Don't Give Up

It's normal to lose your drive sometimes, especially if you're not happy with the work you've done recently.  The time I felt that the most was right after I got my first DSLR and I shot Tigerama, Clemson's homecoming pep rally, which isn't the most camera friendly thing  to shoot anyway.  I was so frustrated with these pictures that I gave up on editing and didn't look at them again until four years later before I shot the Miss Clemson University pageant.  If you need a reminder that it gets better if you don't give up, check out these two photos.  I know it looks like I edited one and purposefully edited the other one badly, but they're not edited at all.

This is the difference that can be made with 4 years of learning and experience (and also a change in gear).

Canon Rebel T3 with 18-55mm kit lens

Settings: 35mm, f/5, 1/200 second, ISO 6400, custom white balance set before the lighting changed, no flash, manual focus, shot in JPEG

Side note: those dresses are all orange.

Canon 7D, 50mm f/1.8 lens

Settings: 50mm, f/1.8, 1/250 second, ISO 640, auto white balance, no flash, auto focus shot in RAW and converted to JPEG for this post

I hope that helps motivate you a little in whatever you're doing.  I was laughing and snapchatting the 2012 photos to my fiance and my photographer friends. Good thing those photos never had to be used anywhere!   It's a nice reminder of how much I've improved and why it was a good idea to not give up.

Courtney's Graduation Session

No matter how many portrait sessions I have in the future, this one will always stand out to me.  Everything seemed to go wrong, but it's the one that made me laugh the hardest, and it made for some of my favorite Clemson senior pictures in the end.

After having a few weekends of portrait sessions, I had to take a weekend off because I was going to Arizona for a week.  I rented a wide-angle lens to take with me for some landscape shots, and decided to bring it back to South Carolina with me for my next portrait session with Courtney, since I didn’t have to ship the lens back until the day after that. I now have this lens and I'm excited to get wide-angle shots like these again. My new photography friend Jacob came to shadow me that day. 

This is one shot I took with the wide-angle lens before things started to get crazy.

At my last session before Courtney's, two weeks earlier, I had taken some pictures like this one with some beautiful spring flowers in President’s Park.

Somehow, to my disappointment, these flowers had all died before Courtney’s session, and all those lovely bushes were just gone.  This is Courtney sitting in a shady patch of mulch with the last remaining bush of flowers in President’s Park.  That was the first of many bumps in the road during that session.

After we finished this shot and Courtney moved, a group of LARPers with swords took over the amphitheater, so there was no going back for another picture there.

We discovered that the Reflection Pond had been drained, like it is at the beginning of every spring exam week. Since I've already graduated, I don’t really think in terms of semesters anymore, except for when it comes to graduation pictures, so it didn't occur to me that this would happen and I didn't have enough time to figure out how to pretend the background didn't look disgusting.

This is Jacob’s picture of me looking sketchy in the grass between the empty pond and the LARPers, trying to find an angle that could hide how gross the empty pond looked, and laughing at how ridiculous the whole situation was.

I told Courtney to put her hand on the railing, like I do with all the other seniors.  Then we realized that there were chiggers on it, so she put her hands like this.  I was happy with how it came out and she didn’t get eaten by chiggers.  And I just love the light on her hair!

We had to wait to take this one because there were two high school guys at the gate posing weirdly for pictures for several minutes. The lighting hit the "Clemson" bleachers perfectly!

Fun fact: since I was in Arizona for a week and didn’t have any sessions the weekend before, the entire sit-in on the steps of Sikes took place between two of my portrait sessions.   

As many obstacles as we ran into that day, the three of us were able to laugh off everything that was going on.  I ended up having a wonderful day with Courtney and Jacob, and these pictures are some of my favorite portraits I've taken at Clemson.

I think a good way to describe that day is from Pete the Cat and his white shoes: “No matter what you step in, just keep walking along and singing your song, because it’s all good.” 

To see Jacob’s pictures from that day, visit his website at jacobathompson.com.

Looking back on 2016

I'm happy to say that 2016 got progressively better from a rough start.

One big thing that happened is that I shifted more into the portrait field.  A year ago, I wouldn't believe that would be my main thing, but I love it.  

