Places To Go, People To See

Another confession… I’d like to call it research, but I spend entirely too much time surfing other photographers’ websites. I’m addicted. I look at website design, I watch what others are charging, I even try to find out how busy everyone has been. But most of all, I study their shots. I look the colors, I study and try to reverse-engineer their lighting and editing. Recently, my eye has gone straight to the backgrounds.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve complained about the lack of interesting locations around town to shoot. And every time that happens (most of the time right before a shoot), my dear Hal loads me up in the car and we drive aimlessly around town searching for that needle in the haystack; that one golden place that nobody else knows about. Most of the time we go back home empty-handed, I rant and rave that we’ve already used up all the “good places,” and we settle on a location that I’m no longer thrilled about for our next shoot.



Such was the case on a recent shoot. We’re SO thankful for this family; even through the horrible shoots where everything went wrong and we never really got “the shot,” they’ve stuck by us. The days prior to their shoot are as usual. I sit around and worry about whether we’ll be able to deliver for them, I worry about where we’re going to shoot that’s new and fresh and would be what they want, etc. We finally found a fairly new location for us, did the shoot, got home and dropped the pictures into the computer. Looking at the pics, it hit me…we didn’t shoot the family, we shot the location.

It’s not about where we shoot, it’s about WHO we shoot. I’ve spent so much time stressing over what is behind our clients that I’ve forgotten about the clients themselves. Sure, we get some nice backdrops sometimes, but that’s not why we’re being hired.

Another lesson learned…keep watching. Our pictures will have (no pun intended) a fresh face on them very soon! And to our friends, this awesome family who never lets us down, thanks again, and next time is sure to be even better!