they are putting on a family and kids photography conference/workshop next month called pictage u and i’m speaking and teaching at it! when they contacted me about being an instructor i was humbled and blown away…and then nervous.

i will be teaching right along side some amazing photographers who i know i will definitely learn from as well.  one thing i love about this conference/workshop is that it’s affordable!

you get to listen to each instructor speak on subjects that they are passionate about and ways that have helped their business to succeed.  i’ll be speaking on creative products, how to offer them, and how to sell them. as well as our studio space and why it works for us, and loads of more business info! we will also be doing a demo shoot where each photographer will spend time shooting a family or child demonstrating the way they approach that type of session.  and even better, the next day you all get to spend time directing and shooting the models.  great portfolio opportunities!  it sounds like the perfect workshop to me. and i get to be a part of it!! there will also be mentoring sessions available for individuals as well.   i’ll be giving a mentor session on retouching and overall image improvement in photoshop. a crash course if you will to make your photos look even better! mentor sessions are a great way to learn quickly what you need to learn without spending loads of time and money in a classroom.  i’ll be offering mentor sessions to photographers in the months to come  covering many different aspects of photography. contact us for more information. we’d love to chat with you about mentor possibilities!

CLICK HERE go to the website to get more info and to learn about the other instructors.  i hope to see you there!

to read a recent blog post i wrote on products on the pictage blog go HERE.

we will not be taking any portrait sessions come this september through the winter so that i can get ready to be a mama. many of you know that we have a beautiful studio space in the near southside of downtown fort worth. we will continue to have this studio space and are interested in sharing the space with another professional.  preferably someone in the arts industry.   it will be open to all wedding professionals!  we are super flexible and will only be needing it during the days and again, these days are open.

if you or someone you know might be interested please shoot us an email with your questions!   if you’re serious about pursuing the idea let’s grab some coffee and talk!  the sky is the limit with this space.  don’t let anything hold you back, we would love to chat with you.  it’s possible that we will only share it with one other business, and it’s possible that it could be perfect for those who are needing to meet their clients from time to time.  our space has a “meeting nook” complete with a flat screen prepared to be hooked up to your laptop, which can allow you to show your clients slide shows of your work.

the building is a gorgeous fully renovated historic building.  we have an awesome restaurant, cat city grill right below our studio that jim and i like to frequent often (a great place to take your clients after a consult.)  there’s a certain buzz around the magnolia area with many unique, really tasty restaurants up and down the street.  i’m sure you can tell by now how much i love this place!  it really is a great place to have a business.  we are blessed to have many plano, and dallas area clients who gladly drive to our studio, so don’t worry if you have a large dallas clientele.

please email us at info[at]heatheressian.com

here is our beloved studio:

**UPDATE**

we’ve partnered with Vera Green Productions a talented all green event/floral design business in sharing our studio space.  we couldn’t feel more blessed and excited!

1. how did you get into photography, and how many years have you been shooting?

i’ve been shooting now for almost 10 years. i started out by taking some photography classes in college (pre- digital photography) and proceeded to assist and work for any photographer who would have me. i worked with wedding, commercial, portrait, and fashion photographers. thank you to those who allowed me to stumble my way through helping you! i would still drag the bags of some of my favorite photographers just to get a glimpse at the way they approach things.

2. what ps actions do you use?

i use 90% of my own actions, and the other 10% is made up of totally rad actions- oh snap! and a kubota- warm bw action. i greatly enjoy building my own actions from nothing ( for ex: i don’t use purchased actions to build my actions) and find it to be crucial in bringing my vision for an image to completion. but i do feel like purchased actions serve our community well, and at times can really take imagery to the next level. the only thing i think we should be careful of is not relying on our actions to make a good image.

i have some other thoughts about actions, so maybe i’ll share them in the next photographers post.

3. what equipment do you use?

i’m all canon baby! i shoot with the 5d and use many different canon L series lenses. i have the most wonderful think tank gear bag that is designed specifically for traveling, and fits perfectly in the overhead bins of airplanes. love love love this bag!

4. how many years have you been in business?

we are in our 4th year! so excited about that, and i can’t believe it’s gone by so quickly.

