...from my first shot at a Beloved session of my own

I’ve promised for a long time that I’m going to talk about Beloved. I mentioned it last week in this post about using the Beloved concept for the first time in a family session and it was very successful.

I discovered Beloved by way of The Rock n Roll Bride blog when blogger Kat and her husband Gareth had a Beloved session here in England with a photographer named Marianne Taylor. I immediately sought Marianne out online, dropped my jaw at her work and then booked her for our own Beloved session. We had to wait about 4 months for that date to roll around and I was pretty much sick with excitement from that point on. I kept looking at that session with Kat & Gareth and wanting to know how she got such intimate shots.

Enter ‘Beloved’.

So I googled this word ‘Beloved’ and found that it is being known as a new genre in photography. The brain child of Jesh de Rox, Beloved is about capturing the essence of a couple who have been married for some time. As we were told at the beginning of our session, “this is not a photo shoot.” It was about us having an experience together and her being in the background capturing those moments. Those real moments which weren’t staged or forced. Every laugh was real, every smile genuine. But more on our own experience later…so yeah, Beloved is about inviting couples into an experience and being there to capture that experience. What they end up with is a snapshot of their relationship in its truest, deepest sense with no strings attached. And if they choose to display those images to continue seeing, they won’t just be pictures. They will be memories.

One of my favorite shots from our own Beloved session with Marianne Taylor.

When I found Jesh de Rox, the photographer who has birthed this concept, I listened to a speech he gave in Las Vegas in 2010 about Beloved. You can find it here on the bottom right of this page - just click play. It’s very long and a bit frustrating that you can’t see it as he’s speaking, but it was a good introduction to his mind and how he approaches Beloved. I still felt in the dark about Beloved after that – I didn’t really get it – but when he tweeted that he would be doing a webcast in the middle of the night UK time, I joined in. It was about 1am. Jesh is a very soft spoken and I think he’s brilliant but I have found it difficult to stay connected when he’s speaking. He kind of takes a really long time to say what he wants to say, but if you take him as he is, knowing that he is completely unique, you just might come away with something you didn’t have before. So after ‘meeting’ Jesh, I could understand where Beloved was coming from but as far as how to actually attain it? No clue.

After that webcast, there was a chance to buy his Beloved Field Guide at a discounted price. There was very little information about it online and I knew I couldn’t be the only one feeling completely in the dark so I bought it knowing that at least, I would be able to photograph it and do a review for people wondering what it was. At best, it could change my life. So when it came and I read through the cards, many of them made me laugh. I thought “there is no way I’m going to say that to another human being!” Things about feeling the other person’s love energies and filling yourself up with love. {I’m paraphrasing…I don’t remember if that’s exactly what it said}. Some of them were really fun to invite couples into an action scenario and I felt comfortable with those.

So with the new field guide under my arm, I invited my friends Marcus & Elbrie to be my first Beloved experiment as part of the filming for my wedding commercial. It was really fun and they’re great on camera. I did all of the fun invites & none of the soppy ones. So needless to say, the photos are fun & lively but not particularly deep or emotional. I was frustrated and just didn’t foresee how I’d be able to get the emotion I saw in that first session with Kat & Gareth. So I put down the field guide and decided that I wouldn’t ‘get it’ until I experienced it for myself. And then I began the months long wait for our session with Marianne.

It

felt

like

forever.

Two weeks ago, Steven and I dropped the three kids off at babysitters and headed to a park near London. We had a great time in the car laughing and singing our favorite songs and talking about our relationship. We picked Marianne up at her house just around the corner and spent over an hour in the park having the most wonderful time I think we’ve had together in years. To my amusement {and probably fate}, Marianne started by turning us towards each other and asking us to {yup, you guessed it} “feel the ground beneath our feet, feel each other’s beingness” and so on. And you know what?! I didn’t think there was anything weird about that! When I read it in the field guide, you’ll remember, I was like “nu uh..no way am I gonna get that soppy with people” but it clicked in that moment:

This isn’t about me. This is about them.

