1. Know Your Client

Each client is unique. What defines them at this age is their interests. The more you can connect with them on this level the more they will feel comfortable with you and in front of the lens. I know a lot of photographers that will send out a “Get to Know You” questionnaire to their clients. It’s a short survey that asks clients about their hobbies, music tastes, sports, etc. As you prepare for the photo shoot, you may want to have your client bring their ipod or mp3 player loaded with their favorite songs as background music for the shoot. You can also suggest they bring any sports items they have or  instruments they played. Anything to make their experience unique and specialized.

2. Dress for Success

Nothing dates an image more than the style of clothes a person wears. When my Senior images were taken, acid wash was the rage. Let the Senior bring their favorite clothes and what makes them feel comfortable. You may also want to suggest to throw in a few more timeless and simple outfits ie, solid colors, no big logos, etc. This way you are covering all bases and will ensure the images will not be outdated as the fads change. Also, if your client wears glasses you might want to suggest they get a pair of frames without the glass. Most glasses give a glare from studio lights or reflections from outside. You don’t want them to look differently without their tradmark specs, but you also don’t want to spend a lot of time retouching glare.

3. Posture and Hand Placement 

Posture and hand placement  are so important in senior photography. For most Seniors, this is their first time being the solo subject for a professional photographer. So they will not automatically know what to do with their hands and limbs. Typically, girls should have soft hands and boys should have more confident hand placement.  Instead of telling your subjects what they should be doing or going in and mechanically moving their limbs for them, show them how to pose. This way, they don’t feel as awkward or embarrassed that they are doing it wrong. This should be a positive experience and the more you can alleviate any stress for them the better.

4. Bring Along Support

You might also suggest they are welcomed to bring a long a friend, parent or sibling. Sometimes having a familiar face in an unfamiliar place makes all the difference in the world. I think it’s often important too to snag a few candids of the Senior with this person. It’s a simple thing to do and it makes for a lasting memory from a great session. Some photographers will even include their support person in the portrait session. Whatever your view is, this person is special to your Senior, so take the time to capture it.

5. Be Social Savvy

It seems like a majority of Seniors are very social savvy with accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.  It’s imperative to be just as savvy. In your questionairre from step 1, make sure to ask your Seniors for their various handles on social media channels. I always ask if it’s ok to tag them on Facebook and give sneak peeks on other social media channels. I’ve also Instagrammed between set ups where the client is relaxing a bit and laughing. It’s important to find out what they are comfortable with in regards to social media and then target your marketing accordingly.

The most important item to keep in mind is to make your client feel at ease. You are documenting a really important time in their life. Keeping it fun, positive and smooth on your end will go a long way in making a great memory.

1. The Time is Right

It’s hard to say when the exact right time to photograph a pregnant woman would be, but in most cases 7 months is the ideal month. This is usually when the baby has dropped a bit in the tummy and when moms are still relatively comfortable in moving their bodies. If you wait until after the 7 months, sometimes it can be uncomfortable  for the mothers, plus they have a lot on their plate the closer they get to their due date.  As a photographer, you’ll also want enough time to edit and print these images before the baby arrives. This should be plenty of time for your client to order images and share them before the wee one enters the world.

2. Preparation is Key

Maternity photography should be treated just like modeling or head shot photography. Have your client come prepared. Moms should make sure their nails are groomed and you might even suggest having the moms have their hair and makeup professionally done.  It’s a little bit of pampering but it goes a long way in making the clients feel great about themselves. Have a candid discussion with your client regarding what to bring and make sure they bring water, snacks and a robe (for in between shoots) so they can feel as comfortable as possible. Also, remind them  not  to wear anything too confining around the belly before the session (like elastic pants). This can often leave marks on the tummy in which you’ll have to photoshop out later. So save yourself some time with this little tip.

3. Try New Angles

Ok, so you’ve done the traditional photo of mom standing up with her hands on her belly, now what? With maternity photography, it’s important to get the best angles and lighting as possible for the expecting moms. Try shooting from above. This is a great angle as it is almost always flattering . At this position, you can focus on her bright eyes or her hands on her belly. She can be looking straight at you or down at her bump. Any of these combinations will work as this angle is flattering and slimming to the face.

4. Get Creative

Think outside the box and get creative. What I love most about today’s maternity photography is the abstracts. I love the focus on the belly and flowers. Or maybe the feet are in focus and the tummy is out of focus. Or you can be clever in announcing the sex of the child by including elements to give clues. Try a pair of boy’s baby shoes in the photo or maybe fill the room with pink balloons. It’s fun to get creative and your client will have fun as well.

