Keeping Up

     In all honesty, photography is definitely one of the harder jobs that I could have picked to do for a part-time high school job. I could have picked something that had regular, consistent hours, instead of a photoshoot here and a photoshoot there. I could have picked something that didn't require my mom to run me all over the city and my brothers to get dragged along constantly. I could have picked something that didn't involve correspondence and email/text answering at irregular times throughout the day. I could have picked something a lot easier, maybe work at McDonalds or something.
     The reality is, I didn't. And even though this photoshoot life is crazy sometimes (ok, it's crazy all of the time), I feel so totally beyond blessed that I am able to do something that I love as my highschool job. My work is something that I enjoy, from connecting with people to taking pictures to spending hours on editing. I am thankful to my family because they put up with it in all of it's insanity. I am thankful to my mom because I could not do it without her. I am thankful for my parents that they homeschooled me, so that I have the opportunity to be flexible with my schedule and to pursue things that interest me (yes, my mom counts all of this photo time as school credit). And I am thankful to my  Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, because ultimately all of this comes from Him. In all of it's craziness, photography is infinitely better than McDonalds.
     That's a little bit of background for you about my photo life as it currently stands. Now, to catch you up on the photos... :) I recently did a shoot with two families, a few all-together group shots, and a few of each family individually. When I got into the car, I immediately hit the review button on my camera and began flipping back through the pictures. When I got to the group photos of everyone together, I was so, so excited. Each and every person's face in the picture was clear and sharp. I counted the shoot as a success at that point :) That was just the first of many family/holiday photo shoots, and I will continue to post some over the next few weeks.

Short and Sweet

     When I go to a photo shoot, I take a LOT of photos. My brothers often ask me about it; "Kaela, why do you have to take, like, at least three pictures of everything?" Actually, when I first started taking photo classes, that is exactly what my photo teacher told me - to take three of everything. You get one angle that you like, and you snap three photos, because the expressions of the subject might change, or the camera might get bumped (resulting in blurry photos), or you might adjust your zoom on the camera and back up a bit, or shift your lighting, etc. Then, you try another position for the subjects, or another angle, and you do it all over again. As you might imagine, the numbers build up quickly.
     Last month (wow, I am having the sudden realization that November is now technically "last month") I think I hit my all time lowest number of photos during a photo shoot - only 101 photos. Typically, I might take between 300-400 photos on a normal shoot, even though it only lasts about an hour or so. Newborn shoots take a bit longer, but only because they require a lot more posing and prop set-up. This particular shoot we were on a time crunch, so it was shorter than usual, and I didn't take nearly as many photos.
     That being said, the photos that we did get were so, so sweet. I loved working with this beautiful baby girl :) Thus, the moral of the story is that although taking a lot of photos is a great way to learn and experiment, you do not have to take a million to turn out with a few sweet ones. As long as you work efficiently with the time you have.