River Session & an Update on All Things Us

Square

You may have noticed, we’ve been working pretty hard on things around here. New sections of the website keep popping up, and new people keep joining the team. Everyone’s an Alumni Intern or regular Intern or +Photographer or Contributor or… etc. The fact is that I like family – and that’s what we’ve created to a large degree. Even Dani – the model in these photos – applied for our internship – and she got a chance to photograph a little at the end, after we were done shooting her. Like an initiation I suppose.

Even though we weren’t able to take her on for Season 5 – we hope she reapplies. In the meantime – we asked her to model for us this past weekend. So with her dad as driver and escort, watching on (Dani’s 16!) we asked her to lie down in the Chattahoochee river while we took a thousand photos.

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Last Thursday, +Raven led our Editing Workshop for the Interns. Now of course there is so much more to editing than you can really learn in just 2 hours – and as much as we sometimes would like to really teach editing to the Interns, the fact is that we’re really focused on the ‘photography’ part of the whole thing.

Let’s face it – editing is a lot easier when your photos are a lot better.

It should be obvious that one of the strengths of being a part of our ‘photographic family’ – is that we all have different skills, and we definitely have various areas of expertise. This was the 2nd time that I’ve had +Raven teach the editing workshop, and let’s just say that she’s a badass. I definitely learned a few things and I still didn’t catch everything she covered (luckily I get to attend ALL of the editing workshops we do.)

Of course – anyone who’s good at editing will tell you that at some point, you just have to sit down and screw up your photos for a few hours until you really figure out what to do, when, and how. It’s like all of those photoshop tutorial books and magazines that we all buy – and that we never crack open. Or if we do crack them open, we don’t actually DO the tutorials.

How do you get past that? My method was to just keep shooting and blogging. The more photos you make that you like, and the more blogging you do – then it stands to reason that you’ll just edit more. It’s why we require the interns to blog all of their shoots. Far too many hobbyists and amateurs don’t really examine the photos they’ve taken – if they ever really look at them at all.

For this river session, I was joined by Current Interns Jina and Kelley, and then Alumni Intern Niki came along as well. Jina and Kelley were with me on another shoot at this same location last week and we noticed a spot of sun shining through the threes at exactly 8am. That’s when we decided to come back a few days later.

If you’ve never done a group photoshoot like this, it can be a little tricky. You don’t have the luxury of spending 30 minutes or an hour with just one model. Sometimes you barely have 15 minutes to do your best and make brilliant photos. Yes – this is also just a time for the interns to practice and try things out – but you know, most of us want to hit a homerun EVERYTIME.

So even though there really isn’t any pressure – these sorts of shoots can kind of train you to look at your space, look at your model – and then deciding how you’re going to shoot them BEFORE you ever put your camera to your face. And the shortened timeline? – try shooting a wedding where all of a sudden your 45 minutes for wedding party and bride & groom portraits, disappears completely. Now you have to steal time AND make brilliant shots.

Like we say – it’s all practice – and it’s all a game of stump the photographer.

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Model, Photoshoot, Chattahoochee, Georgia, LeahAndMark.com

Atlanta, River, Chattahoochee, Photoshoot, Model, Photos, LeahAndMark.com

[ad-engine ad_group=”CARE”]

Atlanta. Portrait. Photographers. Chattahoochee. River. Models. Session. Photoshoot. LeahAndMark.com