#jufroh

If you often compare yourself or your art to others, then please try your best to stop this right now. It’s not making you enjoy what you do more or making your art better. It’s just giving a negative feeling to something, that should fulfill you and make you happy. Whatever you see out there in social media, is only what people want you to see. They will not share their bad shots or the 200 images it took to finally get that one perfect shot. Have you ever wondered how making of images often look so much less glamorous than the actual published image? How the entire setup suddenly seems so much more usual?

I’m back.. after months of disappearing from Tumblr because I felt like I had nothing of importance or relevance to share with you, I am finally back. And I just realized how much I missed this community. The last months have been crazy and I would really like to share with you why. 

I am engaged for years and this year we finally decided to say YES. We are planning our big day and we couldn’t be more happy with it. I totally underestimated the amount of work this takes. Also, while every other girl seems to be planning this day in her head forever, I am basically just trying to figure out what to do. I tried on about 50 wedding dresses before I finally found one and finding a locations that is affordable and nice has been a lot of work. But, we are getting there! We also got a really great photographer, so I’m starting to believe we will somehow manage this. 

Also, we finally cracked 1k followers on Facebook. In Germany many shoots and meetup are organised via Facebook. This means that people will often judge your skills based on follower numbers. If you want to give us some support, liking our Facebook page would be great! With that we already had the chance to participate in two really great meet-ups.

In general we are getting to a place in photography where this is about personal growth, meeting interesting people and just creating what we love. Yesterday I scheduled some posts for Facebook and I realized I have over 100 retouched images on my laptop, that have not been published yet. Over 100! Reading the number I just realized how much content that is! We are so excited to share those images with you and become more active again. 

It’s been a while since I last had the time and chance to update our tumblr. The last months passed really fast and with wedding preparations (yes, it’s happening this year!) coming up, time became and a rare resource. 

The last year has gone by really quickly and we suddenly were able to work with photographers and models we had always admired from a distance. I was sure we would never, or not in that short time, be able to approach them and receive such positive feedback. But for some reason last year many pieces fell into place. 

I have no idea where things are going this year. As those of you following this blog for a while may know, Jay and I do have our regular jobs that take up almost all of our time. Photography is our passion and our way to fill up our batteries. It was never something we did for a certain goal or to impress someone. Meeting new people and getting to know them better has become one of the main benefits of photography for us. With this new year starting a lot of people are asking us for our goals. “What do you want to achieve this year? What is your next big step?” - Every time I hear this questions I realize our goals are quite simple. We want to travel more. That’s it. I am not waiting to get published in a magazine or planning to host my first workshop. I just want to see more of the world.

The more I see of the world the more inspired I get and the more I realize that life should not be an endless string of wake up - eat - work - eat - sleep. We have all the possibilities at our hands and we just need to make things work. If you stop waiting for that perfect moment when everything happens within your comfort zone, odds are you will never leave your country or even city. But if you start getting adventurous you start to suddenly experience so much more. That’s what we learned in the last months. Go out, live. 

After so many years we realize more and more that it is not the looks that make us fall in love with a model. There are far more factors that impact if a session will result in many good images and there is a lot you can do to improve this and leave a great impression. Here is our top ten of things to keep in mind:

Ask about the styling / Makeup: Especially in the beginning you will not have a make up artist at every shoot. Asking about the styling the photographer has in mind is therefore especially crucial for those projects. Will the photographer bring the clothes? Is there anything you should bring with you? Asking those questions will show that you are focused and want to come prepared in the best possible way. If the photographer will bring close, wear something that will not leave any marks on your body. It is completely fine to wear sweat pants or yoga pants to a session. The retoucher will thank you for this!

Less make up: Unless you have a really clear briefing to put on tons of make up, you should always go as natural as possible. It is always easier to add make up than to remove it. You can bring your make up with you and decide together with the photographer what amendments would be good for the photos.

Be thankful: No matter if the shooting is a paid job or a personal free project, everyone there is investing their time to create something great. Although only the model is visible on the photo, a lot more people have put thoughts into this. Acknowledge their work and they will remember you as great to work with.

Be aware of the light: Especially when shooting portraits, it is important to be aware of the main light source. If you are turning you head or body sideways, always turn in the direction of the light. If you are not sure which light source is the brightest for the camera, ask. 

