with sofia w who's in canada and had asked when you do try to photograph creamy, when do you try to photograph the preemies as soon as possible when they're just out of the hospital, it'll or does it matter to wait closer toe when they were a full term birth? Do pre mies act like their birth age or are they adjusted? Most babies are adjusted, so but it just depends because every baby is so unique and they're at a different stage all the time. I have babies that were thirty one and thirty one just over seven weeks. Anyway, it was probably six and a half weeks before I got to take them home from hospital, and they were like being kids both home, I got them home, they weren't like newborns um and they were only really thirty nine, thirty eight, thirty nine weeks hold, so they were they were seemed older to me, like they've been around for so much longer, they were very in tune with their routine and and when they were to be fed and what what was going on? They were really aware of everything, but when it comes to photographing them when they come out of hospital, usually as soon as they discharged from hospital, if if a client has booked in with me and then they contact me and say, well, a baby actually arrived early, then I say, look, you know, just take your time and let me know as soon as you're home from hospital more range of time and a few session and I go from them because that baby is premature I don't want to, you know, I don't want to make them feel pressured about their newborn session at all, so I want them to feel nice and relaxed and that it's okay like we're still going to get amazing, beautiful shots and yeah, but as close to their discharge date is possible, not their actual, but well, yeah, their birthday but when they discharge from hospital and we did see that and of course, your last newborn photography workshop, which, by the way, a lot of people are talking about how amazing that was in the chat rooms right now as well. Oh, good. All right, next group of questions, alternative mind photography asked baby photography seems to be a female dominated mark kitt, do you know many successful males who shoot babies? And then I person had a question if watching you interact as a mother, do you feel like it helps your benefits you to be a mom and to have experience, you know, newborn children all through the ages versus a woman maybe who has never been a mother? Yeah, and then the third question remember this tough total said it must help tremendously that you are a parent of twins because you get it when it comes to photographing twins. Yeah, so what do you think about all of those on? I'll go with the last question first, because it's easier? Yes, I get it. I know what the parents are going through. I know how tired they are and no, the joy that they have when you have twins and all of those emotions that come with it. I understand that, and I know having premature twins, I can sort of expect how how they're going to bay during the session. Um, thie question about the dads or sorry, the men being in now industry I know quite a few guys that shoot, and I've had a few people come along to my workshops that, um, in and they love it, they really enjoy it, so and I've actually had the opportunity to work with some studios in my hometown and their men own studios, so they they enjoy it just as much as I do, I think, but it is a female dominated, dominated, definitely, and part was, if you're not a mother, if you're a woman, that is another, do you think that the person like that would have a more difficult time? I don't know for me personally, I've always been around children, I was fourteen when my sister my older sister had a baby and she lives at home with us so I had a lot to do with her I was twenty one when I became a big sister I've just always had babies around me and always been drawn to them, so I suppose it's helped me personally, um being a mum but I don't think it would have mattered mattered a lot to teo the outcome because I can still relate two babies and still drawn to them and love working with him we'll kick us today was an anti and nobody knew yeah, one of the one of the two women with you the twins know no one of the babies that was here she was the aunt that bought the baby with her? Yeah she's not the mother and she was no one would have ever have known it was amazing and it does help to be a moment does it helps to relate to how they're feeling and to have gone through the experiences, especially when you're doing newborns when they're coming into the studio and you know, they sleep deprived and I get how they feel with all the hormones that are changing in their body and and, you know, I understand the whole breast feeding thing and all that kind of stuff, so it is easier to have been a mom but you know you don't have to be a mum to be how to do this well, yeah. When I when I had my photography business before I came on full time here create alive I was photographing bellies and babies and I'm a proud auntie of three but certainly not a mother myself but I think that having that what you talked about just a minute ago is that it's for me more about being able to make that connection with people whether that's for sue the woman that you photograph or for kelly the babies that you photograph both of you are able to get that connection in the eyes and it's just a different age of client but I feel like that's what that's what you that's what you offer? I have this theory that what's not a theory it's it's kind of you know, quite no one to be true is that people convince on the highest value so a woman when you first meet somebody at a party and conversationally somebody who says do you have children tells me that the highest value is the children other people will say to me what do you do? So for a living which means career is often the highest value people come through the conversation straight away if you learn that you'll understand that when you meet, people will very quickly tell you who they are and what they do by the questions they ask you um you know so often people come up to me and say do you have children and straight away I know they have children because you wouldn't ask that if you didn't have children I've never asked anybody that um but always ask people what they do for a career because it's my highest value so I always think when people do come up to me and say do you have children in order to relate to them back through the highest value I talk about being an