This week we spotlight one of our talented members, Emily Krbec, a Caledon, Ontario photographer.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I’m a 20-something mama to one very spirited 2 year old boy. I am married to my high school sweetheart and polar opposite. Our family a little quirky, and very silly. I’m slightly obsessed with purple. I honestly believe in faeries. And I try to keep a smile on my face at all times.

Where do you call home?
Wherever my boys are. Right now, that is in Caledon, Ontario.

How long have you been doing photography?

My love affair with photography started in high school, but the business side of things didn’t come about until after my son was born. I am now in my 2nd year of business and am loving every moment of it!

How did you learn photography?

I studied photography in college, and learned a lot about the basics, but feel like the real learning started afterwards, when I discovered the awesome photographer community online. I realized that portraits can be so much more than I had ever learned at school.

Who is your biggest influence/inspiration?
I’ve got inspiration flying at me everywhere! I like to get my daily dose of pinterest, check up on my blog reader, and look for local talent to share on my site The Friendly Photographer. I also gain inspiration from the everyday shenanigans of my son, traipsing through the aisles at the thrift store, and just living life! I also currently have a photog crush on Michele Anderson (Pinkletoes Photography).

Do you specialize in a certain area of photography? What kind of photographs make your heart sing?
I love to photograph newborns, children, and their families. I’m in love with images that are honest, unexpected, and beautifully lit. I love colour, but can also fall in love with a gorgeous black and white.

What’s in your camera bag? If you had to choose just one lens, what would it be?
I love my Nikon D700, and like to pair it with my 50mm 1.4. What a divine combination! I’ve also recently acquired a 24-70mm 2.8 and have been loving using it for sessions with speedy toddlers!

What’s your favorite photography accessory/extra?
I pretty much love my new Kelly Moore hobo bag

What does 4TLOF do for you & your business?
4TLOF gives me a place to talk shop, so I don’t have to annoy my husband every second of the day! It’s a place where I can chat with trusted professionals about all the nitty gritty details of my business.

What does being a part of 4TLOF mean to you?
Being a part of 4TLOF means being a part of a fabulous group of women, all working towards similar goals and helping each other achieve them!

Random getting to know Emily questions:

sweet or salty – sweet
morning or night person – either, as long as there’s tea
if you could meet one person, living or dead, who would it be? – Myself, 20 years ago – that would be crazy!
favourite quote – Turn your face to the sun, and let the shadows fall behind you – Maori proverb
If you had one wish… – to be eternally happy
I could give up every food except for… – ice cream

Where you can find Emily on the internet:
www.emilykrbec.com
www.facebook.com/emilykrbecphotography
www.twitter.com/emilykrbec
www.pinterest.com/emilykrbec
www.thefriendlyphotographer.com

Thanks, Emily! It was fun getting to know you a little bit better!

A group of photographers from our forum got together and set up a monthly challenge we call Fine Art Friday. The last Friday of each month we are going to post photos that aren’t our typical portrait shots. They are ones that we consider fine art.

There is no universal definition of Fine Art Photography. Sometimes you just feel it when you see a photograph. A photograph that one person might consider fine art, might not say “fine art” to the next viewer. Fine Art Photography is more about the photographer’s creative vision for a photo.

We have members doing macro work, still life, florals, landscape and everything in between. It’s been exciting to try new things and see our visions unfurl.

If you’d like to see our photographers’ work, we’ve created two blog circles. Feel free to jump in and circle through the blogs. We hope you enjoy your trip!

Start here for Fine Art Friday Group One – Rachel Noah a Camas WA Photographer
Start here for Fine Art Friday Group Two – Story of Life Photography Bergen County NJ

We wanted to give a shout out to another fabulous Fine Art blog circle created last year by the talented Nichole Van. I have admired her work for years and been to two of her fabulous photography workshops. She is one of the most creative photographers I’ve ever met. She has some photos that, quite simply, just take my breath away. Nichole’s group is called Elevate-A Fine Art Exploration and the photographers participating in it have shared some amazing fine art photographs. Pop by her blog and check out their circle. This is my favorite of her Elevate-A Fine Art Exploration series and a great place to start.

