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| Do You Doodle Do? |
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A place for the different, the unique, the tasteful and the extraordinary in wedding photography, lets say it simply, welcome to Don't Box Us In.
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Agnes Lopez - Jacksonville, Florida |
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Agnes Lopez - Jacksonville, Florida www.agneslopez.com (weddings) news.agneslopez.com (blog) www.posewell.com (models, actors, commercial) 
How do you keep yourself motivated & your photography fresh?
I try to stay creative by doing shoots that aren’t wedding-related. During the week I focus more on my commercial photography and work with models, actors, and do shoots for corporations. You can see my commercial and fashion work at www.posewell.com. This allows me to shoot in a different style from weddings, use different lighting techniques, and work with professionals from other creative fields.
What (or who) has inspired, & continues to inspire, your work?
I draw inspiration from things like Wong Kar-Wai’s films, dwell Magazine, and designers like Narciso Rodriguez, Requiem, and Victor & Rolf. I get excited to put a shoot concept together, from the location and styling down to the makeup and hair. Seeing a finished shoot that is exactly how I imagined it is an awesome feeling and makes me even more excited about the next one. I want to have my pictures evoke real emotion and tell a story, so I tailor my shoots and locations to my clients and their story. I photographed a couple in December who had met on a long layover in an airport in Ohio. Once I heard their story I knew I had the perfect place to take them. 
In this particular case I had been eyeing an airplane graveyard that was in the middle of nowhere and finally found the perfect couple to photograph in that location. What do you say or do to put your clients at ease in front of the camera?
I photograph all different types of people, from CEOs and poets to models and brides, so I just try to keep everything simple and treat them all the same. When clients try to get into a pose I ask them if that pose is something they would do naturally. If it isn’t I get them to move to something more comfortable and work from there. My style of shooting weddings is unobtrusive and the greatest compliment a couple can give me is that they didn’t realize I was even there for most of the wedding. For portraits of the couple, again I keep it simple and make it easy by directing them to do things that are natural. Kissing. Walking. Looking at each other. Laughing. Show us your favorite image that you've shot so far this year & tell us what it is about this image that makes it special to you.
It’s definitely the bridal I did with Vy. 
Vy’s dress was handmade by her mother, who is an extremely talented dressmaker. My goal was to really showcase the dress without taking the attention away from the bride and I think I accomplished that in this shot. What advice do you have for other photographers that are starting out?
Always try to outdo your best shot from before. Don’t get complacent. Always wait for the shot and don’t try to fix it in Photoshop. Experiment with your style and try new things like different lighting techniques. Zack Arias’ OneLight Workshop is a great opportunity to learn real techniques for lighting in fast-paced situations. Tell us one thing your client should know about you. Tell us one thing we should know about you.
I am very competitive with myself. I am constantly trying to out do my most recent work. I always keep an eye out for new and interesting locations and I am always developing new ideas for shoots. I am not a morning person. 
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Something a little different: Paul Freeman |
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For those of you in the middle of a busy wedding season and anyone else that needs a break from all things related to photography we thought we'd give you all a head's up about a great new artist, Paul Freeman. 
Freeman is an incredibly talented singer & song-writer who started writing at the age of 14 and found his first guitar in a dumpster! He has always had a passion & dediation to music and that all came to fruition when he was signed by Clive Davies & Arista Records last year and he recently released his amazing debut single, You & I, which is now available on i-Tunes.
 Freeman will be performing shows in the US - for performance dates or to hear his music visit his website or myspace page. For those of you with some free time on your hands and enjoy live music, trust us when we say, Freeman sounds even better live and you will NOT be disappointedi! Current show listings are as follows: 
Check out Paul & his amusing personality and music:
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Sarah Q's Website Sarah Q's Blog Tell us a little about you ...
Hi! I'm Sarah Q! I'm a wedding and portrait photographer based in Austin, Texas. I started as a newspaper photographer almost ten years ago in the small town where I grew up. Two years ago, when my son Kai was born, I decided to try out weddings. Midway through the very first wedding, I knew I had found the job for me! I love love love shooting weddings - the fun, the people, the chaos, the happiness - I really can't imagine going back to a "regular" job now! 
How do you keep yourself motivated & your photography fresh?
My slogan is : Sarah Q {Photography for Happy People} because I LOVE working with happy, fun-loving couples and families. When I'm around the right people, it's easy to stay motivated and creative. I've always fed off the energy of the people around me so I've learned to only work with people I really like. The few times I've worked with negative, unhappy clients, it's been really hard to stay inspired. When I'm around fun people, though, my head starts spinning with ideas! Just a few weeks ago, I woke up with a terrible headache and had no desire to shoot anything. I had an engagement session that day, though, so I headed up to the studio. As soon as the couple walked in, I knew it was going to be a good session. They were so sweet, so obviously in love and had so much energy - we ended up shooting for almost three hours and I got some of my favorite engagement shots ever! My goal for next year is to ONLY work with clients that inspire me like they did.
