Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I hope everyone had a chance to get out and participate in a little partying this weekend. It felt good to have a little fun while I prep for a busy wedding & portrait season. Wedding dates are getting closer as the weather slowly beings to warm up.

I have also been working on my basement studio where I like to play when the conditions prevent me from shooting outdoors. I plan to use the studio to shoot higher end studio portraiture for individual and family pictures. These include sports portraits, religious and holiday themed portraits and professional head shots. I am building of inventory of backgrounds and props and my studio lighting is all set, but I also shoot a lot of pictures on a plain background and put those pictures into a themed collage set.  I’ll post some pictures of the studio soon showing it in operation. I will be taking some dance and communion portraits in the near future.

It has been almost 7 years since I started shooting professionally and has been a tremendous experience. I often wonder if I hadn’t built this business 7 years ago, if I would do it all over again today. It all started with a simple passion to make the best pictures I could. Then there’s insurance, marketing, accounting, proper pricing, site design and the list goes on. As it turns out, it really is all good stuff and I am certainly glad I did what I did when I did.

Each year, I try to take some time to reflect back on older work I have done when I was a padawan learning the ways of running a business. I always made sure not to let anything cloud my vision of seeing and making the pictures I wanted. Much has changed in the last 7 years. My equipment arsenal has grown and my technique has sharpened, I now have assistants and second shooters working with me, but I need to be conscious of any changes in my style of shooting. It is not good to market old pictures if I am not taking those pictures anymore.

While looking back at some of these older images, it’s natural to wonder what I might have done differently if I found myself taking the same shot again today. While I love to experiment, it is sometimes refreshing when I look at a photo I took years ago and realize that I would not change a thing.

Cheers!