susan sabo photography

hey, you! yeah, you there...the one with the mom!

While I'm working on my brand spanking new site/blog, I've got a Mother's Day offer to share. Yeah, you know your mom loves photos of you, or you and her, or, maybe her and her dog :)

From now until June 30, I'm offering a 1-hour portrait session for only $150. Way better than flowers...although flowers are really nice they do get that stinky smell when they're a few days old. I guarantee you that the pictures you get from a session with me will never start to smell.

Since Mother's Day is coming up soon, you can also get this for her as a gift certificate.

And don't worry, even though your mom really loves her dogs and/or cats, I'm sure she really loves you too, and will want you in at least a couple of shots.

3 reasons you're not so special

Everyone thinks about getting a professional portrait session at one time or another; really, no matter how many pictures you've taken on your point & shoot, you know it would be awesome to have some really nicely done shots of you, your family and/or pets.

But even though so many people want to have their portrait taken, very few actually take the step and do it. Why? It's always the same three objections, and for those, I have these three basic answers:  

    1. Nobody's kids listen

    2. Nobody's pets behave

    3. You look way better than you think you do.

A long time ago, after my first kids' shoot, I called a good friend of mine who had been doing that for years, and I asked her, "how do you get the kids to do what you want?" and she laughed and replied, "you don't!"

So now you know the truth. You're really nothing all that special (in the behavioral department, that is). Ok, with that being said: most professional photographers have a bag of tricks they use to get kids and animals to listen, and pretty much all of them involve bribery. I keep a baby bottle, a sippy cup and kids and pet snacks in my studio. I also keep baby cold medicine and Benadryl (no, you're not the first person to think of that and no, that doesn't make you a bad parent).

Kids grow up so quickly--as the mother of a 28-year-old, I can tell you it really is the blink of an eye--and pets are with us for such a short time; I always encourage people to get professional portraits done at least every couple of years. It's totally, 100% worth it.

So book your session and don't be afraid. Ask your photographer how to prepare; he/she should give you a list of do's and don'ts for the day. And don't go into it thinking that everything is going to go smoothly and your 1-year-old is going to think, "yeah, um, I'm going to sit my diapered fanny down right here where they want me to and I'm going to let this person stick this thing in my face and let all these lights go off around me and dang it, I'm going to love it!"

So you take time to play; you take a time-out; you take a walk around the block; you and your photographer do whatever it takes to get everyone comfortable, including yourself, and get the shots. Remember, when you're looking through a photographer's website or portfolio, you're seeing the best of his/her work. You're not seeing the shots it took to get there.

So for your information and enjoyment, here are some of the shots that it took for us to get there this past weekend.

  

  

  

 

you know it's going to be a great vacation when you can't wait to start taking pictures

Just got back from a week in New York, loved loved loved it. I stayed in Cold Spring, in the Hudson Valley, with my good friend Jen. we ventured into the city for one night, stayed at the most awesome Pod hotel, and did the tourist thing at Times Square.

Second best thing about this trip is that I left my pro camera gear behind and took only my Olympus point-and-shoot. What a liberating experience! I think that one big mistake I made when I started to load up on pro gear, and shoot for money, was to put away my point-and-shoot and stop making time for shooing for fun.

That's what the last week has been about; just shooting for fun and having a blast.

Is it Photoshop or Witchcraft?

The new version of Adobe's Creative Suite (CS5) was released today, and it's got some amazing tricks up its sleeve. Most notably, Photoshop's new "content-aware" feature that lets image editors do some amazing things with just a couple of clicks; tasks that used to require some pretty in-depth knowledge of the program and a hefty amount of time.

It's also sparked a debate among photographers about the use, or overuse, of image editing software to do a job that should be done primarily by the photographer when composing and taking the image.

So how does this affect you, a client, who is looking to hire a photographer?

Well, in lots of ways. For one thing, like the advent of the digital camera, it (in a way) suddenly makes everyone a PS "expert." I use that term loosely, of course, but the fact is that with each iteration of software like this, the end user is required to know less and less about the basics of editing. It also allows photographers, and image editors, to take what might be considered a "reject" and make it all shiny and new.

That might sound pretty good to you at first, but heavy Photoshop use is, in my opinion, a sign of lazy shooting. Textures, cross processing and special actions aside, the longer your photographer is spending on programs like Photoshop, the less time they are shooting, and the more they are becoming computer techs. (Of course I am excluding fine art photographers who produce a particular look or feel with their photos; looks that can be achieved only with editing software; like tints, for example.)

I don't heavily process my images. That doesn't make me better or worse than other photographers; it's just a personal preference. When I load your RAW images into my computer, i like them to be as clean as possible so that, ideally, the only changes I'm making are tweaks; color balance; brightening, etc. 

Something to think about when you're interviewing photographers. Ask them what image editing software they use, and more importantly, what they use it for.