5. do you sell your high res files to your clients?

hang onto your seat folks, i have some strong feelings about high res files or “digital negatives” . we do sell them to our wedding clients because we think people like to have them for archival purposes. however, we don’t offer them to portrait clients. i’m not saying that we wouldn’t consider it but it would have to be super special circumstances.

here are my thoughts on why we don’t offer the disc:

i came from the film days when many people didn’t give away their negatives, it just wasn’t a common thing to do in the photography business.  i had the opportunity to learn the business side of print fulfillment, and i got to experience first hand actually working with clients and building relationships with them. so much of this experience drives the way i feel about giving a disc to clients. i’m blessed to have clients who trust me, and trust my vision for the session from start to finish. they want my help in choosing enlargements and what we call “story walls” or a series of images. it’s more then them wanting to print the photos for themselves. they want to purchase artwork of their loved ones for their walls, and we just so happen to specialize in this. i’ve also worked in a professional printing lab (shout out to cbc!) where i learned color and density correcting in depth, so i apply this knowledge to my editing of images.  for me, to hand the disc off would feel like i would be ignoring all that i’ve worked so hard to learn. and i enjoy editing and working with my clients just as much as i love to photograph them! so i would be sad to send the disc away with them .  and it kind of makes me squirm at the thought of professional photos being printed at wal-mart. not that there is anything wrong with wal-mart, but it is not a pro lab, and the colors could come back wonky and then heather essian portrait arts might appear to be a wonky photography biz.  we definitely lose potential clients from time to time for not selling the disc, but we realize that we can’t be all things to all people and we had to make business policies for our sanity. in all honesty we are so blessed to have loyal clients who don’t question this, and these clients are very supportive of our decision.

*muah* to our amazing clients!!

my last and final thought; and i promise to step off the soap box after this is: for me photographer=print fulfiller, i can’t do one without the other. i enjoy the entire process way too much. we own a photography business to make a profit and we don’t profit from our session fees alone, we’ve got expensive equipment and studio space to pay for each month which means we would be out of business at this point if we gave away the disc. yipes.

with all of that said, i do think that there is a place and a market for photographers who sell the disc, i just feel that they need to charge appropriately for the disc for their own benefit. we put long hours into our jobs working hard which takes us away from our spouses and children.  therefore,  hopefully we make more then minimum wage for doing so.

*if you’re not sure of what to charge for the disc or prints you can check out easy as pie pricing strategy for photographers. this will be some of the best money you could spend on your business. don’t be afraid to invest in your business.

6. do you have any employees?

i do not, i’m actually my husband’s employee. no, i kid, i kid. but he works with me full time running the business while i focus on the creative stuff! i’m so thankful to have him and don’t know what i would do without him. he really is the pulse of our business.  if done legally, employees for small businesses can be extremely costly (another reason to charge appropriately for your services) because employee tax is quite high. and hopefully you want to run an ethical business.

7. do you have a studio space? and do you think it’s necessary for a photography business?

we do have a studio space right on magnolia street in the near southside of fort worth. i don’t think it is necessary to have a studio space as a photographer. as photographers we are so lucky to have a business that can be run out of our home with minimal overhead. i say we keep it that way as long as we can. the goal in any business should be to try and keep overhead as low as possible (per my husbands advice). i think it really depends on the business. jim and i prayed long hours about our studio space and felt lead to move forward with it.  personally for us, we would not have moved forward without a complete peace because it was quite scary. the studio space has been such a blessing for us, and i still get giggly when i walk in the door! i just want to scoop up all my girly damask fabric and furniture and kiss it!

8. do you have workshops for photographers?

i about fell over when i read this email. what? me have a workshop? this is something i would love to do one day in the future.  however, i’m not quite sure i have the following to do so, but whatever God has in store for us, i’m game!

**if you have a question please send it over- better yet, add your question to the comments section of this post. i want to get to know you all better! i’m happy to help if i can. please don’t be alarmed if it takes a few days for me to get back to you, it will probably mean i’m deep in editing or design work.**

and just for fun, considering i’ve still not shared many europe photos from over a year ago…here is a favorite of mine.

Cinque Terre, Italy

*this was the real light folks! not much ps work done at all on this image. yes, i would like to move to italy. i guess i’ll settle for photographing weddings there instead any italy brides out there…call me.

my  *g o r g e o u s * cousin, kara. more to come from her session very soon.

this image will be displayed as a 24×30 canvas gallery wrap…it will definitely be a show stopper at the wedding!

*UPDATE* THANK YOU TO ALL OF YOU WONDERFUL PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO EMAILED ME TO LET ME KNOW YOU WERE INTERESTED! THE POSITION HAS BEEN FILLED.  I NEVER EXPECTED THAT MANY RESPONSES, THANK YOU ALL! I HOPE TO GET TO WORK WITH EACH OF YOU IN THE FUTURE.

it’s not too late to schedule your holiday portrait session!!

