Related Posts

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  Tips for Photographing Families with Autism

  The whole reason that I (Rachel) started into photography was because my oldest two boys are autistic. It was almost impossible to get a decent family portrait. For almost a decade we went without because the harsh flashing of the chain studios and the bewilderment of those taking our photographs just was impossible to overcome.

  As our family grew, I became more and more restless about this state of affairs and got a camera and started to voraciously learn all I could about photography so that I could capture our family’s memories and HOPEFULLY get a family portrait.

  A few years ago, the first portrait was realized and I am overjoyed. Crystal took the images and I did some head-swapping and it hangs proudly in my home.  I have since also gotten an image of all 6 kids after Max, my 3-year-old, was born.  And then another with all 6.  And then I got one with all 7, just a bit ago.  So I am blessed many times over now.  I also have realized the importance of having images of my family and the sadness I felt over not having one, and so I do all I can to photograph families I know with autism, so that they have one less thing in their worry bucket. So, I’ve had a lot of opportunities now to photograph and interact with these wonderful families.

  I wanted to write today to those in the position of photographer to these amazing families, because it can be a little daunting to enter into these situations.

  The main point I want to stress today is…don’t stress! I know it is natural to feel a little trepidation at the thought of going into an unfamiliar situation. So I want to make it less mysterious.

  Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means that every child is different. Some are more severe and some are much milder. What works perfectly in one situation won’t be the answer in the next situation, and ya know, that’s ok! It’s just like any other family, really. Some kids are slow to warm up, some want to follow you home. It is important to listen to the parents about what their child likes or doesn’t like, etc. But taking family portraits is likely a fairly new situation to the whole family, so the parents might not know exactly how their child will take to it. So here are a few tips that have worked well for me.

  1) Don’t stress.

  When stress starts, it is easy to escalate. Parents can feel it, the kids can feel it and it spirals. So feeling calm and loose is a great way to perpetuate those good feelings. And ya know what? I can speak from personal experience here, these families will be THRILLED with just having ANYTHING, so don’t go in with undue stress, because it will throw you off.

  2) Talk to mom and dad ahead of time

  This way you know if Jr hates grass on his bare feet, or is sensitive to sounds etc. That will help you know how to be. Also talk about favorites. I have yet to find a child with autism who doesn’t just LOVE something. That way you can brush up a little on trains, or Buzz Lightyear or whatever so you can chat about it as you take pictures. That is a great way to get the child to look at you naturally and smile. Find out what makes them tick. Often times things like Thomas the Train and Buzz Lightyear, etc. are big favorites and you can find (or borrow) Pez dispensers which fit conveniently in your hot shoe. That helps the kids look into your camera and smile, and it is a built in reward mechanism for them! Awesome on both counts!

  3) When talking to mom, tell her to talk about the upcoming shoot to her kids.

  Walk though what will happen (“We will be getting dressed up. You will be wearing your red shirt and blue jeans. When we get there, she will have a camera and she will want to take pictures of you feeling happy.”) I find the more the child has heard about what is coming up, the easier it is to settle into the routine.

  4) Speak calmly.

  There might be some children who need you to be boisterous, but starting calmly will prevent an accidental overwhelming of the child. Lots of sensitivities to sounds, social situations, new situations, etc. So easing into the situation is a great way to go. Talking calmly and softly, using natural light where possible, and going at a slower pace is a great way to earn the child’s trust.

  5) Reward liberally.

  Ask mom to bring some of the child’s favorite motivators. It could be fish crackers, M&Ms, etc. When things are going well, let the child know how pleased you are and give rewards.

  6) Enlist the rest of the family.

  Explain to mom and dad and the rest of the kids that you are relying on all of them to do doing what they need to be doing so that the second the child with autism is looking, you can get that shot. Make sure they know that they are so important to you and that you are partners with them in getting this done. (Mom and dad are often the ones who need the most reminding! They want to look at their child and admonish them often and so when the child is looking, mom is looking off and talking. Oops!)