5. Get Loved Ones Involved

It’s not just mom who is excited about the arrival of the baby, it’s the dad, the partner, the pets, the siblings, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, you name it, everyone is anxiously waiting. So now is the time to capture their excitement too and include them in the maternity photo shoot.  Dads and partners can come in and wrap their arms around the mom. Siblings can come in get up and close to mom’s belly. Finally, let Fido in on the action too, he’s a part of the family too and his life is about to get a whole lot better with more table scraps coming his way in a few years.

The important key to remember with any of this is to always make sure your client is comfortable. Keep relaxed but take this seriously. Your clients will love the extra attention and details you give them. Photographers are family historians and this is one of the most important jobs in the world.

#1 – Customizing Colors with PixPublisher

PixPublisher’s color fill feature is incredibly powerful and versatile. It allows you to change the color of any decoration or frame to any color you choose. This can come in handy for virtually any photo book in which you want to match a specific color palette.

When you select any decoration or frame by clicking on it, you’ll see an option called color fill appear on the toolbar above the workspace. Just click the color fill option and pick a new color from the color selection panel that appears. The panel gives you three options for choosing a color. You can:

1.       Choose your color from the palette provided

2.       Enter a color code manually

3.       Use the dropper tool to choose any color on the screen.

Whatever color you choose will be applied immediately to the selected decoration or frame. If you’re looking for ideas for a color scheme for your photo book, check out the kuler website by cilcking HERE. 

1: We have now added Genuine Leather to our line up of beautiful lay-flat photo books. Our premium line of photo books offers rugged durability with a striking presentation. It comes in square, portrait and landscape shapes and four different colors, onyx black, quarry gray, ruby red and saddle brown.

2 :  Custom title functionality for Leather Lux & Genuine Leather photo books.  Members can now select  from default titles or enter your own title for the book. There will be 2 lines, each one contains not more than 18 characters.

3:  We’ve added no foil embossing for Leather Lux and Genuine Leather cover photo books. So members  will be able to choose stamping with gold, silver foil, or without foil (debossed).

4:Fixed import. Now our import will  work faster and be more stable for large number of photos from our different import sources.

5.Fixed fit/fill functionality for rotated images. After applying fit/fill rotated by 90 degrees, the photo element will keep its rotation.

6.   Fixed inner move in pan mode for rotated images.

We hope these updates and fixes will help you on your way to making beautiful photo books.

One of the promises that I made after I had my daughter (among the many) was that I would no longer let my personal photos collect proverbial dust in the vortex that is my archiving system. Vacation photos, holiday photos, family photos…if they weren’t for clients or as part of a photography project, once I started shooting digital I would rarely make prints. Everything changes when you have kids and for me that included not just how I make memories but what I do with them once I’ve recorded them. To this day my family goes through old albums and I love when my dad posts old photos on Facebook…especially when I’ve never seen them before. Making prints of memories is important!

So I solved the problem of my personal photos taken with my dslr because I started to make books and prints for gallery walls but what about my iPhone? I have over 11,000 pictures on it! (#issues #hoarder) I’ve made prints of those before too but I wanted to make a special photo book just for Lucia.

While most kids play games and watch shows on the iPad my girl likes to go through the camera roll and scroll through old photos – “remember this day, mommy?” is one of her many catch phrases. So I teamed up with my friends at Adorama to make an 8×8 photo book of some of our favorite family memories as recorded by my iPhone and processed on Instagram.

The book

The hardest part for me was selecting the pictures (no surprise).  The book itself was so simple to make because the program online is very straightforward and you have full control over the style and design.  There are many different templates to choose from for every size book available and in fact for someone like me who is terribly indecisive there are almost too many templates.  I narrowed it down to five and then just went with my favorite.  After selecting your images and loading them up to the website (a process that is very fast depending on your internet connectivity) you just drag and drop them into the space in your blank book and save as you go.  Ta-da!  I even cheated a bit and was able to drag a few photos into blank spaces that weren’t meant for images and I was able to play with the size a bit to make photos larger than the space allowed them to be.  You can select photos from a number of different sources including Picasa, Flickr, your Adoramapix account and your computer.

I’ve been working with Adorama for personal and professional projects for years so it was no surprise to me that the quality of the book is top notch.  The pages are printed on real photographic silver-halide paper with a lustre finish so the colors are bright and saturated with great flesh tones.  For photography junkies like me this is a huge deal.  They use real archival quality photo paper so it’s fade-resistant and you even have several paper choices.  I also really like how thick and sturdy the pages are.  Another really important feature for me when I made this book was that the HD glossy paper is fingerprint resistant!  Hello?  Amazing!  I usually prefer matte paper for my prints but I was making this book specifically for my toddler to thumb through, carry with her, and put her hands all over it so this feature was a major draw for me. 