I dunno, maybe Marianne did feel weird the first few times she said these very deep things to total strangers, but in that moment, I found myself following her gentle direction as she did the opposite of what most photographers do: she turned my attention toward my husband, my partner, my mate in life. And it started to become clearer: this was not a photo shoot. She just happened to be there.

Within a few short moments, I didn’t even hear the click of her shutter. After our time together, we floated home and started the two week wait to see our images. We just saw them last night and Marianne has just blogged them today. We watched the gallery over and over and both shared tears.

Now, I really do believe that Beloved doesn’t just have to be for marries couples. If you grasp the concept that this is about photographing the moments that result from inviting anyone with a deep, connected, beloved relationship {mom/son, dad/daughter, husband/wife} then you can draw those real reactions -those genuine emotional responses- out of just about anyone. I’m really excited about continuing my exploration into Beloved and how it may help shape me into the photographer I’m going to be.

{Further Reading}

My review of the Beloved Field Guide {edited with my new perspective}

What I learned from my own Beloved session {by Brooke Snow}

My Beloved Field Guide from Jesh de Rox came recently and I’ve been asked for a review so here goes. The Beloved Field Guide is a box of 30 fine art prints with text on the back. The first few give an overview of Jesh’s vision for the Beloved ‘movement’. The rest of the cards have ideas for your couples sessions. They’re experiential invitations you can extend to a couple to put them in a moment of true emotion and personal exploration for you to photograph. This is not a posing guide, it’s a moments guide. But unless you’re comfortable saying things like “now close your eyes and feel the aura of the trees” (not a direct quote, but you get the idea) then half of these won’t be applicable for you. And some of them are really concrete darn good ideas to get your couple playing, jumping, moving, laughing and I’m looking forward to using them.

Note 6 months after first writing this review: Now that my husband and I have actually experienced our own Beloved session, I have to say that I was a bit adventurous in my assumption that the more intimate invites outlined in the guide won’t be for everyone. I have now opened my mind to the idea of actually going deep enough with a couple to ask them to try some of these things. I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong…and now that I’ve experienced it first hand, I can say that all 30 cards are extremely valuable *gush*

Do I think it’s worth nearly $400? Not really. I’m known for giving glowing reviews for high priced products for photographers, but I really think this isn’t worth it if you don’t already have a very good idea what Beloved is all about. Of course, we’re not just talking price, we’re talking value. If this is a product that sets you on your way to being a successful Beloved photographer, then it was worth it. If you buy it because you’re curious and it sits in a drawer, it won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. Only YOU can make it worth $400.

All of the shots I wanted to display are here on the Glacier Cake blog. But I’ll share a few here for educational purposes :)

Technical details:

• Cameras: Canons 7D and 5D mk II
• Lenses: On the 5D, I had the 24-105 L series 4.0. I chose to put it on the full frame camera because I wanted to get the most out of any tight spots I might find myself in. Also, with the max aperture being 4.0, I wanted the high ISO capabilities of the 5D incase I needed to fall back on that. On the 7D, I had the 70-200mm f/2.8 IS lens which I hire for weddings. It costs me about £80 to hire it for a weekend. And a week for my arms to recover! It’s a very heavy lens but OH SO worth it. I put this on the cropped sensor camera because I wanted to get the most zoom out of it and on a cropped sensor camera like the 7D, 200mm goes a lot further than it would have on the full frame. The detail shots below (flowers, jewelry, etc) were taken wide open with a 50mm f/1.4.
• Flash: I never used it, but I had my Speedlite (430 ex) on the 5D/24-105 combination. Again, because of the 4.0, I wanted to have the flash to fall back on. But with the beautiful light in the marquee, it wasn’t needed.
• Memory cards: I shot 1,000 photos and took up under 16gigs which means I never changed my memory cards.
• Format: I shot in RAW, but the smaller version. Still large enough for large format printing, but this rarely ever happens with wedding photos, so I kept my mb’s down with a smaller RAW format.
• Editing: the B&Ws were edited with my favorite B&W Lightroom presets: the One Willow B&W collection. The color shots were done in manually in LR without any presets.
• Workflow: From the 1,000 shots I sorted them down to 400 keepers. I did almost all of my editing in Lightroom and they required very little editing at all. In total from start to finish (finish being the online preview gallery) editing took 8 hours. This doesn’t include creating the album which will take a further few hours.