Move slowly: Adjusting the camera or finding the right focus might take a moment. If you move too fast the photographer will maybe miss that special moment. Slowing down you movements and waiting before switching poses allows the photographer to capture exactly what he wants and make corrections. 

Listen exactly to the instructions: Sometimes only a few inches to the left or right can make the whole difference. When following instructions apply the same rule as for the movement in general. Move slowly so you can hit exactly the point needed. Also, don’t exaggerate. When the instruction was to move a little, only move a little.

Experiment: Often the funny shots or times you strike an unusual pose are the images that strike out. Putting yourself out there and also trying out different things during a shooting will release the photographer from having to be the only one to suggest poses or ideas. Of course this depends a lot on the individual project, but for us it has always been rewarding to work with models who also offer many variations.

Be open to discover new versions of yourself: If you have a special styling you like or use on a daily basis, that is fine. For photography however it is really important to be open for different ideas. No good photographer will want to take images with the exact style or look from the photographers before. He or she will want to stand out in your portfolio and add something new to it. Whatever you think looks best on you shouldn’t restrict your work. Be open, trust the photographer (assuming you chose to work with that person because of a strong and tasteful portfolio). 

Always credit the artists involved: When uploading images to social media, always make sure to include all important participants of the project. Photographer, stylist, make up artist. They all took their time to make this work and the least you can do is credit them for this. 

Lately a photographer asked us, why we don’t promote ourselves much more. Why are there no selfies from photo sessions or making of images on your blog or Facebook page? We have a reason other than being lazy or forgetting about it, but we never had to actually say this out loud. Since the answer got him thinking, we really want to share this with you.

In social media everything seems to be about sharing the sugar topping of your life. You share that selfie with the model and everyone will think this is what you do on a daily basis, but in reality you might meet with models only two or three times a month. Everything is about making believe and showing how great everything is. But the truth is that our photography life isn’t that awesome. We both work a regular 5 days a week job and the time we have to fully dive into this passion is really limited. Meetings with models or other photographers are not happening every day, because we need to pay our bills and for that we surely need to work.

Truth us that this whole project is not about us. We don’t want you to envy us or make any assumptions about how great our life is. We don’t want to market ourselves. We just want to take photos. We just want to meet interesting people and see this world. This project is just about the photos we take, but not about the lifestyle of being a photographer. The honest truth is that being a photographer but having a fulltime job means spending a lot of your free time in front of your computer. It means you can usually only do one photo session per week or maybe two and will then spend the next evenings of week again in front of the computer retouching. It means planning posts is crucial because you won’t be able to update your pages between 8 am and 6 pm.

A German photographer published a status this week that got highly recognized in the German photography scene - but not the way he intended. He basically tried to shame models for sharing bad experiences about him in a group. From his point of view they were all mad because he had only retouched one image and were taking drugs - needless to say that the model’s statement was clearly different. If only half of the experiences in those comments were true, that guy should have a law case against him for abuse and some other stuff.

We read through the comments since it was basically all over the place and it got us thinking: How can someone treat a model like that? Having a sensual photo shoot is a delicate situation, but a great one if you found the right photographer. Someone who respects you and surely will NOT touch you. If you are thinking about a photo session and the person is being weird or making not appropriate comments before the session, ask to take a person with you. A good photographer who is concerned about you feeling safe will never say no. If the person does, we highly recommend to cancel this session. Before a shooting, clearly discuss what you want to do and most important, what you surely don’t want to do. Be clear if nude images are okay with you, if lingerie is okay with you. If someone is too offensive about trying to push you to that type of image, it is also a clear no-go.

The last months have been amazing. They revealed to us that we are the last persons in the world able to really judge our work. We are way to critical about this. This way we put our head above our creative heart and we sell ourselves for much less then we actually are worth. In this case, we don’t mean money. We mean those situations where you could contact someone for a shooting, but are too shy about it - but the person would have said yes. We mean that moment, in which someone compliments your work, but you decide to play it down. We mean the moment, when you get requests of “friends”, take their photos and later see them on Facebook without any credit.

Talking to many creative people around us made us realize that this is not the way. Of course you should always aim at getting better, but that doesn’t mean what you do now is shitty. Be proud and happy about what you conquered so far. You put a lot of work into this, you spent many hours taking photos or retouching them, so why shouldn’t you be a little proud. Look at your first photos, would you still take them the same way? If the answer is no you can be sure you did your homework and you will continue to do so in the future.