Here’s what I did: so simple…

1.  Visited Adoramapix.com and chose the perfect book size

Once I decided that I wanted to use my Instagram photos (since she loves them so much) I realized that the 8×8 format was perfect for the square-cropped pictures.   Since I’m terrible at editing to make a concise collection I went with a 26-page book.  Not too many, not too few.  I felt like it was the perfect number of images to keep my toddler’s attention and just enough to capture the feeling of the general “theme” I decided to go with.

2.  Chose my images

With so many pictures to choose from I had a very difficult task ahead of me so I just went with favorite images of the last year or so that were strictly of our family. A NYC-themed book of Instagrams is up next but I wanted to make this one for her first.

The front cover gave me the option of choosing four photos.  I opted to leave the title off the front and put it only on the spine.  You can choose from several different fonts and sizes.

The back cover.  I loved that I was able to have one large photo on the back to balance out the four photos I chose for the front.

Thank you to Monica Shulman who inspires photographers and artists through her blog  called Ciao, Chessa! .  It is a photography and lifestyle blog dedicated to people who appreciate the little details that make life amazing. Since its birth in 2008, her blog  has evolved into a place where she talks about art, photography, travel, motherhood,  living in New York, and the people and things that inspire her.

I wish I could tell you that every photo book I’ve done has been a wondrous masterpiece – inspiring the amazement and admiration of all those who are fortunate to gaze upon it. But admittedly even I make mistakes sometimes (gasp!). Honestly, I don’t think I would feel qualified to write my photo book review blog if I didn’t hit a few bumps along the way (and learned from those mistakes). It enables me to share my experiences with you and hopefully I can help point out potential issues ahead of time. My blog is all about encouraging everyone to make a photo book and to not be intimidated to give it a go. I’m a firm believer in trying everything at least once (okay correction – most things at least once). I bet when you see your photos in a designed book (or when that special someone gushes over the professional-looking gift you made them) you will be quite addicted to photo books as I am and will want to make more and more! I have repurposed these tips from an earlier blog post, but this time with AdoramaPix in mind.

Here are some of my best tips. Before you hit that order button make sure to go through this checklist!

1) Consistency – typically I advocate using no more than one to two font styles in your books for a cohesive look. Go back and make sure that you’ve been consistent in both font size and type. I usually use one font for the main narrative, and a different font for the titles. I have accidentally used a different font on a couple pages of a book before, but luckily they didn’t look that noticeably different (except to me because I knew!) Had I checked more closely I would have caught it. When using AdoramaPix, I just copy the same text box and paste it on the new page so I know that the size and font have remained the same without having to reselect any settings. AdoramaPix’s text tool also automatically remembers your last font and size selected, so it makes it easy to be consistent. Change your mind about the font you want to use? With AdoramaPix, you can select more than one text box and make changes to all the text boxes on that page with a single action. Just make sure to go back and double check that your global font change hasn’t altered your layouts unexpectedly;

2) Alignment- are your photo boxes and elements aligned properly? There are two features I recommend checking in AdoramaPix. If you hover over an image, you’ll see an “X” and “Y” coordinate. The “X” represents the horizontal coordinate while the “Y” represents the vertical coordinate. So, if you want to make sure two photos are aligned on the left, make sure the X numbers are the same. If you want to make sure the photos line up at their tops, make sure the Y numbers are the same. You can also turn on the “moved objects will snap to grid lines” feature which will make sure the photos align with the grid when you lay them out;

3) Margins – did you put anything too close to the edge? Most programs have guides that show you a safe zone. Anything inside those borders will print, but anything outside may get cut off when the book is printed and bound. Sometimes this safe zone is rather generous, but the printers have to have some leeway. If you have chosen one of your photos to be printed as a full bleed (where your photo fills an entire page or spread) make sure there’s nothing on the edges of the photo that is essential. If there is, then you may want to think about making the photo a bit smaller than the entire page (and add a background) so you’re guaranteed no image loss. When you check the book preview the software will give you a warning if you have elements too close to the edge so you can go back and make any edits before ordering;

4) Gutter – “mind the gap” – similar to #3, typically I suggest to folks not to place anything important in the center of the spread, especially text or people’s faces. With AdoramaPix however, there is no split or gutter, so you’re free to design across the center of the spread which is great if you want to do a full page bleed (where a single photo spans both pages of a spread). Still, whether or not you want to put someone’s face in the middle of the spread is a personal preference, as you may not want to have the focal point of your image appear with a crease down the center;