See all of the photos HERE

Edited with MCP Actions Fusion Set

Edited with MCP Actions’ Fusion set for Photoshop

Following up from this post from last week called How to build your photography portfolio, I had a question from a reader about how aspiring wedding photographers should build their ‘folios. And it’s a great question because that’s a whole ‘nuther can of worms.

I did my first wedding for free. I knew the couple, we were comfortable with each other, and I was able to be free to experiment and learn on the job. If you don’t feel that you yet have your bearings to do a wedding solo, find a photographer who will hire you as a second shooter. You will get paid a bit and have an ‘in’ to the world of wedding photography where you can learn simple things like wedding time tables, how to interact and also how to get the shots without interacting.

When you feel you’ve got the basic tools to attempt your first wedding:

1. Make sure that the couple knows that it’s your first
2. Get a signed release to use the photos
3. Definitely still use a contract!
4. If you’re doing it for free, make sure they know what the finished products will cost and possibly get that up front.
5. If you’re going to charge, I would suggest charging a small enough fee for the couple to not expect too much (since it’s your first) but large enough to cover the cost of creating some sample products for yourself.
6. Make sure you build an album or press printed book for yourself. This will be a product you can show further prospective couples. If you can, do a disk case, a canvas, a parents’ book…whatever products you want to sell after your weddings.
7. Provide them with a watermarked web-ready disk so all their friends will know who you are and your business can grow from there!

So in short, building a portfolio of wedding work will take more work than a portrait portfolio but having one cracking good wedding should set you up to start booking ‘proper’ weddings. People don’t need to see ten different galleries before they choose whether to hire you or not.

Processed with MCP Actions, Eye Candy Overlays and Florabella vintage frames & papers

Names of bride & groom:

Date of wedding:

Location:

Time & Location of bridal preparations:

Agreed location of portrait shoot (private shoot after ceremony): This is the session with just me and the couple. We choose a park, landmark or scenic place near the event(s) of the day to scurry off by ourselves for 30 minutes.

Agreed slot of portrait shoot in the day: See above. Usually after the ceremony, before the reception

Agreed slot for family/group photos: The agreed slot in the day for family photos

Price of services:

What’s included: (this can vary depending on the agreement we come up with verbally)

• Wedding day coverage
• Full editing and touch-ups of all shots
• 12×12 hard-cover photo book of your day to be compiled with 50 of your favorite shots
• A disk of all of your web-ready images

What’s not included although available:

• Extra books to give as gifts (popular gift for the parents)
• Boxed Sets of all your photos
• Prints, canvases, frames, etc.

What happens next:

• I will cover your wedding
• Within one week of your wedding, you will be sent an online gallery of your photos. You may then choose between myself creating your wedding book to tell the story of your day or yourself choosing 50 of your favorite shots to be included in your book.
• Within a week, I will send you an online book gallery for you to view. You may make notes on the pages for me to see when I login and I can make changes accordingly. You are allowed two re-edits to get it the way you want it.
• Within 4 week of signing off on your book, your book should be delivered, unless there is an issue with the printing company.

By signing this contract and providing a 50% retainer, you are agreeing to the following:

• The retainer holds your date and is non-refundable should you no longer require my services.
• The remaining 50% is due two weeks prior to your wedding date, payable by cheque sent to my address or a post-dated cheque to be included with the deposit.
• Should you fail to perform (you decide that you no longer require my services), liquidated damages shall be charged at the amount of £(amount of deposit). (Note: this is just another way of saying that the deposit is non-refundable)
• Should I have an emergency and no longer be able to provide my services, I will provide a replacement photographer or refund your deposit. This would only be in the case of a true emergency and is never expected to be a possibility.
• It’s very important for my business and my portfolio that I be free to share my work freely with potential clients and other photographers. Therefore, please be aware that your images may appear on my website which means that you will get to see your best photos instantly as they are being completed without waiting and you can share these freely with your friends & family. I will never display your images in a negative or unappealing light or use them for financial gain (exe: selling them to a stock agency).

