Recently I received an inquiry from someone who was eager to have professional photos taken but was having trouble getting her husband on board, which is something I hear all the time.  Generally but not always, it’s the woman who’s eager for portraits and her husband is pulling back the reigns because he doesn’t view the expenditure as more important than his annual Dish subscription.

I studied counseling for my masters and have been married for a while, so here’s some free marriage advice. You can thank me by scheduling your photo session (just kidding… sort of).

Only you know your marriage and you know what will and won’t convince your spouse, but often the less convinced spouse doesn’t intrinsically understand the value of photography and needs to have it communicated to them along with some reminders about their own splurges and a financial plan to make it work.

Discuss the Give and Take Dynamic in Your Marriage

My husband has a bit of a game addiction.  He loves to buy games.  He doesn’t play all of them so they’re more like a collection that he looks at and sorts through and opens and then puts back.  Some of them get played but most don’t.  He spends lots and lots of money on games.  His parents give him money for his birthday and Christmas and he spends it two or three times.

I was complaining about this once to my sister and she said, “How much does a lens cost?”  I told her the good ones start around $1,000 used and she almost shouted at me, “Let the man buy his games!”  Point taken.

They make him happy and it’s more or less his only vice.  He doesn’t play golf or eat fondue or care what kind of car he drives.  But I buy expensive lenses and require a biannual trip to Florida.

So this may be a good time to open to dialog about the things you each do that the other one doesn’t understand, but you tolerate because you love each other.

Have a financial game plan

This piggy backs on the previous point, but if your husband gets so much money for something in your budget or unspoken fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants agreement, then it’s reasonable to request the same for something important to you.  If you’re overspending and he’s not, then it’s a good time to think about prioritizing those things that are really important to you.  So let’s say photos make you happier than anything else and you want them to be done well and you want the service experience of going to a professional.  Let’s say your husband doesn’t want you to spend the money.  Are you willing to give up anything to make the photos happen?  For example, eating out or your 24th pair of shoes or the new inflatable Santa in your front yard.  If there’s a plan for how it’s going to work, he’s much more likely to be on board.

Verbally communicate what portraits mean to you

And finally, you may need to verbally communicate why it’s important to you (along with a respectful discussion of the give and take in your own relationship, and your plan of how you’re going to make it work financially).  Here are what some people have said about what the value of photography means to them.

We just had a client request a canvas from a picture of her and her husband taken 12 years ago. Her husband recently passed away and that was the only pic they had because they didn’t have them taken often. Even though I’m not happy with how I look, my husband and I had our portraits done recently. I figure I look better now than what I will look in the future when I will like the picture more. ~ Christine

Because parents are always the ones taking the pictures so they never get to be in the pictures. Their kids will want to see pictures of them with their parents when they grow up. ~ Julie

I’m pretty frugal and I justify it by including it in Christmas expenses. I’d rather have updated family pictures than nearly anything else. I feel the same way about other holidays, too. The most important thing on Mother’s Day for me is getting a picture of me with the kids, for our anniversary getting an updated picture of Josh and I, etc. ~ Kim

How this works for us

Obviously my husband and I don’t have friction about photography, but I do have to convince him to take vacations to Florida and this is how it works for us.

Step 1: Give and Take

Every year my husband goes to GenCon because he’s a geek.  When I want to go to Florida I remind him of this.  He gets to go to GenCon by himself, I get to go to Florida with our family (including him – why is this a discussion you ask?  Because his favorite place in the world is the chair in our living room).

Step 2: Financial Plan

I save for two years to go to Florida and I show him where the money is coming from, where we’re cutting corners, and how I’m going to make it happen.  It’s hard to argue with that kind of logic.  If your husband isn’t a logic junky, this might be trickier.

Step 3: Explain what it means to me

I can wax philosophic about vacations all day.  I value them more than life.  I remind him also that I’m not asking to move away from Rochester, just to defrost every so often and swim in WARM WATER.  It’s a thing!

And magically, we go to Florida and he’s mostly happy about it.  Do you see my hot, pregnant, happy self?

