Anne's Weblog

In the end, everything worked out. The workshop took place and I was there as well. The speaker was amazing, he was entertaining and you could say he knew his stuff. First we spoke about pricing, the pre-meeting with the bride and the groom and equipment you have to have. It was great to learn about all this from an expert, who’s shooting successfully. He’s not only a wedding photographer, but also does a lot of commercial stuff and nowadays a lot of teaching everywhere in Germany.

He gave a lot of posing tipps and explained all of them, why you do this and what’s the reason to do that. It was sooooo helpful and really amazing. When it was my turn to pose the model I once again found out how much work it is and that it isn’t as easy as it looks. Especially not, when you don’t have a professionell model, who knows how she looks good. But with the help of her and the teacher I could get some nice shots, at least I think so, which I want to show everyone.

So here are my very first photos with a bride. Hopefully not the last ones. Enjoy and have a great weekend!

I am subscribed to some photography blogs. The first blog I read was the Pioneer Woman, who is an amazing photographer (and cook), who shares willingly what she learned on her road to photography. It is incredible how much she does for others, not only does she share her secrets, but she’s give-away-contests, where you can win a DSLR for example, and she also created the Pioneer Woman Action Sets with help from Doug for Totally Rad Actions.

On of the contributors to her photography section is Jodi from MCP Actions.  She has amazing video tutorials to a lot of tipps and tricks in Photoshop. Every video I’ve watched so far was an incredible source of wisdom for me. She also creates actions for Photoshop to enhance your photos in an easy way. Among those are free actions as well, like her magic blog it board or touch of light/touch of darkness. Amazing!

I don’t remember how, but from there I got to Jessica Claire, who is a wedding photographer in California. She’s amazingly talented and shares so much of her life and her art. It’s fantastic. Somehow I found my favourite photographer at this point. Jasmine Star. Her blog is truly incredible. She’s in the business for just three years and she blogged all the time of her Ups and Downs, her personal life and her way to become a pro. She’s so giving! She’s not only organizing and hosting the OC SmugMug for free! She’s also writing helpful stuff on her blog. She blogged about her tipps and tricks, what kind of post-processing she uses, how she achieves the typical Jasmine-Star-look, how she uses natural light as well as off camera lightning, or about her marketing efforts etc. Even how she organizes her papers or how much she charges for a CD with negatives. You can follow her on Twitter and on Facebook.  I love the discussions on her fanpage, because they are so incredible helpful.

Why do I love Jasmine Star? Because of her giving. I think that’s a wonderful trait, because so many pros are afraid of giving away secrets and here is Jasmine, who’s giving away so much of her knowledge without fearing that she might get some competition, but realizing that this makes her special. She is building on her uniqueness, and (as Dane Sanders puts it) when you build on your uniqueness nobody can compete with you, because just you can be you.

One day Jasmine blogged about a boudoir shoot of hers and I was instantly smitten. I wanted to learn more, so I googled it and came up with the Boudoir Divas.  Marissa Bouchér and Kimberlee West are so incredible, it’s just not possible. Their motto is: Bring boudoir back and bring curvy back! They think every woman is beautiful and they want to help her (regardless of shape and size) to feel as beautiful as she is. The pictures they are taking are so cool! It’s amazing! I wish I could effort their Paris workshop, but at this point it is not possible for me. Hopefully in the future. They also created the Posebook with their favourite poses for all women. Incredible.

The Divas blogged about their favourite albums, which is KISS. One of the owners is Kevin Swan, who’s doing incredible video tutorials. And now we are coming to the title of this post. One of the videos is about using Adobe InDesign to create your albums. I watched it yesterday and it’s really amazing what you can do with it. I’ll think I’ll try the test version and then see if I like it. Not that I need to design albums at this point of my life, but maybe in the future?

These are just a few people that ahve caught me with their passion for photographer and her way of giving freely to aspiring photographers. It’s good to know that this kind of passion and love (both for the art and the people)  still exists.

The workshop isn’t tomorrow They changed the date to the 10th of September. So I have to wait some more time until I can shoot my first bride. Anyway, I am sure it will be cool then as well. Only two more weeks!