My style is primarily editorial

The style of the images I love definitely tell a story, exude emotion, make you feel something. These are often considered storytelling photography, but it’s also known as an editorial style. The people in the photo primarily focus on and interact with each other., as well as with the camera. Together we tell their unique life story with every look, touch, laugh, and movement. The majority of the images you’ll find in my portfolio are of that style- sweet embraces, tossing giggling children into the air, kids running around their parents, dancing, twirling, kissing, hand holding, those special looks between loved ones, etc.

A little secret, those images are often prompted or posed as well. But the way they’re executed is so personal to each individual and family. We collaborate. Our relationship as photographer and client, and your relationship with the others in your images is cultivated to create beautiful moments frozen in time.

My goal is to capture you authentically, your essence, your emotions, the love you want to remember every time you see your images.

When will we get our photos?

I want to deliver the highest quality images of your special moments. For that reason, my current turnaround time is 2-4 weeks from the event date to delivery of your gallery. I’m just as excited as you are to see the final result, trust me! I’m itching to dive into editing as soon as we depart from our session together!

How do you plan our sessions?

I offer a phone call or zoom meeting when you book with the intention of learning about your unique story and what is meaningful and important to you. I truly want to hear your voice and have a discussion where we can both get a feel for each other and start collaborating! I want to get to know you & what’s important in the images we strive to capture. We can use this time to answer questions and discuss details, collaborate about styling, outfits, locations, and time of day. I have questionnaires that I send which I use as a guide to help us both to cover all bases and keep on track, which we can go over on our phone call or can be initially sent by email and then discussed.

Do you travel?

I can travel! In addition to the session, I kindly request an additional fee to cover travel expenses of locations over 1 hour away from my town, which can include airfare, lodging, fuel, and rental car. These are specifics we can discuss together if need be.

What is included in the online gallery?

The online gallery is a password protected page where the final high quality edited images are delivered to you to view and print!

As I strive to deliver a beautiful gallery to you, out-of-focus, duplicates, test shots, poor compositions or expressions, and any other images that detract from the overall final product are culled. This will result in less images delivered than taken, but these are chosen to highlight you and your story, delivering the best of our collaboration together. I do not release the raw unedited files for any reason. I have a 3 week window for gallery downloads, after which I must close it.

How to book?

A few simple steps will get the ball rolling on our session collaboration; Fill out the initial form, and we can chat by email and phone to better get to know each other and discuss the session’s details. I’ll send a welcome brochure, contract, and invoice. Send back the signed contract and a 50% deposit, and you’re booked! The final payment is due 2 weeks before the session. If not received before the session, images will be held until payment is received in full.

What is included in the fee?

It seems like a lot for an hour or two, doesn’t it? Being transparent here, running a business is a 24/7 commitment. I love it, but it’s a lot of work behind the scenes that you don’t see. And I don’t really want you to, because I want to deliver you a fun, glowing, amazing experience that makes you smile when you think back on it and gaze at your images, not remembering the nitty-gritty boring businessy stuff I told you here.

But I like being open, so I want to explain why I- and my industry colleagues- charge the way we do. The fee for your session doesn’t just cover the little time we spend together in person, but also all the work I’ve done prior to ever meeting you in the form of education investments, equipment investments, website purchases and building, editing software, client relationship management software (it helps us both so much in sharing information), gallery hosting sites, practice, and portfolio building. Upon meeting you, we have client communications, client styling research and purchases, session preparation, location researching and site visits, travel time to and from sessions, the time spent shooting your session, and then the post-production of hand sorting, hand culling, and hand editing each and every photo (of which there could be several hundred). Finally, after much labor of love, the result is the provision of your gallery.

All of this is done for the express purpose of providing those stunningly perfect images you and I both love. It’s certainly not point-and-click by anyone with any old camera, and that’s what makes it so special, and yes, more expensive than shooting with your Iphone camera. The pricing reflects the time and energy this labor of love and expertise takes.

What if my child or pet isn’t cooperative?

That’s okay, chaos is welcome in my sessions, and honestly, it makes for some creative and surprising photos (which are some of my favorites)! We are not always going to get happy kids and perfect smiles, and that’s really okay, trust me. It won’t ruin all of your photos. We can take breaks, change our flow, bribe if needed (who wants ice cream?!). Kids and dogs love to move and explore, and I will follow their lead and do my best to capture the best moments. Truly, it shows authenticity and their personalities, and that’s what we’re aiming for right? (And maybe at least one smile).

ALWAYS bring the dog.

What if the weather isn’t cooperative?

The weather forecast is something that drives me nuts. This art often depends on the weather rather heavily, except in a studio’s controlled environment. So often the forecast predicts rain all day in our location, but there’s nothing but sunny skies and puffy clouds when we arrive.

If there’s some rain or the threat of snow or thunderstorms, I’m going to encourage you to stay on schedule. Lots of times, it changes or misses us, and if it is a little rainy or snowing or overcast, it adds a different and still beautiful element to your images.

I will encourage rescheduling if the forecast is calling for violent storms, torrential downpours, and blizzards (or the like). Therefore, depending on the timing of any bad weather and our availability, we can discuss a change in time of day, even location, or reschedule to a different date entirely. If we cannot find another date or time that works for us, I will refund your deposit.

Do you have other questions I haven’t answered? Shoot me a message!