Just because I can never write a blog post without adding a photo… here was my second choice for this month’s challenge, the photo that didn’t make the cut but still sings to me:

In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

Kay Pickens is a photographer in Columbia, MO and St. Louis MO. She loves to photograph the birds out her office window in all types of weather but as a sunshine, warm-weather-loving woman, photographing the birds in the snow is one of the few parts of winter she enjoys…

Twenty-twelve. The new year hits. Time to make goals and start fresh. I love a new year. It seems like you have a fresh blank slate to start over with…and create of it what you will.

This year many of the photographers on our forum are doing some kind of personal photography project. Time to up the artistic juices and refill the creative well.

There are all types of options for personal photography projects. 365-where you shoot a photo a day. Or a 52 week projects where you shoot a photo a week and post it online. Sometimes these 52 week projects have themes, or you can share them with a friend. A my world/your world look on life.

There are 50 days of taking a photo with your 50mm lens.  Britt Anderson, a photographer on our forum, is doing…85 days with her 85mm lens.   Or 35 days with your 35mm lens–you get the picture. (pun intended)

Many of the women on the forum are doing Project Life this year. Sometimes we are so busy taking pictures of other people and families for our businesses that we neglect to take photos of our own families.  Many on the forum are making a commitment to take time to capture more of their own families this year.

Other popular options for photography projects:

- macros
- self portraits
- pick an object that means something to you and shoot it in different locations in different lighting
- My town. Shoot all those sights around your town that you haven’t made time to go capture.
- One location in different seasons and different lighting
- Sunrises or sunsets
- architectural shots
- landscapes
- food photography
- night shots
- learn a new skill or technique like off camera flash
- pick a grittier topic like homeless, or single moms, or homecomings or any topic that grabs your imagination

There are so many options out there where you can forget your biz for awhile and just shoot a project that means something to you personally. Something that will light that creative spark. Share them on social media like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or your blog so people can follow along (and cheer you on).

Link us up in the comments if you’re doing a personal photography project in 2012. We’d love to see what you’re doing!

Kay Pickens is a Columbia MO photographer who has not quite made up her mind what her personal photography project for 2012 will be…but she swears she’ll make a decision just real soon now.

I asked all of our members to send me one favorite photo from 2011.  I know how hard it is to pick just one because I’m sure most are like me and have different things they like about different photos.

So here they are, our 2011 Favorite Photos!

Thanks Ladies!

Jolie Starrett

The Elf on the Shelf tradition has exploded this year thanks to Pinterest.  Our family elf, Fred, has been with us for 4 years.  And this year, he’s gotten a little more active than years past. 

Our members are getting in on all the fun as well.   You can see what some are up to by following us on Pinterest.

This is our Fred

And this is Laura Meeks‘ Elf

And this Kim Hill‘s elf

On November 11, 2011, each of us took a photograph to commemorate the 11th day of the 11th month of the 2011th  year since it’s a date that only happens once in lifetime.  Here’s a glimpse at what each of us was doing at that time.

Do you ever take the perfect picture then go to edit it and realize that all your angles are out of whack? Fear no more, use the SKEW TOOL in Photoshop! Here’s a quick tutorial.
BEFORE:

When you have your background layer selected, click Select>ALL or Ctrl/A.

Then click Edit>Transform>Skew

Then just use your mouse and drag the corners in the direction you need to in order to square up your picture and VOILA!

Here at 4 the Love of Focus, we are all professional photographers. We’ve legally set up our businesses, collect sales tax, pay our taxes and get registered in any way required by our city and or state or country. So, after you’ve gotten good at photography. You’ve practiced. You’ve learned photoshop and or lightroom. You’ve practiced some more. You’ve read everything you can to learn about photography and decide to start up a photography business. Where do you start?

First read this article on the MCP blog about pricing your work, and what you’ll need to earn/how many sessions per week to get the income you’re wanting to earn. If you’re still sure you want to start up a business then here are some steps I took when I started up my photography business a few years ago. Each step took quite awhile and it was often frustrating and confusing, but I kept plugging away at the list.

