We’ve been so incredibly busy with our high school senior season, that I hadn’t had a lot of time for photographer mentoring sessions.  However, Melinda and I did manage to squeeze in a day for her!  She came to us from north of Kansas City…about a 3 hour drive one way.  It was an early day for her considering we began her session at 9am but since she has kids I’m sure she handles that much better than I would!

We had a really great day.  We started off with discussing where she wants to go with her business.  Setting goals is a pretty important part of starting a business.  After knowing what her goals were, it was easy to talk about how she can get there.  We also did a portfolio review.  It sounds scary, but it’s really not once you realize that any image that ANY photographer takes can be improved.

Business structure and pricing is an important topic, in my opinion.   We spent a lot of time talking about her financial goals and suggesting ways that she can get there quickly…even considering she is just starting her business.

After lunch, we had a beautiful girl, Heather, come in to model for us so I could teach posing, studio lighting and natural outdoor lighting.  Since Melinda is working with 2 strobes, I taught her some lighting techniques that work with just 2 lights.  In case she decides to add on an extra strobe or two, we discussed some more advanced studio lighting techniques, including glamour lighting…my new favorite!

Next, we headed outside for an on-location shoot.  It wasn’t the most ideal time of day (around 2:30pm) so it was a good opportunity to explain and show how to find good lighting and manipulate the light with a reflector and/or gobo when the lighting isn’t ideal.  Another important part of teaching outdoor photo shoots is how to find photogenic places to shoot in seemingly mundane locations.  We did a whole photo shoot in just a 1 block area around the studio.

Here are a few images I shot while teaching:

After our photo shoot with Heather, we uploaded the images taken and used them to talk about digital workflow as well as retouching with Photoshop.  More specifically, we discussed the benefits of shooting in RAW, how to quickly and effectively smooth skin without that unnatural plastic look, how to make eyes pop, how to use the liquify tool to make the clients look their best, artistic touches like creating a vintage look, and much, much more.  I could teach Photoshop ALL day if I had the time!

BUT…enough from me.  Check out what Melinda had to say about her mentor session:

Jessica,

Sincerely,

Melinda Macey
Forever Fotos
Richmond, MO

P.S.  I ordered my new 70-200mm f2.8 lens Monday.  I should get it today!!!  Can’t wait to start playing around with it.

Melinda, I can’t wait to see what kind of images that you create after using what you learned during your photographer mentoring session and using that new lens!  Remember, part of your mentoring comes with email mentoring, so I’ll be looking forward to hearing about your progress and answering any questions that come up.

In this day and age of people buying a pro-sumer camera, getting a free website (or Facebook), calling themselves a “professional photographer”, THEN learning photography, Erica (of Erica McKimmey Photography) is like a breath of fresh air!  She is definitely going about starting her photography business in the right way.  This (among other things) leads me to believe that she will be very successful.

Erica came in for her first one-on-one photography mentoring session in mid March.  We had an AWESOME day of learning & laughing.  We discussed, at length, which business model is right for her and came up with a personalized pricing structure for her business.  After a review of her portfolio, I analyzed her strengths and weaknesses and we began a lighting, posing, shooting session.  We started with how she can maximize her studio space and equipment with what she already owns and discussed how a few small additions could benefit her photography.  Then we headed outside to scope locations.  This happened to be in the early afternoon, which is NOT great at all for portrait photography.  It was actually an added bonus because it gave us the opportunity to discuss how you can find the best locations and lighting at even the worst time of day.

Our mentoring sessions come with email mentoring for one year.  I think that Erica has learned just as much from taking advantage of that than she did in her original session!  I love hearing how my mentoring clients are doing and answering their questions.  The quest to become a successful professional photographer is a long one (I’m STILL on mine!) and it takes more than one class to learn what you need to know.  I’m really glad that Erica has decided to continue seeking my advice.

She also took advantage of our follow-up mentoring session that we offer.  She chose to do a 1/2 day to refresh her memory on the things we discussed during her first photographer mentor session and also to learn more advanced techniques that she may not have been ready for in the couple of months prior.  Let me just say that I’m VERY impressed at the progress she has made!  And that’s saying a lot because she already had developed a keen photographic eye before I had even met her.

During her follow-up photography mentoring, we had a female model come in for a live studio and outdoor photo shoot.  We use our intern, Newley for a male model as well.  Again, it wasn’t the most ideal time of day for a photo shoot, but we discussed how to fine good lighting and locations at even the worst time of day.  (See the portraits she created at the bottom of this post.)

After our photo shoot, we had a mock in-person sales appointment.  I’m a HUGE believer in in-person viewing & sales and I think Erica is now too!  Even without using a projector and expensive sales software, you can easily double or even triple your average sale.

So…enough of hearing about her sessions from me.  Let’s hear from Erica!

Erica’s review of her first photographer mentoring session:

Jessica,
Thank you so much for all of your fabulous teaching! I had a wonderful day that just flew by! I learned so much my brain hurts!
I know you have laid the foundation for me to start a successful business. There are so many tidbits you shared which are still resonating with me now. Your willingness to tailor the day to my needs helped me get what I needed most from the experience.