*the deadline to place your christmas card order is november 13th* however, we can fit in new years cards if you order at a later date. i happen to love new years cards myself.

to place your card order please call the studio at 817.201.9401 {select the card that you like and feel will suite your photos best. take down the number and name of the card and contact us to place your order!}

for more information you can call or email us { info at heatheressian.com }

[PRO PHOTOGRAPHERS: you can order this set of christmas card designs right here on our design site!]

one of my great friends is the fabulous Ksenija Savic of Ksenija Savic Photography. Ksenija & i met in December of 2007 when she documented my sister-in-law’s wedding. we instantly clicked that day, and have been friends ever since. the other day, Ksenija & i were talking and we both realized that although every photographer is different from each other, both she & i specialize in fine art photography and tend to have a longer turn around time due to the process that goes into editing, post-processing, etc. we feel it’s crucial for our clients to know that every photographer is trained differently, and specializes in different areas of photography, therefore what’s right for one photography business owner may not be right for another. so the question that we discussed was :

why does it take so long to receive my wedding/portrait images?

{Ksenija and i decided to colaborate on the verbiage of this post}

while we’ve been lucky to not have anyone ask this question, at times maybe we wish you would! we wonder if you might be asking yourself this question, or just plain want to know more about the logistics of it all!

recently we saw and were inspired by a simular post on Anne Ruthmann’s blog {a lovely & awesome photographer} while we agree whole heartedly with everything she expressed in her post, we decided to share our process as well.

so today, we decided to share with you a bit about the process we fine art photographers go through the minute your session, or wedding is over. however, just to make it easier, let’s use a wedding for the example!

step one:
we load all memory cards to the computer in order to properly back up your beloved photos.
then spend what seems to be a NEVER ENDING process,
burning dvd’s of these files to make extra sure the images are safe, as well as backing them up to an external hard drive!!
EXAMPLE: 3500 images = 8 – 10 hours (MINIMUM)

step two:
all thousands of images are reviewed (often times up to 4000 images… yes 4000)!!!
one by one, we choose the best of the best images, to help make your life easier.
the idea behind narrowing down images, is to make sure only the most perfect shots are edited and given to you.
we take so many to make sure we can have a grand selection of every moment!!!
this process can take hours & hours looking at each individual image, to decide whether to keep or not to keep.
EXAMPLE: 2500 images = 2 – 3 hours (MINIMUM)

step three:
somewhere between 100 – 300 top favorite images are selected and then given the very special artistic effect
that is custom by photographer’s style and makes your wedding unique and special!!
this is the process that takes the most time, energy, and personal touch, as well.
in order to provide you with the beautiful, one of a kind, fine art you invested in, this process most definitely cannot be rushed.
EXAMPLE: 75 images = 10 hours (MINIMUM)

step four :
a blog post is created so that you have a great sneak peek to be able to view, share & enjoy some of the top faves from your day!
everyone does blogging a little differently, however for me, i really love being able to make my blog posts as special as possible because of how much i connect with my clients. i want this to be the time that you get to view the best of the best, the most moving & memorable images. an average blog post from start to finish takes me about 24 + hours (MINIMUM).

step five:
color and density is corrected with each and every image. images are cropped if necessary.
Because your wedding was shot in a multitude of different lighting situations each image can have a different correction needed.
EXAMPLE: 2500 images = 21 hours (MINIMUM)

step six:
the images are loaded to an online proofing company.
depending on the photographer’s system and the on-line company used…this can take several days. And inevitably my internet decides to act up right in the middle of a wedding upload
EXAMPLE: 2500 images = 48 hours (MINIMUM)

…so now you can see it has been a MINIMUM of 117 hours – just to get to this point! this of course doesn’t include other weddings & sessions shot, client meetings, daily emails, phone conversations, downloading/backing up, orders made, album designs, etc. that all happen in the ‘in between’ time either!

****PLEASE NOTE****! both Ksenija & i feel it’s super important for all to know that we as photographers each have our own way of doing things. some photographers have a team of editors,,, and others do it all themselves there is truly no right or wrong… which is what makes it an art & so special.

all of us have a different style and approach. what is MOST important is the fit. finding the right person to capture the memories of your special day who also has the style that makes your heart swell,,, because after all, we are around you the entire day, too!!!

another thing that both Ksenija & i firmly believe in is that what counts in the end is the quality of your wedding photos. when you see how much you love, LOVE them, you will be sure it was worth the wait!!!

and then, you will have all the years of your life to relax, share & enjoy them!

and just for fun… here are a few more top fave images from this past year that have all gone through the meticulous process mentioned above!