0) -Step zero is to really learn your camera, lighting, and post processing. Practice. Then learn some more. Practice. After that…

1) -Decide on a name for the business and register the domain name (I used GoDaddy. Make sure you don’t let a webhost register your domain name using the hosting company as the owner. You want to be the owner.)

2)-File a DBA (Doing Business As, also called fictitious registration) with the state. (This is needed in Missouri but varies by state.) If your city/state requires you to get a permit or register in other ways, make sure you do this.

3)-Apply for a sales tax number and send bond $$ for it if necessary. Find out what your state requires you to pay sales tax on. Prints? Session Fees? Digital file downloads? If you’re a lucky photographer who lives in a state with no sales tax, disregard this.

4)-Get quotes on insurance and purchase insurance–most/lots of homeowner policies won’t cover equipment used in a business nor cover you if someone gets hurt on your property while you’re photographing them if they find out you have a business. Get at least liability and equipment coverage. Try PPA (Professional Photographers of America), your insurance company, or State Farm (they have fairly reasonable small business policies). You can also get an errors and omissions policy, especially if you shoot weddings. This covers things like camera failure, CF card failure, etc.

5)-Set up accounting books. I used Quickbooks from the beginning so I could keep track of my start up costs (Tennille Kings Biz Books and Studio Cloud get good reviews too.) I would talk to an accountant at this stage of setting up your books. (I’m an accountant, so I talked to myself… I do run things past our tax guy too though.)

6)- Figure out your Cost of Goods sold and determine your prices. This step, in and of itself, is so important. Do research on what all should be included in your costs. I figured out a price list of where I wanted to be in the future, and came up with a PB (portfolio building) discount off of that.

7)-Decide policies and come up with a contract & model release. There are many of these available for free or for sale online. It would be good to run them past a lawyer in your state. There are many ways to handle your forms: you can have them printed on paper for clients to sign, as a PDF you email, or use Machforms,($39) or Google Forms and have clients fill it out online. There are also apps for the iPad or smartphone that have model releases that your client can sign right on your phone or iPad. As I said, check with a lawyer on what is legal for your state.

8)-Work on marketing/branding, get a logo, watermark, etc. Check out our vendor list at the bottom of the blog to get help with these.

9)-Set up a blogsite for your business. I use a self-hosted WordPress blog with the tofurious theme and a flash site for my portfolio with a mobile phone viewable option. At first you could use galleries on your blogsite and clients could email you their order.  You could choose to use Smugmug, Zenfolio or other online gallery options. I set up Photocart for ordering. ($329 one time purchase)

10)-Send test prints to labs and decided on a few labs to use.

11)-Get a Facebook Fan Page set up.

12)-I got a UPS Store P. O. Box at this stage. (I’m not always here to accept deliveries and I shoot on location a lot.) The UPS Store will accept deliveries from FedEx, UPS, mail, etc. This is totally not needed if you have a way to get all your photos, etc delivered safely and reliably.

13) Get a business phone number. I got a Google Voice number for my business phone #. It rings through to my cell phone, and I have it set up with a special ring so I know it’s a business call.

14)-Get business cards. I actually got a couple different styles of rep cards so I could have a variety of business cards.

15)-Get simple packaging supplies. You could try Rice Studio Supplies or Papermart or other paper and packaging supply companies. Be careful here though. It’s easy to get wrapped up (pun intended) in these kind of things instead of actually concentrating on improving your photography and growing and marketing your business.

16)-Start getting samples to show clients. Large sized photos, canvases, photo boxes, albums…whatever you’re planning to sell.

17)-Check out rules for photographers for different locations around town. Who charges a fee, etc. Scout out locations and make up a list of locations to suggest to clients.

These aren’t necessarily in any particular order, but I wanted most of these steps finished before I felt comfortable charging for my work. I’m sure I  have forgotten a few things, but hopefully these tips will get you started on the path of legally setting up your business. I freely admit I have no idea of how to legally set a business in other countries, but some of these steps should still be helpful.

