Tips for Photographers (T4P) is a weekly feature where I talk about a cool tip that I think will benefit my fellow photographers. For more T4Ps, click here!

Today’s Tip for Photographers is going to be about posing inspiration. Posing is probably one of the hardest aspects of being a photographer, and in my opinion, one of the most important factors in what separates a good photographer from a so-so one. It also completely sets the tone for the photoshoot and your “style” as a photographer.

My primary source of inspiration for my posing is magazines. My poor boyfriend can attest that I buy every single Bridal magazine I can find, as well as several high-fashion magazines such as Vogue and Elle, and I immediately run home and flip through every page, ripping out any poses that inspire me. I have a huge collection of tearsheets that I have collected over the past few years…

I used to paste these into a journal where I would make notes on each pose, what I liked about it, how to achieve it, what types of brides/dresses the poses worked best with…

Now I keep them organized into a binder, divided into categories such as “Poofy Dresses,” “Mermaid dresses,” “Bridesmaids,” “Bride and Groom,” “Groom alone,” “Details,” etc., so that I can easily find the tearsheet that apply to whatever it is I am shooting that day.

Before each session, I go through my binder and review the poses that apply to that particular day’s shoot, and I try to commit 2-3 of the poses to memory. I study them very carefully and try to burn the aspects of the pose that I like into my brain. Then, during the session, I will re-create those poses, but I will do something different to make them my own, such as changing the arm placement, lighting, angle of the body, or composition. After awhile, you will have a mental repertoire of images that you can work from during your sessions whenever you can’t think of something new or unique.

That’s it for this week. Hope you guys like the new feature! Let me know what you think

No major humpdates today.. This past week has been fairly boring. Jason and I spent the weekend at home, relaxing and enjoying our free time (well, my free time.. he was working most of the weekend). We did get a chance to go see Tropic Thunder, which was very entertaining. It wasn’t quite “the funniest movie ever” like I’d heard from some people, but it was a good movie, I would definitely see it again.

The biggest thing going on in the photography world right now is the announcement of the new Canon 5D Mark II. People have been waiting on this for years, speculating about what features it would include.. For those of you who don’t know much about photography, the Canon 5D Mark I is THE camera in the wedding industry, the vast vast majority of professional wedding and portrait photographers use that camera, so most of my colleagues were extremely excited for the announcement.

Today it was finally announced, and I think I speak for photographers everywhere when I say that it was underwhelming in every way. Megapixel count has been increased to a whopping 21 megapixels, which is more a burden than a blessing. Megapixels are used by the camera companies to dupe unknowing consumers into buying fancier cameras than they really need. In reality, anything more than three megapixels is pretty much a waste, and actually costs more in extra memory cards and time needed to edit the images.  ISO has been increased, which is just about the only good improvement. They added HD video capabilities, which is superficially cool but in reality a pretty silly gimmick feature. If taking video footage is your job, you should be buying a professional video camera, not shooting it from a DSLR. Frames per second is the same, number of focus points is the same, virtually everything that people have criticized on the original 5D remains unchanged.

All in all, it’s a pretty sad day for wedding and portrait photographers, in my eyes. Hopefully I can cheer some of you up by posting some of Mark and Jaclyn’s Day After session in a few hours!

Where oh where have I been?

Here is the short version:

I met with my favorite album company, the ONLY company I trust to make my wedding albums, Forbeyon! I am really excited to announce that I will be one of their Sponsored Photographers this next year. Anyone who knows me that when I have very good service or very bad service, I am extremely vocal about it, and my service with Forbeyon has been nothing short of impeccable, so I am more than happy to spread the good word about the great people at Forbeyon and their handmade, top of the line wedding albums. I have been singing their praises to anyone who will listen for years now. If you’re a wedding photographer and you’re looking for an album company, shoot me an e-mail and I will tell you exactly why I adore Forbeyon!

Then I jet-setted to Toccoa, GA (by way of Atlanta) for the much-anticipated wedding of Jaclyn and Mark, which I shall be sharing with you verrrrry soon! Here is an extremely unattractive photo of the loverly couple, me, and my second shooter extraordinaire Kelly Niemann, courtesy of my little point-and-shoot and some random car’s roof.

I came home to find the best gift ever, a pair of awesome Luxe Deluxe earrings from my new favorite bride ever, Mrs. Nikole Bordato!

