This is a double-dose blog post today!  Little Miss K has been my client from even before she was born!  I have been so blessed to get to know and work with Shelby and Josh since they hired me for maternity portraits in November of 2009 and their baby’s newborn pictures.  They chose the grow.baby.grow 1st year portrait plan that I offer and picked three dates in Miss K’s first year:  6 months (see here) and then her 1st birthday party and 1st year portraits at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum.  Here are some of the shots from her party and her 1 year portraits.  A-dorable!

Until next time…

FIND ME AT:

I just added this post as a page to my  blog to show the difference between the stages a portrait goes through from start to finish.   Thought I’d also make it today’ post.  This may help explain the reason you wait for your proofs, why custom portraits cost more and why it is important to choose a photographer skilled in all aspects of digital photography.  I’m not going to get too technical here, but keep it straightforward and simple.  The easiest way to explain is to also show, so I have some examples below.

For my Senior, Engagement and Portrait Clients:

Every picture that will be presented to you in your proofs and your presentation in my studio will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED in color and some in black and white.  I wanted you to see the sometimes subtle, but powerful, changes that take place from start to finish.  Beautiful girl, right?  There’s really not much to do, but  brightening and smoothing her skin add a healthy, radiant BUT realistic finish.  My style is to not “over-do” this stage.  I don’t want you to glow like an angel or be  smoothed out so much that your nose disappears or your skin looks plastic.  I want you to look like YOU – the REAL you.  I won’t be applying make up to you; in my opinion, if you wanted make-up on, you would have worn it to your shoot.   I will, of course, remove any blemishes, under eye circles or bags, crazy stray hairs and brighten up your smile and add a twinkle to your eyes.  All the time, being careful to keep things true to you.

For my Wedding Clients:

Your wedding package with Thrive includes a flash drive loaded with hundreds of full-resolution, edited images that are ready to print.    These digital files are ready to go and I have great labs to recommend so you get amazing printed products.

During your wedding day, your two photographers will shoot thousands of shots.  Those shots will be downloaded and backed up (twice) immediately following your wedding.  Those shots are the RAW IMAGES or SOC (straight out of the camera).  You will never see these.

After your images are downloaded, Heidi will carefully go through every shot and eliminate duplicates, bad shots, unflattering shots, etc. and eventually get down to a very rich assortment of shots from the whole day.  Every single one of those hundreds of images will be EDITED.  They will be vigilantly perfected for exposure, sharpness, cropping and color-correction.   A percentage of these will also be converted into black and white.  They will be ready to print.  These will be the images on your on-line gallery and on your flash drive.

Any image from your day that Heidi blogs about (and that is usually close to 100) or puts on her website, will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED.  These will also be included in your online gallery and on your flash drive.   Each of these images will go from the EDITED stage and be brought into Photoshop to be completely perfected, and maybe some special effects added.   This is where skin is smoothed, stray hairs are removed, light is made flawless, and many other things done to create a true work of art.    ANY image from your online gallery that you or others ORDER from Thrive or that you pick for your album will be ARTISTICALLY EDITED.

In the example, you can see that it is a great picture in the edited stage.  In the Artistic stage, I gave the picture a bit of vintage color to it, the skin was smoothed, the bride’s arm was contoured and the groom’s chin was made a little more defined.

This week really has gotten away from me!  I think I missed two days of blogging.  It has been a great week here at Thrive Creative Studio.  I got to meet up with two amazing business owners who are joining forces and opening a great new place in Downtown Overland Park catering to brides and grooms; Ashley of Good Earth Flowers and Jen of Savvy Wedding and Event Planning. So great to meet some neighbors and talk “shop” and hear their awesome vision for their business.   I also met with a couple of excited newly engaged couples about upcoming wedding photography opportunities, which was so exciting.  Then my friend and fellow photog and my co-shooter at weddings, Jessica, came by my studio to share some really exciting news about her business!  I got the chance this week to meet with some of my senior clients and also an opportunity to help someone I used to pastor and still love take some steps towards living out the call of God on her life.  I think that was the highlight of my week by far.    I was involved in a lot of communication this week; maybe that’s why I never made it over to my blog to make an entry!

I’m going to jump ahead in my blog schedule today and present this blog post of the remarkably adorable and extremely amazing FISH FAMILY!  They’ve graced my blog before and it is always such a treat for me to work with them.  I offer free sessions and digital images to missionary families and I am always so happy when Erik and Jen take me up on my offer. Erik and Jen are National Leaders and full-time missionaries at Student Church.  From their website, it explains that “Student church is:  The strategy is so simple it’s a bit humbling:  Send students to make disciples and start simple churches on every university in the world.  That’s the simple idea.  It’s not just our idea.  We think it’s God’s idea:  Any student, anywhere, can make disciples and start simple churches on their campus.”   God is moving in amazing ways through Student Church and university students all over the world.  If you’d like to read Erik’s blog, click this link.

Erik and Jen have a passionate marriage and an energetic family overflowing with love – I can see this in just one hour with my camera in hand.  Not to mention that all 6 of them are adorably good looking!

Until next time…

FIND ME AT:

Jamie and Chris came to me because they have an incredible sister who gave them a gift certificate for my Belly & Baby package as a shower gift.   I can’t think of a better gift…lol!  No really, what a special gift to give; this will never be forgotten because of the irreplaceable images that were captured of a time that will never come again (at least not with baby Allie).   My Belly & Baby package includes two sessions; a maternity shoot somewhere in your 7 or 8th month at a location of your choosing and then a newborn session when your bundle of love is between 5 and 9 days old either in your home or in my studio.  This is a digital package so that you can have all the pictures that you want to do whatever you want with them.  Baby Allie was just so beautiful and wonderful and mom and dad are proud and in love!

Until next time…

FIND ME AT:

Brittany was a senior client of mine a couple of years ago and I was so thrilled when she called to book a top secret photo shoot with her sister. Their parents were about to celebrate 25 years of marriage and Brittany and Tiffany wanted to bless them with some portraits of the two of them. They are both absolutely gorgeous and totally fun! We had a great time on this hot August morning and mom and dad were both surprised and blessed by their gift.

Until next time…

FIND ME AT:

First of all, take a look at my blogging TO DO list! (taken with my phone)  This could take awhile….

This little family stole my heart!   Momma, Erin, used to actually babysit my kids when we first moved to Kansas and then I was privileged to be her youth pastor before she graduated.  Now, she is a wonderful wife and mother with a brood of boys.  It’s always so incredible to see these young people grow up and see them fall in love, get married and then start families.    It was a hot August morning when we did their family portraits and little Jackson was just a bit camera shy, but they rocked the whole thing!  Thanks guys!  It was so fun.

Until next time…

FIND ME AT: