Lessons

Lesson Info

Course Introduction

this is the most comprehensive class that you've ever taught not just on creative live whatever is that correct definitely and I've been traveling the world for the past two years teaching and never have I done anything this big so it's actually exciting lots of work has gone into it and it's incredible to share it with you so yeah really really cool well I know we've talked about this but everybody out there might not know that I started as a new born photographer maybe about six years ago and it was really hard on I didn't know what I was doing and I got scared and I stopped and boy do I wish that I had what you're about to offer up to everybody back then so I imagine that a lot of you are feeling that way out there and we have a wonderful studio audience in here thank you all so much for being here and I think it's time to get started right definitely all right let's do this yeah yes a welcome thank you for coming and joining may it's um it's early in the morning here in the states ...

but it's even earlier where I come from so I've got a couple of friends back home who are wide awake at two a m which is exciting to share this with them but yeah thank you so much for being here and coming along today's lesson plan which we're going to shoot live with you is my flow posing it's something that I've had so many questions about over the last couple of years and finding ways new ways tio to develop our sessions and get them flowing as easy as possible so yeah let's have a little look at the rest of the course um like I said today flow posing and then we're gonna walk through my home studio and the planning that it took to get me there and yeah I want to share it with you so it's that's really exciting to bring you there they were going to talk about you know the foundations of building that and the essentials that you need we're also going to talk about you know portfolio building for your clients and also you know shadowing other photographers and what that's like to you know t get that experience to move forward in our industry then we're gonna look at posing with young siblings posing with older siblings posing with a stunt baby we're also going to look at poses that most newborns khun do which is really really imp horton and then we're gonna walk through you know my advanced poses and you know during this this course like I've been doing a lot of pre recording and you're going to see that when I'm in my studio actually come across you know instances that don't always go to plan I have babies that don't sleep I you know I go through all of the same things that every other photographer out there goes through so it's really important for you to know that you know it's not perfect for every newborn photographer we don't get all the perfect babies it is really life and that's what you get to see you get to see me kind of stumble my way through awake babies and uncooperative babies but you know what they're not uncooperative their babies being babies and that's what we need to remember when we're working with him so yeah then we're gonna walk through you know what it is that I have in my studio my five essential props we're going to go through making our own props and everything that's involved with that through you know safety to planning and size and things like that we're gonna pose then with props lots of babies and we're going to shoot for kompas it's and when I say shoot for confident compass it's I mean like shooting siblings with props and things like that when you can't quite get them to be in the photo with the baby and then we're gonna look at outdoor sessions which is really fun something I like to do we're also going to talk about marketing which is something that so many people have contacted me about and we're going to go through the evolution of my marketing you know where I started my first logos which are a little bit embarrassing that I'm going to share it all with you we're going to talk about branding and products which is fun to because you know they're the most exciting things for me to share with my clients and then we've got building your marketing plan where do you start so that's really exciting teo do because I think you've gotta have a plan to be able to move forward and having a marketing plan just means that you're going to put all the steps in place we're going to talk about I went back with him we can talk about post processing photo galleries and everything that's involved with that I'm going to take you through my step by step post processing plans my guides everything that I do and then we're going to talk about you know what it is that I provide my clients and then you know the final sales closing every sale and keeping those clients and getting them coming back a ll the time so moving along this I mean like I'm still talking and that I haven't even finished so much in this god it's crazy isn't it pricing I mean everybody has problems with pricing and knowing how much to charge so we're going to go over that in depth we're going to talk about policies and workflow which is also really important for the administration side of your business how to create a what to expect guide so you can prepare your clients before decisions and then we're going to talk about building your team you know are you able to outsource you're going to do it all yourself what is going to be the best solution fear and then balancing your career and life something I had to learn the hard way and I just threw myself into this whole heartedly and came across so many obstacles in the process so yeah I'm going to share with you how I how I manage that and and why and why it's so important to have that balance and not not neglect your family but also more importantly not neglect yourself and I think that's a lot of a lot of the problems is that when you're a mother like me and you're working so hard at your business you tend to put yourself on the back burner and yeah I've had quite a few discussions in the last few days with a very good friend of mine about that so yeah we'll go into that a little bit more later on but most importantly you know finn you born photographers the thing that I can't emphasize enough is that you have to have patience so for my audience that have been here with me and some of our appreciating sessions you've seen how patient you've got to be with babies that don't really want to go to sleep when you want them to and you need to shoot with them and just having that patients not also in you're not only sorry in musicians but um with your business being patient because you know rome wasn't built in a day we've gotta work at this and we've gotta have patients to see it come to life and then we've gotta have persistence you've got to be persistent with what you're doing if you're not then you're not going to to reach your goals you're not going to get to that place where you really want to pay so being persistent is really important and finally you have to believe in yourself um that's something that like I was saying before you know we put ourselves on the back burner we tend to put everything else forward and if you don't have that belief in yourself you know you're not going to value yourself for your time and then you're not going to you know to have an incredible life and you're not going teo to enjoy what you're doing in the end we start out loving what we do and then you know as time goes on we've put so much time and energy and everything else except for ourselves that we start teo to dislike our job so yeah this's may two thousand six way all start somewhere and that's what we have to remember is that we're on a different journey we're on a different path and we're travelling at a completely different speed to everybody around us and it doesn't happen overnight that's two thousand six and then we go to two thousand fourteen you know and I've had patients I've been persistent and I believed in myself because I knew I could do it deep down I just had to be reminded a couple of times when you start to lose fight but that's human that is only human okay kelly and just get a stuffy right here because I want to go back can we go back teo that two thousand six image because it's such a more striking difference when you look at the before and the after right it's amazing uh just to know that you we're kind of like many of us probably feel right now but also to see where you've gone and then it but that you did have the patients and the persistence what was sort of the number one thing that kind of kept you going I get asked this quite a lot actually because you know everybody starts somewhere and it's easy to give up when something doesn't go according to plan and is really easy to give up but to me I had to find that dr what was it that drove me and then I had to find the determination on guy had been told that I wouldn't ever succeed in this industry so I was determined to prove that person wrong and I was like no I am actually going to do this and I was you know years ago I was ashamed to say I was a baby photographer because I was you know there was a stereotype around baby photography they are like pixie photo these to say which is a company in australia that is no longer because I like to think that now that baby photographers are doing such an incredible job that we kind of put them out of business way didn't let anyone you know there was so much syria type around what baby photography wass and it took a really long time for me to build you know tio build that reputation and be confident in what I did so yeah I was determine megan and I think that's that's kate you know you find that dr you get determined and you just love what you do you find that passion and you you know and it comes from within you can't help it who who was the person that told you you could never do it previous employer another photographer actually what was the rationale I showed him my portfolio and he had been he owned an incredible photography studio in my home city wedding photography studio I was hired as a re toucher so I wasn't a photographer but at the time like I was I was working in photography for myself but I wasn't a photographer to his standard so when I showed him my portfolio you just kind of skin through it and he said you know this um ok working here but I really don't think you're going to make it in this industry and it cut me because I've been working so hard and he didn't know that I'd been studying photography at night when my babies were young and little things like that when somebody says to me that I can't do it it just makes me even more determined to prove them wrong and I do have something to prove I am worth it and I deserve to do what I love doing and get that enjoyment from it so yeah