My other advice would be to remember that sales tax, business registration, permits, ability to work out of your home, etc vary widely from state to state and city to city. Check it out for YOUR state and city. I am not a professional in any of these areas. Get professional advice from someone in your area.

Get professional advice (accounting, legal, insurance) wherever and whenever it’s needed. Get legal. Collect your sales tax. Pay your taxes. Operate as a professional. It’s confusing and time consuming to get set up as a legal photography business, but it’s a fabulous and rewarding career choice!

Once you get your business up and going, it’s time to concentrate on marketing your business. That’s what 4 the Love of Focus is all about. The forum has been a fabulous help in growing my business. We look forward to seeing you here in the future!

These tips were shared today by Kay Pickens, a photographer in Columbia and St. Louis, Missouri. Kay often combines her love of photography with her love of writing and her obsession with all things geeky.

When my boys were just babies, I had little time to focus on my photography so I took up the hobby of digital scrapbooking.  It was so new that there were not even any stores selling elements and papers which are now a common place item in hundreds of digiscrap shops.  During that early time in my digiscrapping days, I was teaching myself Photoshop 5.  Yes, this is before the Creative Suite came along, and even before PS Elements came along.  Can I just tell you that I was so frustrated that I nearly gave up the new hobby before I really even started?!  Well here I am 7 years and seven Photoshop versions later…

Now that the kids are older and in school all day, I have found more time to pick back up with my photography business and even started designing products specifically for photographers a few years ago.  But back when I was learning Photoshop, I discovered the Photoshop tool called “actions” to be super helpful in creating quick work of repetitive tasks like re-sizing my snapshots of the kids so that I could quickly print out a bunch of 4×6′s to share with the grandparents.  As my Photoshop skills increased, my actions also became more involved and widely varied – including black & white conversion actions, color pop actions, comic book art action, chocolate conversion action, and so many more.

So in 2007, I started selling these Photoshop and PS Elements actions to other digital scrapbookers.  But since I’ve been refocusing most of my efforts on my  photography business much of  these last 2 years, it seemed only natural to offer the Photohop actions to photographers too!  So I thought that perhaps you’d like to see some before and afters of some images…take a look:

This is a stock image which was fine just the way it was.  Perhaps a bit underexposed, but not horrible by any means.  With a combination of a few different actions, this has taken on a completely new look.  This final image was achieved using Sharpening Action from the Pro Photo Set 4 plus the Eye Defined Action from Pro Photo Single 18 plus YesterYear Action from Pro Photo Single 53 and also the Teeth Whiten Action from Pro Photo Set 5.  All of these actions have layer masks so that you can apply the desired effect right where you need it.

This next stock image also uses a combination of several different actions.  Notice how much more bold the colors are and how much crisper it looks.  This was achieved by using Color Correction Action from Pro Photo Set 2 plus the Downtown Action from Pro Photo Single 55 plus the Flower Child Action from Pro Photo Single 66 and also the Lab Sharpening Action from Pro Photo Set 3.  Just like the prior example, all of these utilize layer masks so that each action can be adjusted to your liking.

These actions work well on everyday snapshots too.  You don’t have to be a professional photographer to enjoy using them and for your images to be taken to a new creative level.  Take a look at some of the images that Angie (from the ACOT design team) provided.  Her first one is this fun wedding party photo.  As you can see, the men are in the shade while the ladies were more in the sun.  The skin tones are not equal because of this (see how much cooler the men’s skin tone is?).  So I used a combination of actions to bring this photo to life.  First, I started out by fixing the exposure using the Underexposure Fix Action from PSE Action Set 1 and only applied the effect to the men’s side of the image as they were too dark.  Then I added the Color Burst Action from PSE Action Set 2 and utilized the layer masks to warm up the skin tones and give a boost to the color of the wood.  But it still needed a little more zing so I used the Flower Child Action from Pro Photo Single 66 and the Dodge & Burn Action from Pro Photo Set 15.  And to finish off, it needed to be sharpened up a bit so I used the Sharpen Image Action from Pro Photo Set 1.  The result is remarkable. 