I treated myself to a day of girly fun, including a new set of highlights and some side-bang, although sadly I have no good photos of it Then it was off to little ol’ Ruston, Louisiana to spend a weekend with Jason’s family. While we were there, we got to catch a Louisiana Tech game, Jason and his brother Joey’s alma mater. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE college football? It borders on an obsession.

Tragically, my own alma mater did not fare so well that day… I don’t want to talk about it… But thankfully Jason’s nephews Drew and Chandler were great distractions, and kept me laughing through my tears all weekend.

Jason and I took Sallie Mae on a tour of the Tech campus, and we found Jason and Joey’s bricks! Louisiana Tech has an awesome tradition of getting a brick inscribed with the names of each graduate and placing them on campus in a walkway in chronological order. So cool!

Then it was off to Joey and Jana’s new house for some delicious multi-flip burgers. Their friend stopped by with a surprise - her new pet squirrel! So random, but very very cool! (Side note: To anyone seeing this and thinking how cool it would be to get a pet squirrel, think again.. This squirrel was rescued, and is being taken care of until it reaches maturity and then will be released into the wild. In many places keeping a squirrel as a pet is illegal.. Stick to hamsters and gerbils instead!)

I also had the chance to have lunch with the fabulous Kelly Moore while I was in Ruston. I have admired Kelly’s business and her photography for a long, long time, but she also just so happens to be Jason’s good friend from high school and college! Coincidence? I think not! A lot of people ask me who I would hire to shoot my wedding photos if I were a bride, and the answer is definitely Kelly. Her style is, in my opinion, classic and timeless and very unique (which is a tough thing to achieve these days). She constantly inspires me!

When I got home, partially inspired by Kelly and partially exhausted from four months of 80-hour workweeks and not having a true weekend off since May (I still haven’t, really), I decided to sit down and revamp my schedule. From now on, I am officially taking all Mondays off. The only photography-related thing I will do on Mondays is answer critical e-mails from clients or respond to new inquiries, but other than that, I am taking Mondays to myself. My Saturdays and Sundays are almost always filled with weddings or portrait sessions, and if not, I am usually scrambling around the house to get other projects done. No mas! Mondays are now Fundays! Maybe now I can catch up on all those episodes of Bridezillas saved on my Tivo….

This past weekend I drove down to Houston to shoot the wedding of my old college roommate Alli and the man I drunkenly introduced to her, Matt. I will share that story later, but keep an eye out for her bridal photos in the next week. She is stunning! I also got to shoot a great engagement session with Jennifer and Anthony/TJ/Teej, who are two extremely fun and friendly people. Now that I have finally met them and seen firsthand how cool they are (although their friends have already e-mailed me to confirm their coolness), I can’t wait for their wedding!

This week I took my first Monday Funday, and predictably enough spent virtually the whole day cleaning. I enjoyed it though, so that’s all that matters! Last night my mom, sister, and I went to see the touring production of Mamma Mia. To say that my mom is obsessed with this show would be the understatement of the century. She has seen the movie probably 20 times (it’s still in theaters, by the way, and yes, she is STILL going to see it) and saw the Broadway show while we were in NYC, but she convinced me to come along and see the tour during its stop in Fort Worth. I’m so glad I did, it was hilarious! Do we look related?

I have quite a bit of catch up blogging to do.. Zi and Gary’s engagement session, the Kelly/Elkins wedding and Day After session, Alli’s bridals, Laci’s bridals, Jennifer and Anthony’s engagement session, Sarah and Drew’s Day After session… Whew! Stay tuned!

If you’re planning on seeing a fireworks show for the Fourth of July, you might be wanting to take some cool photos of the display. Here are a few tips I’ve learned from my experience shooting fireworks:

• Set your mode to shutter speed priority (usually Tv or S on the dial) and set your shutter speed to 5 seconds. Later, you can adjust the shutter speed to get more or less of the light streaks (I recommend 3-5 seconds).
• Use a low ISO, such as ISO 100 or 200, as long exposures can be somewhat grainy.
• Use a tripod! This is non-negotiable! Make sure you get one that will allow you to tilt your camera straight up and not fall over, just in case you end up directly beneath the fireworks.
• If your camera has a short timer option (such as a 2-second timer), use that so that the camera shake when you press the button doesn’t blur the image. Better yet, get a wireless or a remote trigger for your camera!
• To focus your camera, switch the lens to Manual Focus, and then turn the focusing ring all the way to the infinity symbol.
• Shoot, shoot, shoot! You will take a TON of photos, and probably only 5-10 of them will turn out well. That’s okay!
• Later, when you’re tweaking the photos in Photoshop, use the Burn tool and set it to “Shadows” at about 10-15%, then paint over the areas where you have smoke or haze. This will make the sky darker so the streaks of the fireworks stand out more.