  7) Practice head-swapping.

  Ha ha. I know, I know, but it can really help reduce your stress if you know you can combine the best couple shots into one amazing image.

  8) Embrace the fact that sometimes...

  setting up a shot where eye-contact is not needed can be easier on everyone and give you a beautiful window into reality.  I often have to get those shots where my boys are not looking right into the eyes of others or into the camera.  It's not comfortable for them and it can be hard to coordinate them looking into the camera for long periods of time.  But some of my favorite images are the final shots from these situations.

  I know that lots of people love the images of everyone interacting, but often an image with everyone looking is what people think they are after. So being able to even create that in post is a great skill to have.   We have a super tutorial on head swapping on our YouTube page!

   

  

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  Posing Tips for Photographers with Henry

  And now it is time for us all to take some professional posing tips from the wise Henry.

  Henry has graciously offered to show us the amazing benefit that tilting a subject's chin down will provide.  Less double chin, bigger eyes.  What's not to love?  Henry demonstrates, because he knows that even a double chin cannot make him look bad.  This makes it much easier on us to show these posing tips, since we don't have to use one of our client images.  :)  

  Without further ado, take it away Henry!

  

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  How Batch Renaming in Bridge Can Save You Headaches - Pure Photoshop Actions Photoshop Tips

  As we are moving content over from Facebook that we have shared over the last few years, we came across this gem that we talked about back in 2011!  Can't believe it has already been 3 years since we shared this!  We do this a little differently then we did 3 years ago, so here it is, updated and current! 

  We've probably all had it happen.  You have an amazing session.  You deliver a disk full of amazing images.  You eagerly await the client's enthusiastic email response and you get, "Wow!  We love ALL the images you gave us.  But we save IMG_0255 and IMG_0259.  Where are the ones in between?  We'd love to see them all!"  Ugh.  Maybe the ones in between were duplicates.  Or blinks.  Or REALLY wonky expressions.  Or out-of-focus.  But for whatever reason, you don't want to have those images out there associated with your brand.  But once the door is opened and the client thinks there are adorable images of their child that you're withholding, it can be a tricky situation to tactfully avoid (without sounding like you made 4 duds of images either.)

  So, we avoid this by renaming our images in Bridge.  (We also do from Lightroom, and we will be creating a post outlining the Lightroom steps for Lightroom too!)  This means your images will simply go from 1-whatever your last image is.  It doesn't suggest to the client that there are images floating around that could be AMAZING that they do not have and will never see.  Instead it looks like you delivered a great set and they are excited.  

  Afterall, drama avoided is the very best way to deal with drama.

  • Open up Bridge.  It is part of the Adobe Photoshop Program.  
  • Navigate to your folder of images.  We only batch rename photos, after, we have culled and edited the session.  That way if we find more images to edit, or we decide that an image we had chosen to edit, wasn't up to par, we don't have to rename. 
  • Select all the images that you want to rename.  I always add a star rating to my images that I want to keep when I cull my sessions, and then view by star rating of 1 or greater.  That way I only see the images that I have edited.  (As I only edit the images I have giving a star rating too)  You can select them all by choosing the first one, holding down the shift key and selecting the last image, and it will choose all the images in between.  We will go into culling, and how we cull a session in just minutes and a wedding in about 30 minutes, in another blog post

   

  and now you are only viewing the images you have marked with a star. 

  • Go up to your menu and choose Tools > Batch Rename

   

  • For the options, you can choose what you feel is best, however I just choose to rename in the same folder.  That way I am not taking up any more hard drive space.  I then choose the options of Text and that is where I enter the name of the client and date of the shoot.  That way I can search easily if a client has a question later on.  I then start my sequence at 01 or 001 depending on how many files I am renaming.  If it is a portrait session, I usually delivering under 99 files.  If it is a wedding I usually am upwards of 3 digits sometimes even 4 digits. 

