A Great Success vs. Greatly Successful

Having worked in the fashion industry for years, one of the core values of our company was to "do more with less..."; this gave opportunities for lots of cross-training and my interest surrounded work on the opposite side of the lens moving forward. From Betsy Johnson to Tommy Hilfigure, I was given tasks to capture clothes in new ways, thinking outside of the perverbial box.

Now in 2021, anyone can be a photographer with a camera on their smartphone and the Lightroom app, slap on a filter and boom! You are going to land a few interested instagramers or likes on your mediacore Facebook page. Or will you? What does it genuinely take to be considred a professional photographer? How do you get your work published online and in magazines? And how do you get the coveted badges from websites...legally and properly? Allow me to share some of the winning practices that have allowed my work to move within the industry!

One of the biggest mistakes photographers make is thinking that being good at their art is enough to make a successful photography business. Having run my own successful photography business for over eight years, in addition to being a blogger, and a mother to two littles, I can assure you that it takes more than talent to build a profitable business.

I vividly remember my first stylized shoot while working with Amazon and Zappos.com, from the lighting setup to the clothes and props chosen specifically for the shoot. Looking back, I had absolutely no idea what the heck I was doing. Just look at this first photo. Yikes.

The photographer I was working with had no idea what they were doing either since this is what I was directed to do. But we learn best through failures, right?

While I thoroughly enjoy studio setups, my bread & butter is with natural light and positioning subjects accordingly. This does not mean I stop using artificial lights, instead using reflectors, bounce lights, etc.

The following photograph for a mattress company set my instafamous path in motion and I never looked back, because it's where my heart is and what my work is best known for: warm & whimsical.

This image is actually 7 individual photographs placed in layers to create one photo, and while technically sound and appealing, I still look back and wish I had done things differently. Shadow placement on the mattress (the 'shadows' on the surface are artifical and just painted on), the sunflare coming through the blinds on the right side of the photograph... why oh why didn't I fix the bed skirt?!

Again, learning through things that may not have worked properly since the mind and eye tend to catch things like that. We inherantly know the direction of the light on a subject in a photo and when the shadow is cast in the wrong direction, it makes your inner voice go, eh? What's wrong here?

So, without further ado... here is how I edit my images from weddings, family photo sessions, maternity, and sponsored advertising collaborations! 👇👇👇👇 The most important aspect of any photo for any subject: the path of the eye. Using Adobe photoshop here and a few overlays of sparklers for added effect. Short, sweet, and to the point!

The purpose of any image is to direct the eye, and in the photo used as a sample here to go over technique and best practices, I was not happy with how the focus was sort of all over. I wanted to frame the couple much more thoroughly with sparklers since the group was so small. Additionally, they're slightly grainy due to lighting situations and I needed to sharpen them specifically, then go back through after adding all the surrounding elements and blur/defocus them.

Again, adding more of a path for the eye to follow.

In the first image you can see its an enjoyable photo. In the second photo, you can see the eye is automatically drawn to the bride and groom, because they're framed by the surrounding elements.

I hope you found this how-to enjoyable and look forward to doing more like this in the future!

Thanks so much!

S.C. Clark