What do you think?

I would love to expand this post – what would you like to add or what kind of discussions have you had with your spouse on this topic?  Leave a comment below!

The goal of clothing in a session is not just to make you look and feel beautiful, but to direct our attention to your eyes. All of the instructions below come back to that concept. In a great portrait your eye knows the path to the subject and does not have to do any work to find it.

Three things to avoid

Before we dive into coordinating colors for groups, here are a few things your eyes find distracting:

1. Shirts with designs, pictures or words.
2. The color white because your eyes finds bright things
3. Black because it doesn’t show shadows well, which flattens and can make you look wider than you really are

There are a couple of different approaches you can take to choosing coordinating clothing for your session. These approaches are listed in order of ease.

Easy: Choose two or three colors and go with it! (good for large groups)

This works really well in large groups where only so much coordinating can really happen. Before this photo session, Erin told me she wasn’t going to worry about clothing. I quickly emailed her back and said “you really can just pick two colors, it can be easy!” Their clothing came together beautifully with a simple selection of white, black and gray.

With large groups it may be easiest to pick colors everyone has – such as white, black, grey or blue.  Even though white and black aren’t my personal favorites for reasons mentioned above, everyone owns them and in a pinch they can be a life saver.  Neutral colors tend to coordinate on their own as well, so picking a color like gray or khaki can also be an easy way to coordinate.

Some families don’t even need to coordinate, since they gravitate toward neutral colors anyway. Believe it or not, Andy and Betsy just happened to be wearing these shirts against their neutral couch and neutral walls. It really brings your focus to their faces, which is what we want!

Medium: Buy (or choose) clothes that are color matched

Each year Althea buys clothes that are exactly the same color. She uses accent colors for variety and the looks is one that’s cohesive and really pops.

I love in this image how her daughters skirt is similar to her scarf and how she integrated blue and purple together.

She has had issues with shirts arriving on time or with picking a color scheme only to find they don’t make men’s shirts in mustard yellow and such things, but for a smaller family if you can order something from the same company, this might save you time and energy.  Or if you like the convenience of online ordering and want to take the consignment route, you can also check out Swap.com or ThredUp.

Other families have matching clothes for their kids and that can be a really nice look as well.

Hard: Choose a multi-colored shirt you like and match family members accordingly

In this image, Beth chose the plaid shirt first, and then chose everyone else’s clothing to match the plaid. The look is subtle enough that you don’t even really notice that they’re color coordinated, which is why I love this image so much. I would say though that this is really hard to do.

More than one family has told me that they haven’t had a session yet because they were having issues picking out outfits.  Don’t let that stop you!  It really can be simple and still give you the cohesive, professional photo look.

A very close friend of mine requested this image early on when I had no idea what I was doing. We actually suspended the baby in the air over a beanbag and I’m really ashamed to say that the baby actually fell out. Fortunately he wasn’t hurt, but I had no idea that wasn’t a normal part of newborn sessions.

A few years and a lot of education later, I learned that newborn images are not quite what they seem.  When babies are suspended from something or placed on top of an item they could potentially fall off of, it should be a composite 100% of the time.

In the image below the baby appears to be suspended from the dad’s hands.

Not only would that be extremely uncomfortable for dad, but it would leave the baby without support on either side – sort of like a baby on a balance beam.

Instead, it’s a bit of an optical trick. The baby is laid on a black piece of fleece on top of a large bean bag and posed accordingly.

In other images, the baby’s head may not rest well on their hands so they need more support. It’s important to not plan on having their head fall to one side or the other, so in this type of situation it’s better to keep the baby comfortable and edit the hand out later.

There are many beginning, and even intermediate photographers who are not aware of these important safety measures. As you choose your newborn photographer, be sure to keep the safety of your baby in mind.

To learn more about newborn sessions, download the newborn portrait guide here.

The good news is that it usually doesn’t matter.  For many images, even if you want a print size with a more square shape, nothing important gets cropped out.

The bad news is that sometimes it really matters a lot, such as in this image.