anti because I'm a godmother teo I'm nine and um and I love them all like they're my children but they're not my children but you know they are my you know, my fake children okay and I think I mean, you know I photographed a lot of babies I've never felt compelled to specialized like kelly does and newborns but and it's really incredible jonah wow, that just blows me away and the sometimes I was thinking watching you pose that's like surely you could just like you to have to wait to get it right to shoot it shoot it now but you know you keep going and you keep waiting and you keep waiting and you keep moving them and I was like you just keep getting it perfect before you shouldn't and that's pretty incredible I did it with with some full pretty amazing women the other night price's facebook page if you want to weigh more questions and you ladies, if you have any questions, feel free. So they were quite a few questions that came in about props. Um, honey bee and I'm gonna throw a few at you too. Kelly okay, honey bee from atlanta said when starting out, what our good essential props tohave when shooting different age ages of babies? Um, jack asked what would be a good way to start if you don't have any props? Like where did how did you start off? And then host josie thomas says hello, greetings from venezuela. How do you feel about using the same props repetitive lee without feeling like your photographs represent that? Yeah, so you with using the same props we talked about that before, you know, I can do the same thing over and over again in each session, it becomes boring to me, but it's not boring to my client so you can mix it up with different little pants and different blankets and different colored backdrops and things like that. But essentially our clients love those and you know why mike goingto waste their time indecision, trying to do something that I don't know it's gonna work, I'm going to go for the safe shots first. And always do what I know is gonna work for that age because they're there to get a product and I need to give it to them I'm not gonna waste an hour of their time trying to get something that may or may not work on dh when it comes to filling my studio with props. In the beginning I had a couple of different blankets a lot one a dark one and a brown that's all I had three blankets and it cost me about twenty dollars h and I had some timber flooring and a wall that's all I had oh I'm my beanbag, but when I first started out with newborns, I had a normal being bag that I was in a teardrop shape and I tied a knot in it put it upside down and didn't have a properly made being bagged for newborn posing so I made do with what I had you know, while I was establishing my business until I could afford to buy new props and then I started to say, well, I'm getting a bit carried away buying things here I need to allocate a set amount of money each month to buying new props and putting them into my studio so it is for me I don't I don't think I actually have a lot of stuff in my studio and I don't mind using it over again because I might use the same prop, but I will put, you know, different fabrics and in different colors in it and things like that. So, you know, keeping myself stimulated and stuff like that is, um, is quite, you know, fun to do when you're starting a session. And also, if you can go to a, um, we have a spotlight. What is this spotlight store called him here? You know, it's a ats and craft store fabric store michael's michael so a lot of my little knitted squares you khun by those from props, suppliers, I can't it to save my life, but if you know someone that can it buy them a couple balls of wool and some knitting needles or, um, bioluminescence to make a lot of my own things myself just when I was starting out he's really? That hanging shots? No. Why? Uh, I just don't think that you need to, and it could be putting the baby at risk. So I like to keep it really simple, really natural and make sure the baby's comfortable at all times. So a beanbag is the mr yep. And the instead of the only blanket and then backgrounds, I actually think this genre would be the closest general being the best working I'm studio you could have do you think of every other genre and photography in the world right now the baby one would be the best but that has its perils right? Yeah working from home and but if you do get to go to other people's homes to shoot they have amazing furniture in their home that you can use I mean I once wrapped a baby beautifully and they had this gorgeous armchairs so I put the baby on the armchair to photograph and they loved that photo because the armchair belong to their parents they grant there they picked them the mother's parent, the baby's grandparents and things like that so anything that you can find around the house it's so exciting every time I go to a motel room I walk in and it's like well I could use that soo in her place has in her bathroom a basket with toilet rolls in it and look at it I'm like are you put a baby in that you can have but everywhere I go I'm always looking for something that I could use so and if you get to go to other people's homes then they're gonna pepe's things in there that you can use and when I was starting out and people were coming to my home, I would say look, if you have anything that's interesting in your home, please feel free to bring it along and we'll see if we can incorporate incorporated into the session, we didn't see any of these props before last night, so you asked anything for baskets, boxes, you just ask for anything in the crew tuned up with stuff and you never saw any of it, but it keeps the baby still right? Yeah, so I was watching the chair and working while you were shooting, and a lot of people keep asking one question a lot, and that was heady deal with parents stage parents, because obviously there being shooting lives, so they were very calm, and if one handsome baby over to very calmly, but the studio of a different like to get parents to interfere, how do you tell them to stop talking? And did you address the eating issue? Because that was you just now? I didn't talk about the eating issue, and, um, and it's, I always say to parents, don't give your baby food prior to the shoot in the studio, making it a treat so that they can have it after the photos, but yeah, I mean, a baby under twelve months of age isn't really going to understand that that's pretty much for older babies, but yeah, when they've drooling