Lessons

Lesson Info

Course Introduction

we're very excited to have julia cal her back here on creative live and she is just an incredible person she is a portrait photographer she specializes in family and newborns and she is from bend oregon she runs a very successful boutique studio and she's been on creative live twice before and she's absolutely an incredible instructor we're very glad to have her back so julia come on out here welcome everyone round I'm so glad to have you back on earth to be here it's like a huge it's an honor I don't know what else to say well nervous I get nervous before I start out you know and then it kind of feels nervous nerves are good you're shaking a little bit you know everybody is so excited to be here an amazing stories I know the fact that you guys came from so far away just floors me it floors me so thank you well I'm excited to get to know them more so all right well take it away we'll do we give this to you thank you my dear very much well welcome everyone thanks for coming from such a ...

long distance I am super pumped about this class this is the class I've always dreamed of teaching um and it's the one I wanted to teach from the start of my uh family here it created five and I think it's safe to call them family now um and mainly there's so many new born photographers out there I mean I'm amongst to see of them and it's so hard to be different it's so hard to not do whatever what else is doing and it's so tempting to do what everyone else is doing because that seems to be working so you go okay maybe I should do that too well you don't have to you can be you and part of what I'm really excited about in this class to teach is the creative side of it and I really feel like so many of us have this deep inner creativity and us that's afraid to come out it's like hampered by this thing and we'll talk about what that thing is is on dh those of you who watched my last class and know who is going to make a reappearance um but I will save that surprise for a little later I wanted to start off with a very personal story I want to tell you about the day I thought I did not love my son I gave birth almost three years ago um I had a very trying pregnancy I suffered from p clamp seo about four weeks before my delivery my blood pressure got to one ninety over one twenty I started seeing the little floaties sure emily knows what I'm talking about when anyone who's had a baby how many of you have had a baby sorry steve you don't quite know I told him earlier I'm like steve you're gonna be in a sea of estrogen good luck three mix three days but he'll he'll be fine with that I'm sure but when you have a baby and you're going through you know this whole pre pre birth medical advice and things they warn you about these little white flashy lights that you might see in your eyes which is an indication of high blood pressure so I started seeing that I got put on bed rest before I gave birth and then I went in to be induced about two and a half almost three weeks early which isn't you know remarkably early but it was early enough for my due date and so they induce me and I thought you know and I also had what's called placenta previa where your placenta covers the cervix so the baby can't come out and thinking we that have moved out of the way like as a balloon blows up in your belly gets nice and big eventually the placenta moves out of the way in some cases and in mine it did so my doctor was like okay you know you could do with a regular delivery we could go for this we can try it I was like yes okay we could do a normal everybody's like if you wanted to see a section your kid is it for it we can do that like no that's major surgery you know we'll just try it if I don't progress I won't try to be a hero and I won't I won't you know we'll do a c section if I sit there for thirty six hours of three centimeters dilated right and so they twelve noon the toasting comes in by four o'clock I am begging for an epidural I am thinking that I am the weakest the thing on the planet going oh my gosh I cannot do this I am a total wimp I have got to have an epidural so the nsc just called of comes in and like you're like super he comes in sticks need on my back and voila I'm all better okay so by she checks me I'm at eight I have gone from zero fort knox teo eight in four hours okay so I'm like okay I'm not so good you could do this by seven o'clock I was a ten they let me start pushing and I pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed the morning three and half hours later the doctor comes in and tells me I have to have a c section I was devastated but I also knew that if I didn't calm down that anesthesiologist was not going to tell me jack squat about what was going on in that operating room so I calmed down and I made him give me the play by play while I'm sitting there in the sheets up here and they're cutting me open and pulling that baby out like tell me what's going on tell me what I have to know what's going on and so he's given me the play by bandits great I have this baby awesome okay six hours later he's in the nick you low blood sugar bilirubin level's high john dis all this stuff so he's in the nick yo so I haven't just had a c section I have to walk down the hallway to get to my child I didn't want to do it I didn't want to walk down there and we finally got to go home I was with this little baby and I didn't know what to dio and my milk wouldn't come in and I couldn't breastfeed and just one thing after another like started going down this hill and about two weeks into it I said to my husband I go maybe we should give him up for adoption I said that to my husband I said I think I want to give our son up for adoption so I'm not sure I I love him and he just looked at me like what is your problem girl are you an idiot I mean he my husband and what to say he was like almost like a woman where did you go out with my wife debra back to me you know he didn't know what happened to me and thankfully two weeks later I went to the doctor and realized that I a very pad postpartum depression my sister is one of the reasons I'm in business she had does exact same thing I do jenny mason photography is just the exact same thing I do in southern california and she's here today actually just going to be a guest on saturday speaking with me so I'm really excited to share our differences and similarities and for good reason but she came up to bend and photographed me and my son at five days six days and seven days old it was a three day marathon I'm avatar for of course I'm going to shoot my baby right thank god she came I had a c section I couldn't bend over the beanbag I was barely moving through the studio and thank god she came because what she helped me understand was my purpose for what I do what I do I thought I didn't love my son of course the