The image looks great in its original aspect ratio of 1:5, but as you get more square the image looks worse and worse. There are a few things you can do if you have an image you’d like to enlarge that wants to be a rectangle. The first option is to go frameless. There are a wide variety of products available on the market that you can hang directly on your wall without a frame such as canvases and float wraps. Professional labs have a huge variety of sizes, including 8×12, which has a 1.5 aspect ratio.

Alternatively, you can order non standard print sizes through professional labs and then either purchase a custom frame through a framing company or order that same size online.

Usually it doesn’t matter, but is something to be aware of for those images that dislike being cropped.

Beautiful light depends on the quality and direction of the light.  Whether it’s “natural” or not is completely irrelevant.  The sun can create both beautiful and hideous light.  Flashes can also create both.  What matters is the size of the light source and its placement in relation to the subject.   This post is just about placement.

A quick trick to tell if your lighting is good is whether you can see the color of your subject’s eyes.  If so, then you’ve got the correct angle.

If not, then you don’t.

In this image, Averie has her head at a 45 degree angle to the light source, but Abbie doesn’t.  It’s a cute image anyway, but technically it would be much improved if the light had been closer to me.

So now that you know what you’re looking for (directional light), we’ll discuss the two really awful types of lighting that are the bottom of the barrel.  Anything is better than these two things.

1.  Direct flash.  Aside from florescent lighting, direct flash is the most evil and terrible type of lighting ever in the history of the universe.  This is not to be confused with fill flash, but that’s a different subject.  Direct flash is when the primary light on your subject comes directly from the camera, and it’s evil because it is ugly and not coming in from the correct angle.  Your flash should pretty much never be pointed at a person.

Our eyes are not used to seeing light from from where we’re standing and so it’s not attractive.  No shadows on the face, a harsh shadow under the chin, and a dark background are all telltale signs of direct flash.  Direct flash can also cause red eye (whereas every other type of lighting does not).

2.  Bright sun at noon.  Lighting that is overhead or close to directly overhead creates terrible shadows over the eyes and is basically just ugly, again because it’s not from the correct direction.   Avoid taking images out in the sun at lunch time!

I still love this image, but you can see the harsh lighting on the baby.  There are dark shadows on his face and on mom.

Beautiful light comes in at an angle.  There are many different angles you can use and there are books written on the subject, but a quick and fail safe rule of thumb is about 45 degrees above the ground, and about 30 degrees to the side of the photographer.  Think school pictures – where are the umbrellas?  If the school picture day analogy doesn’t work for you, here are some examples.

If you’re inside…

1.  Use window light.  Window light can be great for this since your ceiling will force the light to enter at the correct angle.  All you have to do is position your subject in relation to it.  The problem with this is that window light is notably dim.

This image was taken just with window light.  I love the light on Eli’s little chubby face!  Admittedly, this photo would have looked a lot worse without my really nice camera….

2. Buy a bounce flash and then throw the light behind you.  Bounce flashes can be a little pricey ($150 and up), but the results are oh so worth it.

This is the same day and time as the direct flash image.  You’ll notice that there are no harsh shadows, everything in the image is evenly lit and there are gentle shadows on the face that give shape to Eli’s pinchable cheeks.

If you’re outside…

1.  Go under something like a bridge or a pavilion.  This has the same effect as a roof indoors.

Corbett’s Glen has remarkable lighting by the tunnel.

2.  Plan to be outside at sunset or sunrise because the sun is – you guessed it, at an angle.  I couldn’t find any pictures like this… I guess I’m usually sleeping then, or putting kids to bed, or cooking dinner or doing the dishes or something.

You will take better pictures by focusing on the direction of your light source.  Or if all else fails (or even if it doesn’t) hire a photographer who uses off camera lighting!  People who label themselves as “natural light photographers” are a little like a chef who says he only cooks with an omelet pan.  Natural light works sometimes and is beautiful sometimes, but it’s limiting.

To delve into this subject, check out Neil van Niekerk’s book, “Direction and Quality of Light.”  Creative title for sure, but he is a master of all things flash.

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