One of my favorite blogs, www.go4prophotos.com is holding a friendly competition for photographers with the challenge to update our self portraits.  “That doesn’t sound so hard” you might be saying, but I would argue. First off, we are photographers for a reason. We like to be behind the camera. And second, when arriving at a session, photographers have set images in mind of what they want to accomplish – a picture to paint or a story to tell. As I quickly discovered, explaining that image to the photographer photographing you (in this case, my husband) can pose a challenge.

As for me, I wanted to be sure that my photo, the design around it and my words in my “About me” section matched my brand. I want to be sure that you can grasp who I am within seconds of glancing at my photo. I love to shoot in an open field with the sun setting behind my clients back. So I knew that’s the image I wanted for myself. I wanted you to know what photography means to me and who I am as person…and so this is my new About Me page:

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Even if it doesn’t win the competition and the incredible prize that comes with it. I’m so happy with finally having a self portrait that truly matches ME as a photographer AND I had a fun time with the whole process. Thankfully I have an incredibly sweet and patient husband (who is also deathly afraid of snakes) that didn’t just treck through the middle of a field with me once – but twice! (see the reason we had a “redo” session below.)

I learned from our first shoot to be very specific about what my expectations were. “Angle me with the sun behind my head so we get good flare.” {check the image}. “Well, not directly behind my head, but off to the side a little.” {Check the image}

Me:”Loves, that’s an awesome shot, now expose for my face”

Kevin: “What button does that?”

Me: “Let me see the camera.”

Our conversation went a lot like that in the beginning…but he caught on pretty quickly! 🙂

Since this is after all, my photography blog, I thought it would only be fair to let my photographer post a guest blog:

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Guest Blogger: Kevin DeShazo, Photographer

First off, let’s get one thing straight.  I taught Megan everything there is about photography.  Her success?  A result of my endless (free) tutoring.  I mean, look at this:

One word: Quality.

Given my expertise, Megan asked if I would take her “self-portrait” pic for her website to help her out with competition she wanted to enter.

I made sure to leave work early in order to get the shots in before the sun went down. I picked Megan and Gabe up at home and off we go to the middle of some field with a deserted barn, where the wind in the field was making weird noises and I was convinced that “The Others” from LOST were surrounding us.  Just a tip: The sun goes down early in December.  Really early.  If your wife asks “Will you come home early to take my picture?” early means 4:00, not 5:15.  Needless to say, she frolicked through said field for 15 minutes for no reason.  The pictures were pretty much black.

On top of that, our poor baby was in the car screaming.  Mission: fail.

The next day I left work with plenty of sunlight to spare.  Back to the strange field we go.  Megan hands off her camera to me.  Keep in mind that MY usual camera is my iPhone.  Anything more than 2 buttons and I’m lost.  She starts speaking in a different language with words like “exposure, f stop, sun flare and aperture.”  I hear, “exposure… dinner? bacon? pizza?”  I can’t tell you what happened next.  Not because of anything bad.  It’s just that I am fairly certain I lost control of my mind and body.  I was snapping, flashing, adjusting, zooming, directing like I had done this a million times.

Before I knew it, we were wrapping up the session and Megan was now referring to me as “a natural.”  The results?  Well, you can take a look for yourself.

Not bad for this old fella, eh?

Oh and Gabe was much happier this time around. We handed him Megan’s phone to keep him entertained. So if you got a call/text in the last week in baby language…now you know it wasn’t a prank. It was Gabe.

“Oh Christmas Tree! Oh Christmas Tree!  I long to touch your branches.”