Kari Campos Photography | Chicago, IL

Among the things I learned while watching Jasmine Star’s creativeLIVE workshop were techniques for shooting, equipment advice, workflow, editing, photoshoot prep, attracting (and repelling) clients, website development, pricing, second shooting, seeing light, how to interact with clients, how to build a business, and about a billion other things. So, you can see my predicament. It’s hard to know where to start.

I guess I’ll start at the very beginning. Without equipment, there cannot be photographs (or a photographer to take them). So equipment is what I’ll touch upon.

What Jasmine taught me is that, contrary to what others may make you believe, you really don’t need the best equipment out there, every lens, and every accessory. Rent lenses to determine what you’d like and how you can use them before purchasing. Shoot with the camera you have now and push it to its limits. Learn everything there is to know about it and only upgrade when you’ve done all you can do with it. It’s so easy for a new photographer like me to always be wanting new equipment, but I’ve learned that I should work with what I have and use it to its potential.

Jasmine shoots with prime lenses (a.k.a. fixed focal length, not zoom lenses for those of you who aren’t photography inclined). She has her favorite lenses and she sticks to them. She has seven in all, but shoots with probably two or three for the vast majority of any given wedding. She never uses a tripod. She very rarely uses a reflector. She avoids flash (but will use it when needed). She uses what she has and makes the most out of each situation.

I like the fact that she uses 4 GB memory cards. That way, in case something happens to go wrong with a card, she’ll lose a maximum of about 125 pictures instead of many, many more if she were using bigger cards. I use a 4GB card now and have realized I need to order more.

And while we’re on the topic of equipment, let’s talk a little about camera settings. Did you know she never changes her white balance? It’s always on Auto. She says that she trusts her Canon 5DMarkII and that she can always change the balance in Lightroom if necessary.

(On a sidenote, I took her lead and put my setting on AWB for my first session. Granted, I have a Canon Rebel t1i that isn’t really comparable to her camera, but I learned that I don’t trust AWB in my camera. I had to make a lot of adjustments during post-processing. You live and you learn. Something that works for someone and their equipment doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you.)

In addition to AWB, Jasmine uses back button focusing—something I had never heard of before. So, I Googled (and Googled and Googled) and gave it a try. I love it. I’ll have to write a post dedicated to it.

Jasmine shoots solely in Manual. Again, this is something I want to dedicate an entire blog post to. Let’s just say that while I’ve shot in Manual quite a bit, I chickened out with my first session and shot in Aperture Priority.

And this is what blows my mind…Jasmine doesn’t METER. Can I please be her? She literally is able to read the light and know the settings. She takes a test shot, looks at her LCD screen (not the histogram mind you, just the display with the picture), and adjusts from there. No metering! To me this just seems utterly impossible. Am I just out of the loop and extremely light meter challenged, or is she an anomoly?

I’ll stop there for today. More tomorrow. I promise.

Waaaay back in July, I posted about Jasmine Star, one of the most popular wedding photographers in the biz, doing a 5-day online workshop live in August (big shoutout to CreativeLive).  As you can tell from the post, I may have been a wee bit excited.

 Why? Well, I’d been a long-time reader of Jasmine’s blog and felt some type of secret connection with her. Here was a woman, not much older than myself, who left Law School at a highly renowned school and decided to become a photographer after getting married. I feel like we have much in common, though I never went (or dropped out for that matter) of Law School. But I still know how she fills, and so admire that she followed her dreams. And look, four years later she went from knowing very little about photography to developing into one of the top ten wedding photographers out there. Quite the accomplishment I’d say!

 Anyway, back to the story. I knew watching the workshop live wouldn’t be feasible. I do have a full-time, highly unrelated job that I couldn’t skip out on. Bills need to be paid! And even though part of the workshop was over the weekend, it just so happened to be the weekend that R and I moved.

 So, I pre-ordered the recordings.

And the week after I watched them. Best.decision.ever. Okay, maybe not ever. But, in some ways yes—ever. The first week of September, I watched all of those recordings during the evening. R can vouch. I spent waaaay to much time on the couch ignoring him and instead focusing my attention on Jasmine and her every word.

 I took notes, I took lots and lots of notes. And I plan to share some of the biggest things I learned with all of you. And believe me, everything I learned seemed big. So, over the next week or two, I will share some of what I learned.

It will likely take more than one post so be prepared!

Over the last month and a half since starting this blog, my Weekly Wisdom posts have been chalk full of bullet points highlighting tips and tricks that I’d learned on a particular photography subject. I can honestly say that I’ve learned a lot in the past weeks. Having a weekly post devoted to a new subject makes me explore topics that I’ve yet to understand and holds me accountable to learning something new each week.

 But sometimes I feel like wisdom doesn’t have to come from a book or a website or from playing around with my camera. Bear with me here because I’m going to get a little sappy.

