There is a reason digital cameras have been one of the top selling gadgets for years now. There is a reason ‘everybody is a photographer’ today. Why? Because our pictures are our visual diaries. They are the witness and our memory of our lives as it goes scorching by us at such a fast pace we have trouble remembering. And then we gaze upon a picture and the moment floods back into our senses; we can smell the scents in that moment, hear the sounds that went on around us, and once again truly FEEL the moment as we had lived it.

It is no wonder we’re all in love with photography! A picture is worth… well that’s entirely up to you. For me, a picture of a treasured moment in my life is priceless.

Here is a list of helpful tips to creating better pictures of the moments in your life worth remembering.

Tip 1:

Get closer! Please. No one cares about the surrounding scenery. We want to see the expressions on people’s faces. Up close. So when you have your loved ones get together, move in close, tell them to ‘hug in’, and capture only the top thirds of them! You’ll love the picture so much more and so will they.

Tip 2:

Don’t just stand there, MOVE! Get on a ladder, get down on the floor. Kids are best photographed at their level. Older people are photographed best from a higher angle so they’re looking up a bit. Try it. Be creative.  Tilt the camera and try an angle, move the camera when people are moving and see if you like the blur. Experiment. Just don’t stand there head on and click the shutter. Please.

Tip 3:

Learn how to use the settings on your camera! Why spend all this money on a camera with all kinds of fancy settings and then put the camera on program and pray the camera does something spectacular! That camera is nothing more than a box! It has absolutely NO IDEA what you are pointing at unless you tell it. So put it on the setting of the little guy running if you are taking action. Put it on the setting of the flower if you’re close up. You’ll be shocked at how much better your pictures will be. And once you get really good at that. Break the rules and change the settings so you learn exactly what they do and your pictures will even get better! I promise.

Tip 4:

Understand your flash! Learn how to control whether the flash is on or off. Your pictures will shock you if you do this! Don’t ruin the holiday lights on your Christmas tree late in the evening when the room is aglow by using flash. And don’t think that because you are standing in the hot sun with it glaring at you that you don’t need flash. The person in front of you would look fabulous if you would use the flash to balance out the sun.

Tip 5:

Candids are good! Don’t just pose your subjects. Catch them doing fun and spontaneous things. If they know you are there, ask them not to look at you and to just keep doing what they were doing. Click away. Remember, tell a story with your camera.

Tip 6:

Learn to use the timer on your camera so you can get in the pictures without looking like all of those FB and iPhone shots of people holding up cameras photographing themselves. They’re dumb. People would like pics of you so much better if you weren’t holding the phone/camera up taking a pic of yourself, trust me.

Tip 7:

Keep snapping. Take a million. Delete ten for every one you save.  Take crazy pics, fun pics, experimental pics.  Just keep snapping.  And then when you get things you like, remember what you did and do it again!  This is how any good photographer learns. Trust me.  I am never sorry for a photograph I took.  But oh if I had a nickel for the photographs I regret that I missed.

Tip 8:

Photos on your hard drive ARE NOT a celebration of your life. I repeat… PHOTOS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE ARE NOT A CELEBRATION OF YOUR LIFE. Pictures are meant to be printed, shared, lived with, stared at, and posted on refrigerators. The price to print them today is so minor that there’s no reason in the world not to get triples printed for you, your kids, your parents, whomever! So quit sending photos electronically to your loved ones. It’s never the same. Post them on your bathroom mirror, your desk, your refrigerator, your mantel. Celebrate your life by sharing it often, not just with people who come to visit but share it often with yourself to remind you of the special moments that come together and create the fabric of who you are.

After all, this is your life you are documenting. And there will never be a finer work of art than you.

WHERE:  Faith in Action, 603 S. Main St, Chelsea, MI

WHAT: Free portrait sessions for individuals and families in need

Help-Portrait.com was founded by celebrity photographer Jeremy Cowart. Help-Portrait is a community of photographers, coming together across the world to use their photography skills to give back to their local community. In their first year, December 2009, more than 41,000 portraits were given by 3400 photographers and over 5000 volunteers were involved. Help-Portrait became a global movement in 543 locations in 42 countries.

On December 4, 2010, photographers around the world will be grabbing their cameras, finding people in need and taking their picture. When the prints are ready, the photographs get delivered. 