I am obliged to explain the following:

• Upon viewing samples of my work and meeting me personally, you have decided to invest in my services to photograph your special day because you are confident that I can give you results which you will cherish.
• There is no knowing what photos will be produced from this endeavour simply because this is an event in the future.
• I am unable to make promises regarding the number of images which will be produced from my endeavour.
• As an artist, I reserve the right to artistically interpret what I see and in what ways I choose to photograph a scene. This may mean that some shots are colour, some are B&W. This is my artistic interpretation and vision.
• In addition to artistic images, I will also take ‘normal’ photos by means of documenting the occasion.

Signed: _____________________________________________ Date: _______________________

Print name: ______________________________________________________________________

It’s inevitable. I have to eventually sit down and write my thought on posing. I’ve avoided it for so long but EVERY time I put out a call for topic ideas, I get the same: “posing posing posing POSING!”

Why don’t I feel competent to write on this topic? Because I don’t have a clue about posing either. Maybe it’s a scar from my childhood (me sitting on a weird, brown-faux-marble sheet in Olan Mills with my sister POOPING on my lap while I was forced to smile). But I’ve always shuddered when I think of posing. I guess in the loosest sense of the word, I do practice posing with my subjects but not in the way you might imagine.

I believe everything in life should be organic. Marriage, friendships, faith. I don’t cling to anything artificial or contrived and in my photography, I do a LOT of running. I chase kids down, climb trees, get on top of things, lay on my back. Anything to avoid posing them. This is the purpose of my new DVD (hot off the press), by the way. So you can SEE how I do this rather than just read it on my blog.

The only thing I think I can offer is to show you a few of my favourite shots and discuss my thoughts on posing in relation to those shots. And a lot of these tips will work for any set-up so don’t skip over anything!

If you don’t feel comfortable with the idea of going into a session empty-headed and just capturing whatever happens (it’s a huge pressure!) then perhaps you should explore the option of taking your photos in a studio environment. When children are involved, I find that posing is much more effortless when they know that they’re there for the purpose of taking photographs. They’re in an unfamiliar environment, they seem to know that the lights are off-limits. It just works so much better. In this manner, you can pose your subjects in the traditional way and I resort to pretty much the same things in every session. Lay on your tummy. Sit cross-legged with your chin on your fist, do some spinning, sit on your brother’s back. After these first few set-ups, the kids usually relax and take over the ideas. Now, when photographing adults in the studio (with no kids involved), I find this much harder. Not just the posing, but the whole experience. They tend to freeze up and just robotically change into whatever position you suggest. I prefer photographing adult couples in a natural environment. Now teenagers? Perfect. I have so much fun with teenagers in the studio.

…Teenagers. They’re so fun. Even the ones who freeze up and act like they don’t like having their picture taken. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in my studio in the first place. I and my assistant(s) joke around, talk about boys, celebrities. At some point when I’m really fed up with the fake shyness, I tend to say, “Now, I KNOW you watch America’s Next Top Model. And I bet you’ve been practicing your posing. So now’s the time to pull out the stops and go nuts!” And you know, this usually works a treat. They relent and work it. On that note, sit down one night with a couple of the latest teen magazines or clothing catalogues and make a look-book of poses, one for boys and one for girls. If you or your model are running dry on ideas, flip through the pages and experiment.

