Email by LeahAndMark.com

We get a lot of questions about our photos. How do you take them? Where is the light? What type of camera do you use?

Sadly, people don’t realize that when they ask us a photography question, they’re in for an excited stream of consciousness flow where we tell them everything we can in the span of 2 minutes.

We have a light here! And Here! And over there! We had to slow the shutter speed down to 1/30th and f/1.8 because man, the light in there sucked. Oh, and I had to use a tracking maneuver + the McNally kung fu grip because they kept moving AND it was dark in there!

So yeah. You could say we like making photos. A lot. Times Infinity.

But we can’t keep what we know to ourselves ’cause that’s no fun and we want our friends (you!) to have as much fun as we do.

So we’re starting Email by LeahAndMark.com – it’s our weekly email where we send out tips and tricks and other ideas. Basically – things that are rolling around in our heads that somehow help us make our photos – and that we would otherwise keep to ourselves for fear of embarrassment. I mean really – there’s a huge section in my head devoted just to DIY photography gear made from parts of things from IKEA. If you’ve ever thought that your gear was pretty low-tech and even ghetto – I’m pretty sure that I’ve made and USED something way, way worse – in public, and for an event. Trust me. Very few things stop me from trying/doing whatever I think it takes to get the photo I have in my head.

Those were just a few of the sessions we photographed during our 10 hour photo shoot last Tuesday while we were in Phoenix.

Even from this short video you can tell that our setup isn’t fancy. We have some $10 flashes from ebay (they pretty much have two settings – On and Off), an umbrella, and then models who’ll struggle through my not so great posing ideas until we get to something pretty awesome. Couple that with some know-how-to-use-my-camera stuff and you’re pretty set.

Of course – that’s all gear talk.

You probably don’t have ‘gear’. You might not even have a DSLR. It doesn’t matter – because according to the stats office, something like 98% of DSLR owners never get off the automatic setting.

Automatic is where mediocre lives and if you’re using it – it’s one of the reasons why your photos aren’t exciting.

And Leah and I are all about making photos that we find exciting.

Honestly? Our learning curve was pretty steep. It wasn’t until last year that we seriously picked up our cameras and ever since then we’ve been running. Hard. We know a lot and there’s still so much to learn. We’d like you to sign up for our weekly Email so we can give you a few of the things we’ve picked up, and throw some random ideas at you – because we’re ALL ABOUT IDEAS – and we’re even more all about fun ideas.

Our first email will go out this coming Monday, March 22nd. Although we’ll continue to post pictures and stories to our blog – our Email will tell you how we really made the photo, what we were thinking – but more importantly, some methods you can actually use – no matter what camera you have.

Sign up and be our friend!