I think it is going to be important for me to keep notes of what went well, what I learned, and what I can improve on when I do a shoot. I haven’t been doing this for Megan’s Senior Pictures, although I have been thinking about it all in my head. But after photographing 16 cheerleaders (333 pictures in total on Saturday), it’s good to get this down while the experience is still fresh.
What I did right:
- Prepared 16 individual galleries in Zenfolio (click on the link to save $5), underneath one password protected collection. This way the girls can go straight to their galleries, but can browse across them all.
- Pre-printed notices, customized for each girl, with their unique gallery URL and also a date for when they can expect to see the photos online.
- Had the cheer coach schedule the girls in a staggered fashion, so they wouldn’t all be standing around or a long time waiting their turn.
- Shot early in the morning, starting at 9:15am.
- Researched and printed cheerleader specific pose examples for the girls to review.
- Used my Cactus Wireless Flash Trigger.
What I learned:
- The sun is very bright, even at 9:30am.
- You’ll get sunburned doing a long outdoor shoot (we were there for roughly three hours).
- Bring water.
- Backgrounds can be hard to manage in a public park.
- When allowing “group” shots, try and manage how many you allow so the other people don’t lose interest.
- Lightroom 2 is wonderful, as is the Zenfolio Plugin from Jeffrey Friedl, but they aren’t overly fast (or it could be my network connection).
What I can improve upon:
- Have a giant diffuser made for the sunlight.
- Learn more about manual flash settings.
- Develop more skills for dealing with mid-day light.
- Learn more about Lightroom/ Photoshop.
- Learn more about posing (reading a book right now actually).
All in all I still think it went well. The proof will come when orders are placed. Uploads should be finished today, we’ll see how it goes.