Images from the session: 
What (or who) has inspired, & continues to inspire, your work?
I'm inspired by so many people! More than anyone else, my family inspires me every single day. Roxy, my little girl, is three years old and is the smartest, most hilarious toddler you'll ever meet. She's artistic and independent and EXACLTY like me. Being a good role model for her has become one of my biggest goals. Kai, my baby boy, is two and is the sweeeeeetest boy you'll ever meet. He is 100% mama's boy and is always around when I get stressed out and need someone to cuddle with. And Henry is my amazing, wonderful, incredibly supportive hubby. Without them, I never could have started a business from scratch and built it up to where it is today.
I'm also inspired by photographers (duh!) and I can't even count how many hours I've spent drooling over other photographer's blogs in the past two years. Some of the people I'm always amazed by are :
Kristy, from Wreckless Photography
Leah from Lily Blue, who really needs a blog so I can stalk it! Gabe from Perspective Eye Whitebox Weddings and Kids Jinky, the best kid's photog of all time! The peeps over at Still Motion are AMAZING Kelly Moore's amaaazing And of course, MY wedding photographers and wanna-be-BFFs, Bobbi and Mike Show us your favorite image that you've shot so far this year & tell us what it is about this image that makes it special to you.
Oh my gosh, that's waaaaaaay too hard. I have the hardest time picking favorites! This one sticks out in my mind as a fave, though ...
 I just love everything about this photo. I love that Austin is the kind of city that has happy, sweet grafitti :) and I love how much fun Roxy was having that day just dancing and spinning and playing in front of it. She usually ignores me when I try to take pictures of her, but that day she was all for it. I still need to order a big huge canvas of this ... hmmm ... I need more wall space!
What advice do you have for other photographers that are full-time mums?
Schedule at least one family day every week and NEVER EVER EVER schedule any shoots, meetings or anything else on that day. When I first started, I was working NON-STOP. Every day I had something going on. My hubby was working M-F and I was swamped on the weekends, so we were never spending any time together. One day I decided enough was enough. Sunday was going to be family day. I put it on the calendar and started telling people I was already busy on Sundays. I was surprised at how easy it was to get everything done during the week and Sundays fast became my favorite day of the week. Another tip, especially for those who work from home, is to create "office hours" - set times when you're available and set times when you're not. Work all you can during those "office hours" and when you're off, be OFF. Shut the computer down, quit checking your email and put away the cell phone. Try to keep home and work as separate as you can!
If there was one person you could photograph, living or dead, who would it be and why?
You know, if you had asked me this last week, my answer would have been totally different. I had an uncle pass away this week and I've spent a lot of time the last few days wishing I had made time for a photo shoot of him and my aunt before he died. I photograph couples all the time and I'm kicking myself for not capturing more of the couples in my very own family. I would love to have photographed my grandparents together before my grandpa died, too. Even when it's a grandparent, life seems way too short sometimes. :(
What has been your most effective marketing technique or sales technique this year?
You know, really, it's been the simplest thing ... engagement sessions! I include an engagement session in all my wedding photography packages and make sure to get some awesome, fun, creative shots for the couple to display at their wedding. I also encourage my clients to pull the photos from my blog for their MySpace or Facebook pages or wedding websites. All my blog photos have my web address on them, so I get tons of web hits every time someone posts them up. Another thing I do is make 4x6 photo cards for every wedding guest. On every card is a photo from the client's engagement session and instructions for the guest on how to get into their galleries to see the photos. When I pass them out at weddings, people LOVE them! Recently I've started printing up multiple versions of the cards with a few different photos. It's fun to watch people pass them around to ooh-and-aaah over the different pictures. Just a few weeks ago, when I passed the cards out, I had a couple come up to me and book their own engagement session on the spot! Gotta love that :)
If you were planning on having a photo-shoot, who would you want to photograph your portrait & why?
I reaaaaally want Kristy from Wreckless Photography to do portraits of my and my hubby. Her couples work is so so so so gorgeous. Kristy and I have been friends for years now, so I'm gonna convince her to come visit me down in Austin one of these days :) 
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Daniel Usenko Photography - Seattle, Washington |
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Daniel Usenko's Website Daniel Usenko's Blog Tell us a little about yourself
I have started shooting on film about five years ago, when I bought my first SLR camera. Having discovered the beauty of photography, I have slowly grown into a well-informed amateur. At the time, I was shooting wedding videos professionally, but struggling with the business, until finally I had to close it down. Because I was enjoying photography so much and already had so much knowledge about weddings, I decided to give wedding photography a shot; in January of 2006 I shot my first wedding. Now, I love to shoot beautiful weddings, but also greatly enjoy artistic, dark portrait sessions. I am a 23 year old photographer based out of Seattle, Washington. 