Your advice and expertise will be so important as I move forth with my business. Not to mention, it was just fun to hang out with you! I can’t say enough about the experience and I am anxious to come for my follow up session this summer!

Erica

P.S. Be looking for my follow up questions and thoughts to follow! ☺

Erica’s review of her follow-up photography mentor session:

Jessica,

Phil and I are friends on Facebook and we’d been discussing having a mentor session for a few weeks now.  We finally found some common ground in our schedule and got together last week.  I look forward to the photographer mentoring sessions just as much as I look forward to my senior shoots….and that’s saying a lot!  What I may look forward to even more, is hearing what they learned from the session and seeing their work improve.

I just got this email from Phil this morning and I really wanted to share it with you guys!

“Jessica,

It’s hard to believe the mentoring session we had was a week ago.  The things we covered are still resounding in my head as loudly now as they were on the drive home, and we covered quite a few things.   I still can’t believe you were willing to share you knowledge with me and make certain what we were doing and why.   I phoned a member of my family who knew I was doing this and the question was, “well was it worth it?”   I told them if I would have come away with just learning one thing it would have been worth it, and that was achieve in the first 30 minutes, and I tried to absorb as much after that as humanly possible.

Thank you for your honesty with my portfolio. The constructive criticism and posing techniques have me looking at my previous shoots in a whole new light and anxious to get out and shoot more.  I appreciate the way you did not just knock the photos but help me see ways to achieve better ones next time.  And to also make me realize I do have some good ones.

The mock sales session we did and you looking at my business pricing was a tremendous help as well.  I knew this is where I was hoping to learn from you and it paid off in spades.  The critical information you shared with me not only on pricing, but how to get the higher sales I not only want but need if I expect this to be a full time job had my head spinning most of the way home.  The fact that you were willing to share subtle nuances and the step by step of your in person sales sessions blew me away.  I only wish I had a recorder or video to capture what we did as I’m sure I will forget something.

The time we spent actually shooting and working Photoshop seemed to go by so fast after all the other lessons.  Even though our model backed out late the night before, you were able to show a different kind of magic as you were able to get us another within hours.  Working with this model, and covering tips we spoke of in the morning was a great reinforcement, as well as learning other ideas for shooting(Less is More).  I can’t believe you were willing to help by getting in a couple of the photos yourself. Finally getting to work with Photoshop I watched you  transform photos in front of my eyes, making sure I was following along and understood how you were doing it so easily anybody could have understood.

Sad as I was that our day was done, I was looking forward to getting home to my computer and start playing with the photos we took that afternoon.  Which is exactly what I  did until about I wasn’t seeing straight.  I have worked with different photos and also worked on some of my previous photos as well to see how much I could help them.

I do owe you a big THANK YOU for willingness to share your wealth of knowledge with all of us for such a reasonable price.  If anybody has any questions send them my way as your help has set me on a whole new track and outlook.  Now I just have to  buy some software(already bought the step stool).  Maybe do a follow up?

THANK YOU AGAIN

Phil Murphy  Leisure Time Images

Here are some images that he sent me that we took during his mentor session.  I’m very impressed by how great his images were SOOC (straight out of camera) and also impressed that he was able to use what he learned in the Photoshop section of our mentoring session and apply them to these images.

Take a look at what he came up with…

Erica and Karl came in for a photographer mentor session on Friday.  Since I’m not much of a morning person, we started the day off by walking to Java Mule on the West side of the town square here in Lamar.  On our way there, I remembered that they stopped taking credit cards last week, so we made a detour to the bank next door.  While there, one of the tellers chatted me up about my photography business.  After we talked shop for a few minutes, we headed down the the coffee shop.  As soon as I walked in, the barista remembered that I asked for a  white chocolate mocha the last time I stopped in but they were out.  When she saw me she said “We have white chocolate this time!”  Talk about awesome service! We all got our caffeine fix and walked back to the studio to begin our session.  It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes later when the mail man stopped by just to say hi.  He didn’t have any mail for me that day, but he took the time to come in, say hi, and ask if I had anything I wanted to send out.  When he left, Karl said “This place is like Mayberry!”

That story has nothing to do with the actual mentor session, but I thought it was kinda funny.

We covered so much information that day.  We discussed everything from business structure, to Photoshop techniques, to camera equipment, to studio lighting and posing, to outdoor lighting posing, finding interesting locations in your surroundings to use in photoshoots, marketing, and many other things I’m sure I’m forgetting.  It was a really fantastic day!

With Erica’s permission, I want to share with you the email that she sent me about her experience.

“Jessica,

Thank you so much for all of your fabulous teaching! I had a wonderful day that just flew by! I learned so much my brain hurts!
I know you have laid the foundation for me to start a successful business. There are so many tidbits you shared which are still resonating with me now. Your willingness to tailor the day to my needs helped me get what I needed most from the experience.
Your advice and expertise will be so important as I move forth with my business. Not to mention, it was just fun to hang out with you! I can’t say enough about the experience and I am anxious to come for my follow up session this summer!
Erica

P.S. Be looking for my follow up questions and thoughts to follow! ☺”