Angie had another really cute shot that she sent over for me to play with.  In this shot, I thought the girl’s eyes needed to be enhanced – brown eyes can be quite challenging to photograph and often need a little help in Photoshop to bring out their real beauty.  I also wanted to enhance the color with this.  So I started out by giving it a pop of color with the ColorSat Action from PSE Set 18 and used the layer mask to apply it only to the hat and greenery behind her.  To and a little more punch, I used the PSE Luminous Boost Action from PSE Single 21 – again, using the layer mask to only apply the color to the hat.  To bring out those beautiful brown eyes, first I used the Brighten Eyes Action from PSE Action Set 8 and then gave them an extra bit of sparkle with the Eye Sparkle Action from PSE Single 26.  This combination took this image from dull to dazzling in just a few minutes.

So the next time you are sitting at your computer trying to decide what to do with your images, I hope you will consider using some of these helpful actions to enhance what you’ve captured.  You’ve already created the foundation and these actions are just that extra little boost to bring your images to life.

~ Kim Hill is a professional photographer and owner of Resources for Photographers.  Her products are sold exclusively at A Cherry on Top.  To view her line of Pro Photo Actions CLICK HERE and to view her line of PS Elements Actions CLICK HERE.  Please note that if you are using any pro version of Photoshop, you can also use any of the PSE actions too! 

We love spotlighting our members here on 4 the Love of Focus. We have a talent group of photograhers. This week, let’s get to know Amanda Breeden from Palmetto Posh Photography. She’s a great photographer from the Greenwood South Carolina area.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: I’m a work at home mom to a 9 year old daughter and the wife of a wonderful man who encourages me in all I do.  I love to play golf and I’m addicted to all things pink.

Where do you call home?  Ninety Six, SC…and yes, Ninety Six is the name of the town   It’s about an hour away from both Columbia and Greenville, SC.

How long have you been doing photography? Studio or on location? Describe your photography style.  I’m in my third year of business and though I have an in-home studio, I prefer to do outside sessions when possible.  Most of my outdoor sessions take place in my neighborhood.

My style is contemporary portrait photography with some lifestyle mixed in.  I like to process clean and crisp and I really like to see bold colors and a good bit of contrast.

How did you learn photography? I’m mostly self taught. I took a few classes in high school and college but have learned a lot from practicing, reading books, interacting on forums and trial and error.

Who is your biggest influence/inspiration?  I don’t have any one person that has influenced me but there is a quote that inspired me when I started my business; “It’s never to late to be who you might have been”- George Eliot.  I love this and think of it often.

Do you specialize in a certain area of photography? What kind of photographs make your heart sing?  I don’t specialize.  I do a lot of newborns, kids and families.  But I also do some commercial work, seniors and occasionally pets.  Kids are definitely my favorite subject to photograph!

What’s in your camera bag? If you had to choose just one lens, what would it be? What is the next photography purchase you want to make?  In my bag is “Stella”, a Nikon D700.  My back-up body is a D90.  My lenses include a Nikon 24-70 mm 2.8, a Nikon 50 mm 1.8 and a Sigma 70-300 with macro.  I use my 24-70 lens 90% of the time.  I love this lens!

What’s your favorite photography accessory/extra?  My Phat Strap camera strap.  I had it custom made and I LOVE it.  I always get tons of compliments on it

What are you getting from the forum that you didn’t expect? I love the intimate feel of 4TLOF.  It’s great to be able to bounce ideas off of others and find out what has worked or not worked for them. And any time I need a product review I know just where to go!

And some random get to know Amanda questions:

Sweet or salty?  both, eaten together of course.

Morning or night person?  neither- i like to get up late and go to bed early

If you had one wish… for there to be cure for cancer in our life time.  i’m a cancer survivor and know too many people that have been affected by this horrible disease.

I could give up every food except for… Diet Coke…I’m addicted

You can find Amanda:

Website

Facebook 

Thanks for letting us get to know you a little bit better, Amanda!