a Mentor Session!!

I'm Into Something Good - The Bird and The Bee

A little while ago I received an email from the lovely Karly who wondered if we could set up a mentor session while in Idaho..... I had never really thought about doing a mentor session before........
Sure!!! Let's do it!!!!

And then it hit me—I'm supposed to teach someone else all sorts of awesome stuff...... can I do that? So I started to make a list of different areas we could touch on, and then I realized that there were waaaay too many areas to fit into one evening without making a girl's head explode. Didn't want any of that happening.


So I asked Karly and her friend Kallie; what is it you would like to learn from this mentor session?
And the word that kept popping up was confidence.

After giving much thought to this topic I realized that confidence comes from knowing your stuff, knowing the basics, and having a plan.

The only way to get to really know the basics is to practice, practice, practice them....

Our mentor sesh breakdown:

So right as we started we turned our cameras right over to Manual setting (no auto allowed! ever!!!) and dug in deep—getting correct exposure using aperture, shutterspeed, white balance and iso.
Then we went right into exposing for all sorts of lighting conditions.
We talked lots and lots and lots about light itself (because that's what it's all about really) and assessing the light in each different situation and how to use it to our best advantage.
Composition came next—framing the shot with lines and space and all sorts of other good stuff.
Then we touched on a few posing basics, how to help people feel comfortable in front of the camera, how to flatter the people we shoot, how to get a natural feel to the photos rather than super-duper-posy-rosy.
And we finished up with technical stuff, and all my best advice I could think of!!!


I only wished we could get together again the next day to put everything we talked about into practice for a real shoot! Now that would have been fun!!!!

It was one of my favorite nights of our whole trip home to Idaho.
Boy oh boy was I nervous!!! And I'm afraid Karly and Kallie got to know me a little bit better than they bargained for....... but they laughed at my craziness and therefore I think we'll probably be pals for life. Thanks for the fun times girls!!!!

Interested in doing a mentor session with me?? Email me for rates / info.


Thank you thank you to Kendall for being our superstar model for the evening and thank you thank you to Brianne and Tyrel for letting us use your awesome yard for photos (that barn is totally rad)!!!