5) Spelling and typos – use the software’s spell check where possible (AdoramaPix’s is built-in and you’ll see a red line appear under a word the software doesn’t recognize). If it’s not available, copy and paste your text in your own word processor (like Microsoft Word) to double check your text. For more on the right way to add large amounts of text from an external source such as a document you already typed in Microsoft Word or Word Perfect, check out the link. I can’t stress this enough – if you choose to paste directly from Word or an e-mail, chances are you will also copy some formatting code that will be “invisible” to you and will not show up as an error in the preview, but will only show up after you get the printed book – eek! It also may be helpful when possible to have someone else check your narrative or captions – spell check won’t catch errors such as missing words for example;

6) Photo Quality – AdoramaPix has a photo quality indicator that pops up telling you your photo is not of sufficient resolution, but keep in mind that it’s not an indication of whether your photo is too light or too dark or whether your subject has red eye for example. So make sure to scan through your pages to see if any photo stands out in a bad way, or appears off in comparison to the other photos. Sometimes you can’t tell a photo is a bit off (such as one photo being considerably darker than the others), until that photo is put along side another photo. I have often gone back after running the preview to adjust some photos and re-upload them to the book. Some photo companies have some photo editing tools within the program, but many do not or they are very limited. Err on the side of brightening your photos – most photos end up printing darker than what you see on your screen (it’s hard for printed matter to match the luminosity of our computer screens). Don’t have post-processing software? Check out my posts on free photo editing tools here.

So, there you have it! Be sure to run the photo book software preview before you order while keeping these tips in mind!

Are you new to photo books? You won’t want to miss my “How To” series on photo books. This is the best place to start and has my best tips! Happy Photobooking!

Plus, this is for charity! Profits from the sale of these books will go to The American Red Cross.  We couldn’t think of a better charity to give this money to, than an organization that  helps rebuild America after natural disasters.

So here is a general breakdown of how the contest will work. Now through December 31st, 2012, we will be accepting submissions for The Great American Photo Book on our Facebook page.   The top two entries with the highest votes per state will be submitted to the Adoramapix Judges. We will then choose the best image to represent that state in the photo book. This way it is a collaboration between you the photographer and us the publisher.

Now, with any contest that we run there is a list of Rules and Regulations.  For this contest, you must:

1. Be a fan of ours on Facebook. (This is where the actual contest will run on Facebook)

2. Only one entry per person. You must put the name of the state in the title of your submission.

3. Photographers who submit images, must own the copyright to those images.

4.  And of course, any contest we run contestants must adhere by our 2012 General Contest Rules and Regulations.

* Please note.. #19 in our General Contest Rules and Regulations has been amended for this contest.  Photographers will retain rights.

(Copyright: By entering the Contest,  Photographer will retain all rights to photograph he/she submits. By entering the Great American Photo Book Contest, photographer hereby grants Adoramapix (sponsor) (1) a nonexclusive, unconditional, unrestricted, worldwide, irrevocable ,royalty-free license to reproduce, reformat, adapt, creative derivative works, distribute, transmit, display, make available and perform the photographs photographer submits to Adoramapix (sponsor) in and/or through any and all medium or media, now known or hereinafter developed or discovered, and (2) the right to use your name, city and state in promotions and other publications. Sponsors’ use of the submissions may include without limitation, advertising, promotion and marketing for this contest only The .Great American Photo Book for this year and subsequent years. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use. Additionally, by entering, each entrant grants to Adoramapix the unrestricted right to use all statements made in connection with the Contest, and pictures or likenesses of Contest entrants, or choose not to do so, at their sole discretion. Authorized Parties will not be required to pay any additional consideration or seek any additional approval in connection with such use.)

5. Contest runs from November 1, 2012 to December 31st, 2012 midnight EST.

Winners will be announced in January. Winners will receive an 8×12 and or an 8×10 Aluminyzed Metal print of their winning image. Their photo will be published in The Great American Photo Book and your name will be featured in the book credits, as well as an online announcement. You’ll also receive an icon you can put on your website or blog, to let friends or clients know you won. The finished book will be made available for purchase online.  The luxurious photo paper pages of this beautiful lay-flat hardcover book will make a great addition to any household, and last a lifetime.  Best of all, profits from the sale of these books will go directly to the American Red Cross.. an orgranization that helps those in need during natural disasters in America.