12 local photographers in and around Ann Arbor are working together this year in Chelsea and hoping to photograph up to 100 individuals/ families. This is our first year doing this in this area and we are hoping for a great turnout and a well-put together event. If you know of a needy family or individual who would like to be our guest, please have them contact Faith in Action directly to set up an appointment for that day at 734-475-3305.

This is about GIVING the pictures, not taking them. These portraits are not for our portfolios, websites, or for sale. Money isn’t involved here. This holiday season, we have the chance to give a family something they may have never had before—a portrait together.

A little bit about our friends at Faith in Action:

Faith in Action is a community supported, faith-based assistance and resource agency for families and individuals who need a helping hand. It serves the area within the Chelsea and Dexter school districts.  In 2009, over 5,000 separate services were provided that impacted over 14,000 lives with clothing, food, utility shut off prevention, eviction prevention, health care, transportation, and other emergency services. Founded in 1980, Faith in Action is the lead agency providing safety net services in western Washtenaw County. We are so happy to be working with Faith in Action. They are providing us with a place to photograph our guests this year as well as supplying us with the guests themselves, volunteers, and so much more. 

Please watch this video that Help-Portrait shared on You-Tube. Contact me directly if you can give or know someone else who can give the following things we need: makeup artists, hairstylists, either cash donations for us to be able to purchase frames or 1 8×10 and 1 5×7 frame per individual/family. We don’t want to just give them a portrait. We’d like to be able to give them framed portraits. Thank you for spreading the word!

I couldn’t find it. I forgot about it for a little while knowing it was somewhere. Recently, it came to my mind again and I went looking. Again I couldn’t find it and became frantic. After HOURS of  searching high and low, I found it. I learned a lot during the past several hours now that I’m calm again (LOL):

a) Catalog your work PROPERLY.

b) Identify work that deeply speaks to you and back up the ORIGINAL over, and over, and over.

c) Serendipity! I didn’t capture it wrong!!! Yea. Oh big YEA! I had cropped it wrong and had been using that cropped image all this time (the original was taken in 2006).

d) Study work you’ve created that touches your heart. Identify the ‘why’.  Seek to create this type of work more often!

e) PRINT it. Negatives, CDs, and DVDs will never replace the printed image because they are not capable of creating an instant emotional response like a print can.

Ultimately it was a project in proper storage and backup. It has a happy ending. I found my beloved image that would be impossible to recreate because the subject is long gone. I’ve had an idea in my head for a few years on what I wanted to do with this image and I needed the original to do it.  

I do a much better job of cataloging and backing up J. Love Photography work than I do my own personal images, that’s for sure. I need to work on that!

Now, when I finish it, I’ll post it! In the meantime, what photographs have you created that you can instantly remember as favorites? Seek them out. Back them up. Print them again. Put them away for safekeeping so that even if your house burns down, your image is safe. You won’t regret it.

This month, J. Love Photography will donate  a portion of its proceeds to breast cancer research in honor and celebration of these women! Be sure to attend J. Love Photography’s “Girls Night Out” Shopping Event to help the cause and start your holiday shopping early. Anyone having portraits made as well as holiday cards, etc., during October will also be helping the cause!

I recently created this Vintage Tapestry montage of  snapshots and professional portraits of the colorful, wonderful, amazing women from whom I came; my mother, my grandmothers, my great-grandmothers, my aunts, my great-aunts. I am so proud to be born of these women. As some of you know, when my father graduated from medical school, my mother, my grandmothers, and my great-grandmothers had their photograph taken by my father. This portrait is one of my most valued possessions. I wear it in a Jewel Kade photo charm. I keep it framed on my desk.

So today, “Give thanks for the women who came before you and show you the way.”

Solitary Sunrise

As an artist and photographer, it’s very difficult to leave my art when the ‘mojo is flowing.’ I have several clients waiting for images, albums to design, a mound of paperwork on my desk.  But I’m on day three of a sinus infection and my brain is cloudy, my ears are totally plugged, my energy is low, and I feel awful.

Yet, here I am at my screen.  I need to sweep myself off to a place of peace by revisiting something or some place I’ve been where I connected with that place within myself.  It’s my form of meditation.  My intent here is not to create fine art to sell or to even show.  I do it for me.  But this image gave me such a sense of peace I had to share it.  I’ve talked to so many other people in ‘not so good’ places in the last several days.

If you’re experiencing a blue day, an off day, a sad day, a time where everything feels wrong… imagine yourself as this person wading through the still waters at daybreak.  Know peace.  As someone said…

‘Listen to the wisdom of the earth to find your ground again.’

Namaste