Families. These can be trickier. You usually get a group where you can tell a couple of them were forced to be there and they so do not.want.to.be.there. And they make it clear. I’ve had uncles roll their eyes, clench their teeth, throw their hand up and growl “come ON!” Seriously. As much as I wanted to beat them with my camera, I held my temper and just pointed out that he was a grump. “Hey, don’t be so grumpy who wouldn’t want to be in the studio on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when the football game is on?” This usually gets them to realise they’re being grumpy, gets everyone else laughing for a minute and lightens the mood. At the end of the day, if you’re working with a family and one or two are completely ruining it beyond reason, that’s not your fault. You’re getting paid. Let their family deal with their attitude problem. Now, the family above was no such thing. They were happy, buoyant, fun, laughing. The daughter (far right) was a take charge individual which can be your greatest asset. If you can identify someone to guide the session in the right direction, give them the freedom to do so.

Now, when posing families, I will usually only try two (three max) set-ups for an entire session. It can take nearly the whole time just to get everyone looking into the camera and smiling a few times for each set-up so don’t be too ambitious. I really liked what I did with this family which was to cram them all on one sofa, get up high on a step ladder and give the directions to tickle each other, kiss each other, pull a funny face, everyone look at the baby, everyone look at mum, etc. While doing this, be quickly taking the whole group but also move across the group and capture individuals and smaller 2-3 person clusters. This can make for a great story board or collage.

This little girl was calm and yielding. Be ready for whatever personality child you’re going to be meeting that day. She was very happy to move to different spots, switch hands with the balloons, etc. But even with a patient camera-friendly child, the attention span is short so know how to use your camera like the back of your hand and get.that.shot! You don’t have time to be experimenting. Going into this session, I knew that she would be bringing balloons. And like with any session I’m going into, just before I leave, I quickly browse the inspiration folders on my computer to refresh myself on shots I’ve loved in the past. For example, I have folders just of kids with balloons, couples, newborns, weddings. I don’t copy concepts verbatim but I do like to get inspired and ‘in the zone’ before I head out.

The kids in this session were getting antsy toward the end (after about an hour of running around in the woods looking for places to stop). But I just knew there were more photos to be birthed so I got desperate and had to start thinking outside the box. This is where I fear that some beginner and even advanced photographers are misguided. We (even I do it) look at photos and think that they’re ‘posed’ when they’re not. I bet if you ask any of your favourite photographers, they’ll tell you that the photos were organic, natural and not manipulated. So with this photo, I climbed up on a wooden climbing frame (that’s me on the right) and waited for the kids to run past while they were playing. So I’d go ‘hey look up here’ and snap a couple before they run away again. It worked great and the end shots are among my favourite from this session.

Couples. Sometimes they’re hot, sometimes they’re not. I really lucked out with Tim & Ellen. Their love is on fire and they were so natural in this session on their wedding day. I imagine this had something to do with her rebellion against the white fluffy dress. Nothing felt pressured, this was the most relaxed and effortless wedding I’ve ever done. And I keep using this word, but their wedding felt very organic. The date, the dress, the weather didn’t rule, they did. But I digress. Yes, they were just so relaxed and they required very little feedback from me. I was able to get down in the grass and just catch the love. I didn’t confirm this with them, but I suspect that they talked about how they wanted to be photographed before hand, maybe they even practised. And if your couple isn’t quite so natural or on fire, you can say things like “Pull her closer. Put your hands in her hair. Kiss her neck.” I’d even go so far as to suggest that they whisper sweet (or naughty!) nothings in each other’s ears. Whatever works! And give them some space. Get back and zoom in.

And like I said before, keep folders of inspiration on your computer. With couples (adults generally need more guidance than children) I even put a few key inspiration shots in my iPhone to flick through as we shoot. I even show them sometimes. Or print out some thumbnails to put in my pocket. This is a huge help for me in times of need!

Naturally, I could go on forever. With any photos on my website, Facebook or Flickr, you are totally welcome to leave a comment and ask about how I took it, how it was posed. I think it would help other photographers tremendously to even share these small bits of information. Like I said, we probably think that all the photos we see from photographers were guided by the photographer him/herself when, in reality, they weren’t posed at all! I’m always just a comment away!

These images were edited with MCP Actions, Totally Rad actions, Florabella actions & textures and Eye Candy Overlays