What are your biggest struggles with photography?  Your biggest struggles as a photographer?

With so many people trying so hard to make it as photographers, Mel and I want to help you.  We’ve offered private one-on-one consulting for the past couple of years and have seen absolutely fantastic successes; however, we can only accept a limited number of people per year and we would really like to help more.

Leave a comment below with your biggest struggle with photography, your biggest struggle as a photographer, or even just questions that you’ve had on your mind.  We’ll be looking through the comments and answering some of those questions in  upcoming blog posts!

Seven plays the piano

Seven’s biggest struggle when playing the piano is that he currently can’t quite see the keys.

So let’s hear it!  What can we help you with?

When starting our wedding photography business, the biggest source of our success was our relationships with other wedding photographers.  There wasn’t much in the way of a photography community in Nashville, so we reached out to others in the area who were just starting their businesses and together we have built up a great community that has been thriving for years.

It was fairly straightforward to build community locally; but we also reached out to photographers in other areas.  Other states, even other countries.

How did we do that?  Two ways:  By going to national and international conventions to meet people in person.  But before we ever got on a plane, we began participating in online communities.

This. was. HUGE!

There are some fantastic forums out there; but many of them have thousands of members and established circles of friends, etc. and it can be quite daunting to break in if you aren’t already a part of them.

We helped launch and have been participating in a newer, smaller community called Photographers: Redefined since January and it has been fantastic! It’s still small enough that everybody has a chance to get to know new people and learn and contribute; but it’s growing at a great pace, so there’s plenty of new things going on all the time.

 

“I learn best from example, so this type of forum is a gold mine for me” –Karen Halbert


Tomorrow, we’re having an in person BBQ get together in Nashville, and nearly 60 people from the forum are coming to take relationships that have been established online over the past four months to more meaningful in-person relationships.  I’m sure we’ll soon see similar get togethers in other cities, and I’m excited to see all of the great things that will happen because of it.

Registration is free!  Register now and see what you’ve been missing–you’ll be glad you did!


Click here to register for the Photographers: Redefined forum

A portrait session in Antarctica?

Yes.

We’ve been holding off on posting these due to having been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. After a bit of back and forth negotiation, we’ve been allowed to share two of the images under the condition that we’re only allowed to use the couple’s first names, so as to help conceal their identity.

Getting to Antarctica isn’t easy. Nor is it inexpensive. Many of those ways involve being required to secure employment in various science related jobs. Luckily Angelina & Brad are rather well connected and we were able to skip past those methods and we sailed straight down on a boat they were able to borrow from friends. We brought Seven with us, and they also have SIX kids that all came along as well–that might sound crazy; but it was a very large boat and they played well together spending a lot of time entertaining themselves and watching humpback whales… and pieces of ice… and more humpback whales.

Many cruise ships only venture as far as the Antarctic Peninsula; but we were able to sail all the way into the southern Ross Sea.

Map of Antarctica

Ok, enough of that. Let’s get to some images!

There are some images that we’re REALLY excited about; but unfortunately we aren’t allowed to share everything we wanted. Having said that, this is one we were allowed to share because it’s one of our large landscape images where Angelina & Brad are in the distance so you can’t really identify them by their faces.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this shot. Such gorgeous views, we just had to get them out on that ice and get some imagery featuring the location. The lines and curves of the ice were so fantastic–and they look so beautiful together. The weather was very harsh at this point in time, so they had to put on large thick white parkas to keep from freezing.

Angelina & Brad - Antarctica Portrait Session

And here’s one more–the only closeup we were allowed to share. The wind really started blowing right before Mel got this image. The snow is obscuring their faces a bit–which is why we got this one approved–but I think it really adds to the artistic feel, anyway. And the emotion is just so powerful that it cuts through the snow obscured portions. Look at how they are looking into each other’s eyes. I don’t think any words I could write can say it any better than the passion and intensity you can just feel by looking at it.

Brad & Angelina - Portrait Session

So glad we were finally able to post these! Thank you for looking. To you and your family: Have a great April 1st!