 Sometimes the best wisdom in life comes from within.

 This past week has been a crazy and busy one—one that I’ll admit to me not picking my camera up but a handful of times. Work was extra hectic and long. R and I signed a lease on a house out in the ‘burbs and started the process of packing up our little apartment. And over the weekend I attended a summit on another passion of mine—healthy living.

 The summit was a get-together of sorts of approximately 200 bloggers and readers of healthy living blogs from across the country (I fall into the reader category by the way). It was amazing to be surrounded by so many inspirational individuals, most of whom were young women around my age, pursuing their passions and changing their lives and the lives of others along the way.

 The summit inspired me to do a lot of self reflection, even more than I’ve been doing lately (which I feel is a lot). You could say in some ways that I’m trying to “find myself” in the world, because what I’ve come to realize recently is that the real world isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It was nice to see those my age pursuing what they love, not letting the real world compromise their happiness and what they wanted to get out of their time on earth.

 Because really, life is short, much too short to be unhappy.

 And it’s not that I’m all that unhappy either. I love being married to R—he’s just the best husband ever. And I have great family and a handful of great friends. I spend my free time doing fun things like eating out and exploring Chicago. But I still have this desire within me to better my life, to be happier, and to have a sense of fulfillment in what I do.

 So my Weekly Wisdom this week isn’t photography tips or tricks I’ve learned. It’s just that I’ve learned this…

 Only I can determine my future. Spending each day as I spent yesterday is not going to get me any closer to my dreams. I have to push forward. Step out of my comfort zones. Not worry about what others think. My future is in my hands, not anyone else’s.

One of the things that I find most challenging in photography is composition. Some might say you either have an eye for composition or you don’t. At this point, I would say I don’t. But I also don’t think that means I can’t develop an eye for it. So that’s what I’ve spent a lot of time doing this past week—I’ve read a lot about composition in photography and practiced a bit too. And I plan to keep learning about it for many weeks to come.

There are a lot of “rules” of composition that can be used as guidelines when photographing your subject/scene. Below is a list of tips I came across that I found helpful when considering composition:

• When  you are composing a shot, take time to look around your viewfinder and consider the way each element will be recorded on your camera sensor and how it relates to the overall composition of the photograph
• Each photograph should only have one center of interest (which may be one subject or a group of subjects); the subordinate elements should support and focus attention onto the center of interest, not detract from it
• People as subjects in a photograph tend to attract attention; if they are not meant to be your center of interest, have them look away from the camera, preferably towards the center of interest
• Utilize the Rule of Thirds
• Simplicity, more often than not, is key
• Look around your viewfinder for any distractions in the foreground or background and utilize different angles and viewpoints to eliminate them
• Most subjects are three dimensional and should be photographed at an angle (to the right or left or above or below)
• A low viewpoint/low angle (taken from below a subject angled up) gives the subject a feeling of strength and dominance, adds drama to the photograph, and greater size; many times it helps to separate the subject from the background and eliminates unwanted foreground or background distractions
• A high viewpoint/high angle (taken from above a subject angled down) helps to orient the viewer and minimizes strength and size of the subject
• Balance is key in composition and can be symmetrical or asymmetrical
• When shooting a horizon, place it high or low in your scene, not in the middle; it’s pleasing to the eye for vertical lines to be off-center too
• Diagonal lines are dynamic
• Rules are meant to be broken; you have to know the rules of composition to know who to break them in a way that is pleasing to the eye
• Experience will help you build a sense of composition

These tips helped me when I was practicing this weekend. As I took photos, I was evaluating the foreground and background to eliminate distractions (such as a pesky phone charging cord that would have been a pain to eliminate in Photoshop). I also tried several different angles while photographing. High, low, left, right, I tried them all, and it was fun to say how it could really change the feel of the photograph even though the center of interest remained the same.

On my Photography Resources page, I have a link to a website that has a number of great articles on composition. I would highly recommend checking them out.

What are your favorite tips for composition (or building an eye for it)?

See that bar of categories near the top of this page? Yeah, that black one. Now do you notice anything new? If you answered yes, yay to you! If no, booo hissss!

I’ve added a page titled “Photography Resources”. The majority of my learning in the past eleven months or so has been thanks to articles and blog posts I have found online. I typically star these items in my Google Reader, but it was rare that I came back to them, and there were far too many things starred. So I decided to create a page where I could share some of my favorite articles on photography. It’s a list that will be updated frequently as I come across great tutorials and articles.

I’m hoping that if any of you out there that are reading (there is someone out there right?) are looking for resources for learning photography, my list may be useful. I’m also planning on going back and reading through many of these articles often. I figure the more you read/learn the same material, the longer it will stay in your brain.

If any of you have favorite articles, tutorials, or websites, I’d love to know. Leave a comment and I’ll check it out and maybe even add it to my list.