A little while ago I packed up my two youngest and headed out to one of my favorite spots to do a shoot of my little girl. Even though we got there early in the morning, it was already very hot and humid and my kids were slightly less than cooperative, but I’m so glad I finally got out to do this! I don’t do it enough.
**This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. I was compensated for this post. However, I use Blurb myself to print books and would only recommend products that I love and use!
Hi everyone!
Wanted to write a quick blog post to encourage you to get those pictures off of your phone (camera roll, Instagram, hard drive, the cloud, or whatever digital space they live in…) Confession: most professional photographers are horrible at practicing what they preach when it comes to printing images. I am guilty of this. I have thousands upon thousands of images stored in cyberspace, both from my “big camera” and my iPhone. I take snaps almost daily on my iPhone that I post to Instagram. Follow me there I’m @jessremus!
I have been trying to be better the past couple of years about getting my photos off of hard drives and the cloud and onto paper or canvas. I’m always so glad when I do. We are all guilty of putting this off, because we treat this like a life or death decision. Which photos do I print? What size should I get? Canvas, print, or photo book? It goes on and on and the result is that the images stay sitting on our hard drives forever. Trust me, do NOT overthink this, just print. You will always be glad you did.
Lately I’ve been printing books and prints of my Instagram photos. My kids love looking through these photo books and they couldn’t be easier to make. I use Blurb and it links right up to my Instagram account and I can pick and choose + drag and drop whichever photos I want in each book. Super fast, super simple, anyone can do this (and should do this)! And now through August 23rd, 2016 there is a great deal: 40% off all orders at Blurb!! You do not have to be a pro!
You can see in the screenshots below from Blurb how easily you can import your photos from just about anywhere…
I choose my Instagram photos, Blurb connects and loads them all up in seconds:
And I selected images from a recent vacation and started dragging and dropping them in. There is a choice of layout for each page, with or without text. Super easy and fast to do! You can also have Blurb insert the images for you (which you can edit later). Easy peasy lemon squeezy as my boys like to say. Look it over, save, purchase, print. BOOM you are done and have a cute little tangible photo album.
This is a recent example of a small square Blurb book that I made, 7″x7″, also shot on my iPhone. I’m all about speed and convenience these days:
Now through August 23rd, Blurb books are 40% off**! Follow this link to get in on it! 40% off all orders at Blurb 🙂
Happy printing!!
A highlight of July was our beach photo shoot swap with Tara Fletcher Photography. Tara and I met last year when we realized that she lives very close to where we spend so much time (especially in the summer) in southwestern Michigan. We decided a long time ago in the freezing cold of winter to do a session trade on the beach so that we could each be in pictures with our families.
I’m still working my way through all of the amazing shots Tara captured of us, and will be sharing more soon from our shoot and hers. It was a bit crazy to do a shoot while simultaneously being the subjects of another shoot, but so worth it! We are already planning our next one!
Continue around our little blog circle to see what my friends have been up to this month, starting with my dear friend Sarah in Colorado…can’t wait to see what she’s got for this month, she’s been posting some amazing things on Instagram!
*This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase, however, I never recommend anything I don’t use and love myself!
Recently I posted about Creative Live – an online creative learning resource. Creative Live has all sorts of courses – FREE if you can watch them live! And all of them can be purchased after broadcast. The thing I love about CL photography courses is that you can watch how photographers work and see their knowledge and advice in action. Photography is obviously a visual art and most of us are visual learners, so it really helps me personally to feel like I’m tagging along with the photographer on their live shoot.
This review is for the Pets and People Photography course with photographer Vicki Taufer. Photographing pets (particularly dogs) is one of my favorite things to do and I love incorporating the family dog into my sessions. I’m always interested to learn more tips, tricks, and ideas for successfully incorporating dogs into shoots with their people. It’s one thing to photography people, another to photography pets. Mix them together, and you have a lot going on! From that chaos always comes great shots though, so I loved learning Vicki’s tips.
This was a 3 day course just loaded with information. Vicki had a ton to share about her business, business development, and technical aspects of shooting pets and people in all sorts of situations (studio, studio lights, natural light, outside, multiple dogs and people, etc.) There are several Q&A sessions too – Creative Live courses have a live audience and online audience and questions are answered as the course progresses. The nice thing about that is they are many of the same questions I had while watching!
I really liked how Vicki went into detail on how she developed the pet side of her business, and was very open about both successes she has had as well as mistakes made along the way. Her idea to host a “dog days of summer” promotional event was an a-ha moment for me. I love doing shoots for shelters of homeless pets and this is something I can work into my current business.
I also find it fascinating and extremely helpful to watch other photographers working. There were many live shoots filmed as part of this course, in lots of different situations so that you could see how Vicki worked under various circumstances. It’s always interesting to see which lenses and settings other photographers use as well, I always learn something. In several of the shoots, Vicki used a pretty high ladder, climbed on and shot down from there. I can’t wait to try that. I use step ladders quite often but haven’t used something that high and I loved that perspective.
If you are interested in learning how to incorporate pets into your photography business, or simply how to take better photographs of pets, I would highly recommend this course!
You can check out all that Creative Live offers for photography classes here: Online Photography Classes
Nothing better than capturing the newest member of the family for some dear friends! It wasn’t that long ago that I took some shots of big sister Pearl as a newborn, time flies!
So there’s this secret little spot, a small stand of trees that can look like an enchanted forest when photographed from the right angles. I’ve used it a few times for clients, and have been wanting to go back to take some pictures of my baby girl there. Any photographer will probably tell you that it’s a lot harder to photograph their own kids. Our kids are on to us. B is only 19 months old and either looks away or runs when she sees my camera.
I waited for a sunny morning and loaded up my girl and her less than enthusiastic brother and we headed out. It was hot and buggy, so I only had about 15 minutes to shoot before the kids were over it. I was able to use B’s reflex to run from my camera to my advantage to get a shot of both her #elbowdimples and #kneerolls 🙂
Now follow me around our blog circle to see what my lovely and talented friends have been up to, starting with my friend Kim in Georgia.
