March 20th Wrap-Up

First off, Stacey and I would like to thank everyone for showing up. This has been the second month in a row where we have had our best turnout yet! It is great to see a core group of people coming on a regular basis, along with new people coming to check out the meeting for the first time.


For this month of March we went over the following topics:

*Tom Ekblad - Spotlight Studio
*Pictage's order by text function
*Pictage's new 2-for-1 automation promotion
*Pictage's new event owner releases
*"The Wedding Report"
*Roundtable discussion on what parts of a wedding give you trouble.

The majority of the roundtable discussion focused on formals, and the following ideas were tossed around:

#1) How do you prevent yourself from getting bogged down/off-track/and losing momentum when doing formals?

Some of the ideas to help in this area where to be very prepared, have a list of the shots you need to get, and start posing your groups from bride and groom and then adding people or vice versa so you remove people from the frame and end up with just the B/G as the last shot

#2) What do I do if I find myself consistently shooting more formals than I (yes the key word is I) want to?

Some of the ideas:
Set a time limit per wedding/package on formals
Put a limit on the number of groupings per wedding/package
Put a time value per grouping and explain to the couple how time can really add up
Cut down on the possibilities you give your couple (don't fill their head with ideas).

#3) Any suggestions on using fill flash for outdoor formals?

An idea that was brought up is to use a flash lower than the camera to help fill in the shadows set on manual at 1/16 power.


Congratulations to Paul Fletcher for winning the $100 in Pictage credit, and the reward of doing next month's Studio Spotlight. Stacey and I hope you are all doing well and we look forward to next month's meeting.


In closing, we would like to thank everyone for helping making this group a fun and informative evening every month. One thing to keep in mind is that we all come to these meetings with a different background, style, experience level, etc. With those diverse backgrounds, there are bound to be different approaches that work for everyone. My goal is that we all can learn from one another's experiences, be open to new ideas, and above all be patient and willing to share! I want this to be a place where we all can foster new relationships and feel comfortable in giving and asking for advice. I know that we are all very passionate about photography, and hopefully we all can remember that there is more than one way of doing things.


Take care,

- Jason and Stacey Thon