Antisdels Photography – Fresh and Contemporary Portraits

About eight years ago, I was shooting portraits in Louisburg, KS and had a conversation with an older woman who told me that she had twin granddaughters who lived in Chicago, but flew into Kansas City to have their senior portraits done by a studio called Antisdels. She also told me how much they spent on senior portraits and as I recall, she said it was somewhere in the ballpark of a couple thousand dollars. I was in disbelief. I couldn’t believe someone would come that far for senior portraits and secondly that someone would pay that much for them. That was until I saw their work and have now come to realize who they are.

Antisdel’s Photography, located in Louisburg, KS, a suburb of Kansas City, is a portrait studio that specializes in children and senior portraits. They are also founders of Senior Portrait Artists, or SPA as they are more commonly known, an organization dedicated to art and business of senior portraits. 

Antisdel’s photography to me is really what senior portraits and children / family portraits are supposed to be all about. They are bright, colorful, youthful, vibrant, fresh, new, contemporary, stylish, cutting edge, emotive and the list could certainly go on and on and on. If you haven’t heard of Antisdel’s, I highly suggest checking their work out and also checking out SPA. It will be well worth your time!

Roadside Families – Pay It Forward Project

Photographers, one question: How often do you and your immediate family get your portraits taken? Probably like most, not that often. I photograph families every single day of the week and I rarely get our family photos taken.

A while back, I ran across a site called Roadside Families and it is still going strong. The premise behind this amazing site is photographers photograph others and their families but rarely find the time or opportunity to photograph their own families. So, you get your family photographed by another photographer and then you do the favor for someone else by doing the same exact thing.

Roadside Families is the creation of forward thinking photographers, John Michael and Dalisa Cooper of AltF.coM. They have a long history of bringing creativity and ingenuity to portrait photography and the photographic community.

So, if you are a photographer and want family portraits and want to help other photographers make memories of their families, then Roadside Families is for you and you should get involved. Just go to the Join In Page to find out how to join and what to do next.

Create Pictures that Bring Tears of Joy – Tips for photographing kids

There are lots of tips and tutorials out there on the web and books that discuss how to get children to smile and how to interact with them. So trying to figure out which ones are great and worth discussing here on this site can be a challenge. I photograph kids everyday and have done so for over ten years. But I even found this next article very helpful: Child Photo Tips

The site it’s on is Best Family Photography Tips. It has tons of helpful tips and little filler. It’s really jammed packed with good, condensed info that is helpful even to the most experienced photographer. It serves as a great source of reminder and of course learning for anyone else wanting to improve their family photography

PortraitTutor.com – Posing guide website

One thing that many beginning photographers have issues with is posing their subjects. As far as that goes, even photographers who’ve been doing this for a while can get stumped on posing their subjects.

I found a great resource called PortraitTutor.com which has some helpful information on basic portrait information and some posing ideas. However, they sell a posing guide of over a thousand poses for all types of subjects. These poses are both traditional and contemporary.

This looks interesting enough to invest in. I think that many photographers get stuck and with a resource like this, coming up with new and unique looking images would really help them expand their abilities and skills.

Get that baby smiling

Learn how to get babies to smile!

For those who photograph babies know that at times it can be a bit challenging. However, with experience, you can learn how to get young people to smile for the camera.

Recently, I found a great post on how to get a baby to smile. Ten tips for making your baby smile is a great blog post that would benefit any photographer who feels comfortable enough to handle children. This post is really insightful into how children feel and react to interaction from parents and adults. It is not a post geared for photographers, however, it is certainly beneficial to portrait photographers who photograph babies. Enjoy!

Tamara Lackey Photography

Have you ever done a Google search for a child photographer?  There are a ton of very good child photographers out there.  Are you looking for someone with wonderfully inspiring child portraits?  How about a book on child photography or better yet, a DVD on Contemporary Child Photography?  Please allow me to introduce to you Tamara Lackey of Tamara Lackey Photography.

Tamara is a Contemporary Photographer, who specializes in child photography, with a studio based in North Carolina.   Her work is full of emotion and glows with inspiration.  Her ability to capture the perfect moment seems to be found in every shot.

In her first book, The Art of Children’s Portrait Photography, which I have read, Tamara touches on the many different aspects and how-to’s of child photography. She details her methods not only on how to get fantastic shots but how to market, advertise, and promote your business.  Tamara has a fun and witty approach in her writing that makes her book a very informative and enjoyable read.  The Art of Children’s Portrait Photography is “a must” for those looking to educate themselves and venture into the direction of Child Photography.

Tamara now has a new DVD called Inside Contemporary Children’s Photography.  Just by watching the preview on her website you can see this DVD is professionally made and produced.  It is a behind the scenes look at Tamara’s shooting session from start to finish.  After watching the preview make sure you read the wonderful compliments and reviews about it.

Tamara has won many awards from WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International.  Her work has been featured on the Martha Stewart Show and in many magazines such as Parenting, Town and Country, and Vogue.  I hope you enjoy Tamara’s work and feel free to let us know what you think of her book or DVD.

BlogsofPhotogs.com – Discover New Photographers!

Today we’re checking out a magnificent site called BlogsofPhotogs.com

Mary Hanson is the voice behind this great resource for finding new photographers.

The premise behind this site is showcasing the work of photographers and their blogs. I love it as it shows great work from photographers who you may never find otherwise.

Many of these photographers are up and comers. Many are women. Many are natural light photographers. Many photograph children and families and pets. Especially if this kind of photography interests you or you do this kind of work, I would highly suggests checking it out and even subscribing.

Mary gives her thoughts on each blog and photographer and explains why she thinks their so great. I think as a photographer herself who does the kind of work, for the most part, she does a great job of helping her readers that probably appeal to them as well.

Mary also occasionally offers freebies on her site which makes her site even more appealing. Basically it’s stuff like layers and templates for cards which look great and work good for making your customers even happier with stuff you get to offer them.

Overall, it’s a pretty simple and straightforward site with not a lot to offer in terms of variety, however what it does offer, it offers it very well and makes it a standard in my mind for showcasing portrait photographers blogs.

To get featured on her site, submit your blog to her and she may put it up there. I’m sure with the popularity of her site, she probably gets lots of requests, but you never know. I’ve found many photographers through her site that I’ve gone to their site to check out their work. It’s a great resource and I think it’s a benefit to all photographers who check it out.