Phoenix Wedding Photographer

Create Better Images Workshop Recap

Well it’s about time I did a recap on the photography workshop that Jen and I held back in November.

It was so much fun and such a wonderful success. This time around we actually did 2 different workshops, a Beginners and an Intermediate. We had 12 people join us for the beginners class and we were able to get a great group shot thanks to the wonderful Gisele Holloway. We got great feedback from everyone on the workshop and are very excited for the next one that we will hold, probably in the summer of 2009.

The goal of our workshop is to teach the fundamentals of photography — basically how to take their cameras off of the automatic settings and practice shooting manually, allowing them to have more creativity in their photographs. We teach the basics of understanding light, aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and how they relate when shooting manually, as well as provide some hands-on lessons and examples, and share which lenses will provide the most bang for their buck as far as output of image quality goes. We also shared several shots that Jen and I have taken with the exact settings, lenses, time of day, etc., and provided explanation as to how we achieved the shot, something that the last workshop had specifically requested more of, and several commented this time around that those examples were very helpful. Nearly everyone said they learned quite a bit and got something (or a great deal) from the class, which is what we hoped for!

Thanks to Gisele, we were able to get some great pictures of the workshop.

Our Intermediate class was a lot more hands on as we actually took everyone outside and shot with 3 different sets of models, a toddler, a family, and a couple. We had a small class of 7 people, which was perfect because we were really able to go hands on with everyone there. We had a great time shooting and everyone said it was great experience seeing how we shoot clients.

The goal of the intermediate workshop was to go much more in-depth, build upon all the fundamentals by applying them in action, and really speak to the specific things that the attendees wanted to learn (posing suggestions, working with clients or putting people at ease, incorporating more creativity into shooting and understanding light better.) This workshop was VERY hands-on, with live models and an in-depth post-processing lesson in Adobe Lightroom. After our live shoot, we processed the images and then shared everyone’s work – which was very cool to see what everyone captured during the day. Everyone did so great!! The feedback Jen and I have received has been astounding and we are so thrilled that everyone learned so much. This is an email that I received from Jenny, a workshop attendee who also attended the Beginners workshop last summer.

“Thank you so much for putting on the intermediate workshop with Jennifer! I had so much fun and definitely learned a lot! I feel like my photography skills have already improved just by knowing more about how to look for good light and how to compose interesting photos. The Lightroom portion of the workshop back at your studio was extremely helpful! I know so much more about Lightroom now and am so excited to put it to use on other photos I’ve taken. It was encouraging to see others photos and to learn from the way they take photographs and the way they edit them. Thank you again for being so willing to share your photography knowledge and expertise! “

We started our day in the classroom going over a few fundamentals, but then we went and spent about an hour and a half with different models.

The first model was our ever so cute little Noah. He did great!


We then worked with the Gonzalez Family.

We then ended with Christa and Donald, who were so cute and fun to shoot! They made it really easy for everyone to be able to get some great shots. I had a blast too!

I just want to thank everyone who attended the workshops.. we had such a great time. Also, thank you to our models who did such a great job!

If you are interested in more workshops please continue to frequent our blog as we will both post more about the workshops when we come up with our new dates for 2009. If you would like to be on an email list just send us an email.

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December 15, 2008 - 10:53 pm

Libby - These workshops are great! Thank you! Hopefully you’ll see me at the next one too : )

December 12, 2008 - 1:27 pm

Mandy Hank - Awesome job Kim- you guys should try and do a photog “day of shooting” seminar like this. We (photogs) always want to go out and just shoot- it’s a lot better than just always getting together to talk -since most of us our hands on. Keep me in mind if you decide to get anyone together- btw Kailee’s raspberries are adorable- I miss that age with my kids! 🙂

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