and things like that food's going to come out, we saw that before it's, one of the little babies, but food is a massive issue and women just sort of hand when they get here upsy they're like feeding them and toddlers particularly will get so distracted by food that they want to be photographed so you have to make that room right if god and the other one was stage parent yeah so with the parents when they come in like I'm talking to them and I'm telling them because like we're saying they don't know what to do when they come into the studio so it's like okay well while I'm shooting this is what we're going to do we're going to do four to five different setups based on how your baby is going with the situation and I'm going to get you to sit close by your baby but I'm the one that's actually going to get their attention so I'm telling them this as a process because I don't want them standing behind me jumping up and down and you know, throwing their arms around abrir because if sue was doing that the baby would be looking at her and I'm not going to get that our connection so I don't know all of my shops have our connection but the majority of them I want that connection through the lens so it's up to me to get their attention yeah so I tell them it's it's about guiding them in communicating with them and it's not you know sit over there you know led to do anything it's you know, this is what I found works best, so explaining into it in a nice way have a question, do you ever shoot when your children are home? Not with your sins? I have I have once or twice when, you know, in different situations, I have a two story home, so my children will be upstairs and they have lunch boxes and things like that, but no, I primarily shoot monday to friday, I only book three sessions a week, and that way, if, for example, I had a session booked in on a tuesday. Um, but I was free on the thursday, and my child was home sick from school that used that I would reschedule that session to the thursday, so I'm always I've still got two days that I can switch around if something happens, but, yeah, I don't like to shoot with my children in the house because it's not fair on them and it's not fair, my clients, and do you? How do you handle people coming through your house? Is your assume they have to walk through your living area to get to your studio, actually have my studio set up in the front of the house, so when you walk in my front door, my office is right there, and it's got all my images and it's got all my products in it and then the next room is where I shoot and then the next room from that is the toilet the bathroom so they don't have to go into the rest of my house occasionally when they've come with a couple of extra kids like siblings I have a very childproof house purely because I have people coming into it I have a tv room that they can go and sit quietly and watch tv if they want to if they're not in there and they sit in your shooting room here yeah yeah I have a couple of chairs set up and it's not a huge space and I'm sure most people that come in there looking to go this is where you work because it's I mean it doesn't look anything like what my pictures looked like so I say yep this is all I need this is great so kelly we've spent all day photographing babies and saw you do a lot of different posing and obviously even with the preemies we saw how amazing you are an attention to detail tara photo is wondering when you first started how did you become comfortable posing and handling these babies and more so for her I'm she's new to photographing babies and is wondering what are some of the things you can practice toe actually feel comfortable and confident yeah I actually had this conversation I was very lucky enough to have a massage the other day after my twenty four hours of traveling and I was talking to the lady who did it and she had this amazing touch and she felt with her hands and it was so come and it put me at ease and I felt so relax tonight and I thought about it for a while I thought when I touch you baby I'm very relaxed she feels your sleep you said yes I did this year e says she had this amazing energy through her hands she was so calm and so relaxed and she felt with her fingers and I taught a workshop recently and I was guiding a photographer with I was letting the photographer do the posing and I was guarding them and I put my hands on her hands and they were shaking and that intense and the baby can feel that so you need to relax and you need to feel the baby move in your hands and that's what I have found really works for me and it takes practice tto learn but I know when I'm putting my hands on them I'm feeling the move and I'm not going to move my hand until I felt them relax so being able to touch them and feel them through your touch I think that's pretty it's it feels pretty special to me that I can do that and I'm sure that a lot of other people can do that, and for people that are finding trouble, maybe just they just need to breathe and feel, because it takes a lot to do that. Susan actually said something to you that afternoon, our lunch break, it really made me think, um, she said she keep looking at you, and you were every time these children smiled at you, you were smiling back at them, and she was like, it just occurred to me, you spend your chutes and complete joy because you can't fake a smile to a child, that smiling it because you're marrying that joy back, and you actually was smiling the entire time or laughing or just calm, it gives me such a it makes me happy. I am not that I want to go on about my history or anything like that, but I I spent a lot of years and a pretty pretty dark place, and and if it is so amazing to feel happy and to feel joy, so to be out, what to do, what I do and get that every day, it's and its incredible and I have so much gratitude from my life what I do, so can I just say you, then, are these perfect little forms of joy that bring joy and sleepless night, right? And then you grow up to be women. And you come to my studio and you complain about your arms, angel signs and your chins, and then your skins. And you're here and the clothes you wear. And I think to myself, there's gotta be a time. And there were. We shift to that place where we don't ever have to do that, because I hear more of that than I hear sparkles of joy in calm and tranquility, that baby spring to our world. And yet you would think that it was the other way around for new.