minute I got a medication like you know I was smart enough to get to the doctor and get on medication be like help me I have pope ppd um I fell in love instantly with my son it took two weeks of being on medication and I was fine I'm telling you this very vulnerable story because postpartum depression it is an extremely common occurrence one in three women who give birth will suffer from some form of post partum depression and I don't think it's talked about enough it's like hush hush and like the thing that you're not supposed to talk about like oh you're crazy no I wasn't crazy some others don't even know they have it they don't understand why they're feeling this way baby blues it's it's not going away it's just this thing I got to get over it the whole world is telling you you should be happy you have this little boy you're so beautiful life is fantastic and you said you're going oh my god what do I do what did I just get myself into a ball and chain this thing stuck to me all the time I have no life my career's over I mean that's pretty much how you feel sad but it's feel it clouds everything and here you are with this beautiful new life and you can't see it you can't appreciate it thank goodness my sister took those images before his birth I was one person after dean's birth I'm totally different for those of you have children you understand this there is an huge transformation because your whole life is now lived for a different reason than it was before this image is one of the images my sister took of me with dean when he was five days old hey symbolizes the most significant change in my life will ever take and this photograph is the beginning of that this photograph is the beginning of something that now means everything to me that I could not recognize at that time this image is the most important image I own it's just a picture should be mobile way okay but to me the fact that he was that little and could sit like that shocks me now when I look at it and it helped me to find my wife my hope is that my portrait art makes up for what the mind cannot always accomplish okay my hope is that my images for other mothers I will cherish the feeling of that momentous beginning mind was clouded most or not you know most women don't have ppd but should they I want to be able to cherish that feeling that emotion and I met such a stickler in photography that we sell emotion and it's our job as artist is to convey emotion and a lot of what I'm going to be teaching you hear in the next three days is about taking what's in your heart about your subject and pointing it onto a page putting it onto up some kind of medium because that has impact not only for you as a person and expressing what's inside of yourself but it also has impact from the subject of that art that image that my sister took means everything to me to me it is the finest art there is now when you take that and translated into painting and composition and story and design and all those things that come along with really taking a photograph and turning it into more than just a photograph you have something even more powerful so I just wanted to share that little story with you as a beginning in the hopes that you can kind of see my flaws and see that I'm just an artist tortured and struggling like the rest of you and that each one of us can take what's uniquely us and put that into our work and that's what's going to make us unique so who will benefit from this course you born photographers obviously if you're just starting out looking for something different okay if you're trying to refine your work just make it better make it more interesting make it more you a newborn for tiger stuck in a rut how many of you have been stuck in a rut before it happens to us all and just keep in mind it will happen again it will happen again if you're not a rat right now it will happen again but there's ways to get out of it okay we'll help you with that anyone who needs a creative boost I'm going to talk a lot about creativity and where that comes from and how to find it it seems like this elusive little being that flies around us and we just want to grab it help me be creative okay and we put enormous pressure on ourselves to be creative we were talking about how to redirect that how to re channel that you're going to learn your why if you don't already know it your style how to inspire your own creativity what does it mean to be creative what does that mean really it's kind of a challenging questions sometimes how to be true to that thing inside you that voice and it's different for each and every one of you poorly different okay ants we fund to explore that market you're working of course bring in new clients we'll talk about that on saturday a lot shooting and posing for fine art imagery okay we've got ten or twelve babies I believe coming in sascha really very exciting starting this afternoon so we're gonna talk about set combinations and set design for really focused sessions my newborn sessions take no more than two hours period end of statement if it takes longer than two hours I'm like here okay you know it doesn't need to be longer than two hours you need to create a system for newborn I mean people who tell me these newborn truths or four five hours long I'm like I I used to do it my longest recession everywhere seven hours yeah um not anymore okay so we'll talk about how to how to change that because your time is valuable you guys know from the last business glass that your time is extremely valuable and you need to need to cherish that time pre visualizing images do you see something in your head you've always want to create you're just not quite sure how to go about it how to create a composite newborn images you can see on the walls here I've recently actually just kind of started getting into the whole world of fantasy and photoshopped makes that so fun for us these days the world is our oyster we could do anything now anything that's in your mind can be done it's a little overwhelming teo like anything khun rebound so that could be sometimes too many choices well what will this class do for you well my hope is that you'll be able to differentiate yourself you'll be able to create images that means something to you okay charge more obviously for quality work fuel your inner self that creative interview that wants that satisfaction from creating something that's uniquely you refine your style with a deeper sense of who you are and get paid to do what you love why should you not get paid to do what you love how many of you actually enjoy getting up at six a m and going into work yeah a lot of you do because you like your job right I d'oh it's no big deal like you actually excited to go to work in the morning cause it's fun imagine that on steroids when every image that you get to do is something that you want to create