I was lucky that my friend Tracy asked me to do her Miss Clemson University portraits in March.  I wanted some more experience with portraits before advertising myself as a portrait photographer, and I knew she would be easy to pose.   She had competed to represent South Carolina in the Miss America pageant the year before.  I somehow turned to my least favorite lens during that session, and it became my favorite lens for portraits after that.  I surprised myself with how much I liked the end result, and it gave me more confidence in my portrait work. 

One thing that worried me before starting to do portraits for people I don't know was whether I would ever encounter an unfriendly client. That would make for an awkward session, and I would feel more pressured to make them happy from the beginning of the session to editing the last image.  I can honestly say that every single portrait client I’ve had so far has been amazing.  I’m so thankful to have met all of you and helped record your favorite parts of your Clemson experience before you go off to wherever you’re going next.  I’ve loved hearing all your stories, walking around campus with you, and meeting your animal friends.  I can’t wait to see the awesome things you do with your degree from the best school ever. 

Although I’ve gotten better at editing (shout-out to Connor for helping me upgrade my editing software when my hard drive gave out and took my editing software with it), I’ve also gotten better at avoiding things that I want to fix later so that I don’t have to spend as much time editing.  Editing can drive me crazy, so I try not to make myself need to do more than just basic edits, like cropping a little closer and slightly turning down some really bright highlights.  At the end of the post, I'll show my first and last portrait sessions of the year, because I don't know how to add them in the middle. 

Here are my first and last portrait sessions of the year, before and after editing.  Tracy (top) was in March and Victoria (bottom) was in December.   They’re both headshots taken at similar times of day and probably 30 feet from each other.  I’m still not content with how I edited Tracy’s because the shadow over her eye was difficult to remove, and as a result, I spent a lot of time on that photo and my eyes got worn out, so I wasn’t as in tune to how bad the color looked.  I also don't really like this background with the pole and the brick wall going right through her.  Victoria’s was pretty easy to edit, partly because I was more cautious about the things that bothered me about Tracy’s photo.  The only thing I would have  done differently with composing Victoria's is to maybe turn her a little more and adjust her gown so it wouldn't look as puffy as it does here.  

I’ve done my best to make each portrait session better than the last.   I’ve spent a lot more time watching webinars and reading other photographers' experiences.   While it’s cold outside, I’ve been working on things like making my website look cleaner and learning how to improve the overall client experience.  I’m on so many email lists right now, but that doesn’t bother me like it used to. I look forward to seeing what each person is offering me and how it could help me become a better photographer.  I take advantage of as many free educational opportunities as I can, but I just paid for a one-month Sue Bryce subscription on Thursday and I’m already so excited for my next portrait session!  Some of my other favorite portrait photographers to learn from are Amy and Jordan and Katelyn James, who do free webinars every once in a while.  I get so excited to come home from work, heat up some soup, and listen to them talk about doing what they love and making their clients happy.

2016 involved two adventures to Florida, one to Arizona, a gymnastics meet, and a bunch of portrait sessions.  I did one portrait session with wildfire smoke in the background and one with a python at the last minute.  I got to do five portrait sessions in the stadium, which I had never done before.  What’s in store for 2017?  Well, I’m going on a honeymoon to British Columbia and I'll get to shoot a part of the world I’ve never seen.  There will be a solar eclipse practically in my backyard, so that'll be a new photography experience.  I’m planning a dance photo session; shooting dance is one of my favorite things, but I don’t often have the opportunity to do it.  Hopefully I’ll get to be there for the Clemson club gymnastics team again, maybe more than once this year.  Of course, I’ll be doing more portraits, hopefully more than just graduation portraits, walking around and taking more pictures of random things, and taking pictures of more random things in my apartment.  I also have a new wide-angle lens that’s supposed to arrive any second now.  I rented one for Arizona and used it for a portrait session, and I’ve felt like I’m missing out ever since I returned it.  I'm pretty excited for the next year.

Shout-out to all you awesome people for making my day that much brighter! I wanted to say thank you to everyone who supported me this year, whether you just liked a photo on my Instagram or asked me to do your portraits.  I can't tell you how much it means to me.  Happy New Year!