  • If you need to add more information to the name, you can add option boxes but clicking the plus sign next to one of the options already present, and then choose one of the options from the drop down menu. 
  • Then hit rename.  Viola, you have all of your files renamed, and the client will never know how many images you took, or that 16 images are missing between shots due to duplicates, out of focus, bad expressions, bad lighting etc. 
  • Save your images as JPEG files, and either deliver to clients, or finish your Photoshop work on the files that need more touch ups and then save, or if you are renaming your JPEG files, Viola, you are done! 

  

   

   

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  Pure Lighting Tips--Edge of Shade for Flattering Portraits

  
  

   

  We are often asked how we can light whole groups so effectively.  This is a really easy thing to do.  It is especially useful for families.   When we shoot families we like to have areas where we can get some good shots in safe lighting.  Sure, we can play around and experiment, but getting a shot that we know the family will love in flattering light is our bread and butter.

  When we are shooting families we suggest places that we know will have areas of shade with backlight.  So, this is usually accomplished by light filtering through trees or bushes or in alleyways, etc.  The trees create a lovely area of "open shade."  The backlight filters through the trees and gives lovely hairlight and a beautiful and interesting background that helps the group to separate from the background.  

  The important thing to remember here that we NEVER situate our subjects deep in the shade.  There are a few reasons for this.  One, the further from the background our subject's can be, the better bokeh we will get.  And two, at the very edge of the open shade, there is beautiful reflected light that bounces onto the family.  So they will have backlight and a reflected front light.  We never use reflectors for family shoots, but it looks like we do, because this is how we set up the shoot.

  Below is an AMAAAAZING drawing I made.  (It sucks.)  But it shows how they are positioned.

  

   

  Ignoring the fact Rachel has NO art skills, you can see that we have the sun behind the trees, the subject in front of the trees at the very edge where there is no sun in the frame of the camera.  (I might actually be standing in the sun!)  The light from the non-shaded area then reflects back onto the family/group/subject.

  It is quite simple.  Once you set an exposure and white balance, this light stays the same, so you don't need to change settings much.  It is a very easy way to get your groups to pop out of the background.

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  Camera Raw/Bridge Basics

   

  Learning to use Adobe Camera Raw can be daunting and cumbersome.  Especially if you are new to the program.

  Here are 2 videos, showing you how I use bridge and ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) to edit my images.  

  I cover Batch Editing, Star ratings and how to use them effectively in a fast workflow, presets, adjustment brushes, radial filters, tone curves, using the straightening tool and more! 

   Video 1

   

   

  Video 2

  Don't forget about our Sale!  $99 for our ENTIRE STORE!  Never happened before and will never happen again!!  Hurry!  CLICK HERE. 

  Also don't forget to join our Facebook Group for chances to win free sets!  CLICK HERE

  Our 1st sky Swap is being discontinued on July 2nd!  Hurry and get your set for only $28!  CLICK HERE!

   

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  How to Find Lost Lightroom Panel

  Every few weeks we get a frantic email scrambling for help, because Lightroom has eaten a critical editing panel and a Pure friend is needing our help to restore their Lightroom to it's more usable state and help them find their lost panel.  Often (I am not sure why) the main panel that goes missing is the vital Basic panel with the main sliders for Exposure, Contrast, etc.  You can imagine how concerned people are when this happens.

  I created a video to walk our users through how to restore lost Lightroom panels, in case this ever happens to you.  There are a lot of tips in the short video, but if you need to get going quickly and don't have time for a video, the basics of restoring panels is to right click on any of your panel names (Basic, Tone Curve, etc.) and you'll bring up a list of all possible panels available and check marks for which ones are currently visible.  You can hide panels by unchecking unwanted or unused panels, and checking important panels that have accidentally gotten hidden or lost somehow.  

  If there are panels you don't use often, hiding those panels can help speed your workflow by decreasing the amount of time you spend scrolling through the panels, so even if you decide to do the opposite of this blog post, you can customize your workspace and save time.  

  

  Check out the video for more tips and tricks to customize your Lightroom interface and find those lost panels!