All of the above tips are for people using SLR or DSLR cameras. If you’re using a point-and-shoot, look to see if your camera has a “fireworks” or “nighttime” setting. That’s your best bet! Don’t forget a tripod!

Here are some photos I took at a show a few years ago:

Good luck! Let me know if you get anything good!

Hello from Omaha!  This place is swarming with baseball fans from all over the country for the College World Series, but the REAL big event was Darbi & Neil’s wedding last night!  It was so beautiful, I had so much fun with them and I have a ton of stories to share, but that will have to wait a bit until I get the many, many photos edited!

I did want to share something with you all though.. At yesterday’s wedding, the shutter on my camera died, the autofocus on my most-used lens died, a flash went on the fritz, and we had a memory card go bad on us.

I am happy to report that none of these things interrupted the wedding day coverage AT ALL!  Whew!  We didn’t miss a beat, and we have a wealth of fantastic, beautiful images from throughout the day.  The reason for this is that we came prepared with backup cameras, many many lenses, backup flashes, and TONS of memory cards.  If we had not had backups in virtually every aspect of equipment, yesterday would have been a very tragic disaster, as there would have been parts of Darbi and Neil’s wedding we would not have been able to cover.

If you are a photographer, and you do not have backups for EVERYTHING (and possibly even backups for your backups), you should not be shooting weddings.  If you are a bride, you need to be absolutely 100% sure that your photographer has at least one backup camera, several lenses, a backup flash, extra batteries, and more memory cards than they could ever possibly use.  If your photographer is not equipped with this, you might want to rethink signing a contract with them.

In the future I’m going to post a lot of “Tips for Brides” and “Tips for Photographers” but no tip I can give will ever be more important than this.  Hopefully it will be of use to some of you!

Now I am off to shoot Darbi & Neil’s Day After session.  They are both pretty smokin’ hot, so that will make my job super easy!  I’ll be back in the Big D on Tuesday!

Well, I am trying to keep my promise to update at least once every other day, so here is some cool stuff happening in my world:

:: I don’t know if any of you know about Google Alerts, but it is a great little tool that e-mails you every time the Googlebots find a certain phrase on a website. For example, I have one set up for “Stacy Reeves” and “mist Photography,” so every time either of those phrases appear on a website, Google lets me know. It’s a great way to keep track of who is mentioning you or your business on the web.

It’s also a great way to find out things you didn’t know about yourself.. For example, apparently I died at a Shreveport convenience store in 1997. I also rescue Akitas in Kansas City, and I am an at-large member of the Hope Mills Youth Association. Cool, huh?

:: Jason and I received an invitation to see a test screening of 21. I love Kevin Spacey!! I will be sure to let you know if it’s any good

:: The super secret surprise is AAAALAMOOOST RRREEEADDYYYYY..

:: Last night I played in a poker tournament (I was all about poker in college), but the best part was, all the players were wedding photographers!! How cool! I have no idea how many people played total, but I made it to the final table I was totally stoked. I ended up getting taken out by the one and only Jessica Claire, who is a total poker all-star. I finished 7th, but next week I am taking it all!

The “Wedding Poker Stars” tournament happens every Wednesday at 9 PM CST. If any of you wedding photographers out there want to get in on the fun, e-mail me and I will send you the info! It’s an $11 buy-in, and the first three places win. It’s also a great opportunity to network with photogs from around the country!

:: Jason sucks at keeping secrets. You regular readers will know that we opened our Christmas presents to each other about a week before Christmas for no reason other than our own excitement. Well, Jason and I agreed not to exchange gifts for Valentine’s Day, and instead we are just going to do something fun with each other. I told Jason it was his job to make plans and surprise me, and naturally, the surprise lasted about 24 hours before he admitted what his plans were. I’m not going to tell you guys what it is until after we do it and I have photos to show, but I am SO EXCITED!!!

:: I shot an incredible engagement session about two days ago, and I am so wanting to show you guys the photos, but since I don’t have any sessions coming up for awhile, I am holding off until next week.

:: I’m still holding on to these FOUR bridal sessions that are all GORGEOUS beyond belief.. Maybe I can convince some of these brides to let me show you a sneak peek.. Jena, Jacqi, Alex, Courtney? Anyone feeling bold?

That’s it for right now.. Leave me a comment and let me know what YOUR Valentine’s Day plans are!