How do you keep yourself motivated & your photography fresh?
Tough question. Honestly, often I am not motivated at all—I am bored. I think this is the reality of many artists, and it is ok to admit it. Few of us would be shooting weddings for fun if we did not need an income.
However, I do love what I do—I love photography. To stay motivated, I do my best to ignore the fact that photography is my job. When I shoot or retouch, I do my best to distance myself from the work, and try to focus on the art, on the people, on the beauty.
One of the things that helps in keeping my photography fresh is looking at the wonderful art of other photographers. Fascinated by the beauty, I become motivated to achieve the same results. Positive feedback from my clients also helps, especially from those who are absolutely amazed by their wedding photographs.
What (or who) has inspired, & continues to inspire, your work?
Music inspires me. I don’t understand how sound can inspire me to produce an image but somehow it does. Listening to bands like Brand New and Drusjki have inspired me to produce much of the best art. I absolutely love this music, listening to the songs hundreds of times; listening to it when I am depressed and down, or when I am optimistic and happy.
Beautiful people inspire me. I really don’t know how to explain it, but shooting beautiful people is just intrinsically inspirational. There’s not much more than I can say about this really—I simply enjoy taking photographs of good looking people.
Light inspires me. Whenever the lighting is bad during a wedding, I struggle so much with being uninspired, even if the people are super nice and everything is really beautiful. On the other hand, when the lighting is favorable, taking pictures of the wedding is just so easy, so enjoyable. Even though none of my clients really care, sometimes I am so excited about the light, that I can’t help myself, telling the bride “The lighting is so great, the photographs are turning out amazing”.
We noticed on your blog that you offer an "art" gallery. Can you tell us what this is and show us a couple of before and after examples?
Most people want to be a part of a fairy tale; that is what the “art” gallery suppose to help with. Throughout the day, some images look a little more abstract/unusual than others; I take those and carefully mix them with Jesh de Rox’s textures (finearttextures.com). The results are amazing and the brides love being in a wonderland. Of course, sometimes the textures may be forced upon the image, and it’s important to guard against it; the texture should be natural to the image, making it look better, not worse than the original. That’s why it’s important to keep the end product in mind when shooting throughout the day.
The following are a couple of my favorite before/after images, that took an average of 1 hour of work.
How important is post-processing in your final images?
I learned shooting with film, and I absolutely love shooting with Fuji Reala 100. Actually, two weeks ago I was looking through my old photographs and got so nostalgic about photographs captured on film. I decided—I should shoot on film more (for myself, not weddings). What I love about film is that it requires no post-processing on my part at all, and the images come out better than I would ever get from out-of-the-camera in a digital.
With digital, I believe the post-processing is absolutely necessary—the images are just dull right out of the camera. Curves (for those who know photoshop) is my most often used tool for correction; sometimes I have up to ten curves adjustment layers on a complicated edit.
Of course, having been taught on film, I firmly believe that capturing the image is more important than the post-process, and no post-processing can save a bad photograph. However, I do believe that a digital photograph with no post-processing simply is not complete.
Tell us one way you keep your business organized.
Artists and organization simply don’t go together. They would never be married. Luckily, I have studies math and philosophy in college (yes, I know, these are the last things a typical photographer studies). My “other” half is very logical and analytical, and therefore organization comes easier to me than it would to other photographers. The formula is easy really—keep everything labeled, and have lots and lots of to-do lists.
If you were planning on having a photo-shoot, who would you want to photograph your portrait & why?
There’s this guy I read about, Jesus from Nazareth (Israel). I think he’d be pretty good, especially since people claim he made light (actually I think he also said that he is light himself, which is kind of cool if you think about it, because then Jesus would be exposing your images directly). Like I said before, I really love light, and I believe it is the most important aspect of photography. If he made light, or is light, or both, it seems like my photographs could turn out better than anyone else’s. Think about it—don’t you hate it when the dynamic range or the white balance, or whatever else is not working out right? Well what if it could be perfect—just think about what beautiful image that could be.
I mean, there are of course many photographers that I admire, but it seems like getting someone real vintage and original like that would be far better than anyone else. I heard people tell me that Jesus is still alive, so I hope that this wish comes true one day. 
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