After my workshop with Yan I have a fishbowl’s worth of ideas swimming around in my head regarding what I can do to take the Jenna Cole ship and point it in the direction that matches my vision and desires. I’ve hired Three Fifteen Design to give my site design a revamp, and as I examine my past images looking for work to put in my portoflio I realized that I have so many pictures I love of my kids, but not many that really showcase what I can create for clients at this point in time. Little wonder, since I’ve done very little professional work since we moved to California.

To help close that gap I’m putting out a call for subjects interested in working with a photographer with the tagline “Documenting Who You Are. Not Just What You Look Like.”

If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area (or the Katowice area of Poland, since I’ll be there in a month) and would like to participate there are a few guidelines:

1. I’ll have a heavy hand in selecting the location, time of day, and what you wear.
2. No guarantee of an image with everyone smiling into the camera. We might not even attempt this at all during your session.
3. Must write up an (honest) review of your experience. This will be shared with me and may be used on my new website. I will also have you post your review on Yelp.

Individuals, couples, and families are welcome. I’m interested in thinking outside the box, so really show me what you’ve got with your pitch.

Visit this form and tell me about the magic we’re going to make together.

Feeling stuck when it comes to dreaming up a session? Last year I was going to do a free session for a family that was going to meet me at Half Moon Bay. We were going to get chowder bowls to go and sit outside and eat them together. Then we were going to head out to the beach. The family was going to fly kites and build sand castles while I fluttered about my with camera. We were never able to sync up our schedules and make it work but I think about that session a lot and how much I would have liked to document that memory for that family. I have some friends with fantastic style who live up in San Francisco and are going to have a baby. I would love to go into their home and document their relationship as expectant parents, and one or two small ways that they are making changes to their living space to accommodate the little one they are about to welcome into their life. I have friends who like to cook together and are learning to play guitar. I want to rent out a kitchen I know of in San Jose with a huge range next to even bigger windows. I’d love to document them preparing something simple together and crooning a few songs afterward.

Now, what about you? Tell me how you would like to be photographed. If you’re in the area maybe we can meet up and make it happen. If you’re not, I would still love to hear how you would like to be documented. It might give others some ideas if they are feeling stuck!

The form for those in the San Francisco Bay Area.

*I’ll be in contact with those who are a good fit for this project, but will not plan to follow-up with each submission in order to deliver rejections.

I’ve got two new posts up on Movable Media. The first aims to help you make better use of the window light in your house (what time of day should you take pictures near the different windows in your house?), and the second walks you through how to set up a quick little “studio” in your house that utilizes natural light.

(Clicking over to see them is a nice thing to do for me because they’re paying me per visitor!)

I purchased a spot at Yan Fam Way on a whim. I saw her short post about the workshop and purchased based on not much more than a love of her work and a fascination with her public persona. As soon as I received confirmation that the payment had gone through a steady hum of anxiety about the workshop began to buzz in the back of my mind. There are a lot of bad photography workshops out there, and I had no idea if I had just signed up to fly to Utah attend one of the duds.

It was this public persona that had me feeling nervous. Yan is followed and adored by many, and she shares a lot via social media. One of the things I had retained from her admissions is that she is a free spirit with a killer eye but not a lot of organizational skills. I was worried about two distinct possibilities: that I had just paid for the opportunity to hear a conceited photographer talk for 8 hours about how awesome they are while telling attendees that they just need to find the rainbow butterflies that exist within each of us in order to harness the unlimited power of our artistic prowess OR that the day would be awkward and disorganized as we all tried our best to get the most out of our investment by gleaning droplets from a hurricane of information messily flung in our direction.

Keep reading, because I’m writing this review to tell you how needless that anxiety was, and how incredibly wrong I was about the negative possibilities I feared. We didn’t have much communication from her until about a week before the workshop, but a few days before the event I opened up my inbox to see an email titled “portfolio review and assignment.” Inside I found seven paragraphs, very detailed and written with a careful balance that allowed the message to cut right to my weaknesses while maintaining my belief in my own potential. I have read that email a dozen times since I opened it, and each time I come away with a new insight about my business and the revised approach I want to take in the future. At the end of the email she gave me a personalized assignment based on my Jenna Cole portfolio (each attendee talked about their assignment at the workshop and they were all very unique and specific) and I was frankly kind of shocked to see what she wrote. Not only was it the perfect fit for me and where I’m at right now, but it got really got at the reason I was attending in the first place. Read more →

My next post at New York Institute of Photography walks you through the process I’ve developed for dealing with the mountains of artwork that T1 brings home from preschool. I love it all, but was starting to feel like it was taking over our house!

I’m currently writing articles for the New York Institute of Photography and my first post went live this week! I used some photos from a portrait session in the bluebonnets of Texas a few years ago to talk about how you can maximize the wildflower patches you are able to scout this spring.

When you click through my links to the post they track the referrals and pay me for the traffic I send their way. Thanks for your support (please help me by sharing the post with your friends!) and I hope to write posts that help you improve your photography skills as well.

How to Take Portraits in Patches of Wildflowers