PHOTOGRAPHERS listen up!!! Today is a TREAT of a guest and a topic so grab a pen and paper NOW and get ready to take pages and pages of notes.
If you’ve ever wanted to take photos that leave your clients in tears of joy or photos that quite literally take clients’ breath away… on today’s show we are chatting everything storytelling and composition with the absolute queen of this subject: Anni Graham.
Today we asked Anni ALL the questions about how she’s able to tell such breathtaking stories via her photography work. Anni delivered and walked you through her whole process and perspective on how to approach client sessions and weddings. She covers how to prepare for a shoot, how to break out of a creative box in your photography, how to get out of autopilot on a wedding day, how to market to your ideal clients and her advice for any photographer out there trying to find their own style and grow as a photographer.
Basically, Anni dropped TEA for you today and you will hands down want a notebook for this episode. And it’ll leave you ready to run out and start shooting TODAY with her techniques and strategies.
Anni’s Story
Anni is an elopement photographer based out of Oregon who’s been shooting since 2010. Anni is passionate about creating imagery that depicts the incredible outdoors and the heart of human beings in her work. Today, she gets to guide her couples all over the world, scaling up the sides of mountains, and crafting unforgettable experiences for them as her job. She’s also the founder of Immersed Education, an education brand for photographers on a mission to help their students take a literal step outside of their comfort zones — culturally, physically, artistically, professionally, and relationally.
How Anni found her editing & posing style
At first she copied other people’s styles for so long. Whoever was inspiring her, that’s who style she was trying to emulate. It wasn’t until she switched to just doing elopements, that she started unpacking her own style. Who she was as a photographer, and what she really cared about. Switching her business so dramatically she had to ask hard questions and there weren’t a lot of elopement photographers back then.
Looking back on her work and realized there is a lot of consistency. No matter how much she grew and evolved, her pictures would always look like Anni’s pictures. Sometimes it’s really hard to break and grow and try and do things that are different. There was always this trend or thread that was always there. There was always this twist on it that was hers.
It’s something that Anni is still discovering and growing. Her hope is that she is always changing and evolving.
How to get into composition and storytelling in your photos
You have to have a plan, the more Anni plans her shoots, visualize and think through everything she is going to do the better everything is. Don’t just go in and rely on your inspiration and creativity. That you’ll be able to wing it and turn out amazing.
Think through everything from beginning to end. Who is your couple? What do they care about? What are they doing this for? What is important to them? Where are you shooting? What’s the location? What’s the lighting? What are the different areas you’re going to be shooting at? What are the different shots you want to take in different areas?
You can still be authentic and in-the-moment with still thinking through everything. You want to get to know your couple, get to know what’s significant for them, what pictures they like. You have to think through everything for a shoot. Or it might be a hodge-podge situation. The more you plan beforehand the better everything will turn out.
Post-production/editing portion of storytelling & compostion
You can make something look pretty magical in the editing portion. If you have a couple that doesn’t do a lot of movement in front of the camera, you might have to do more work in the editing portion to bring in different compositions, cropping, and emotions that were happening. That can bring so much creativity in a shoot that not that much was maybe happening in.
How to market to clients that desire the exact style of imagery you excel at
It’s important to be really bold when you are choosing how to display your work. Whenever you are choosing what pictures to post on social media or put on you website, choos the pictures that feel the most like you. Don’t share everything and posting photos just to post. Choose things that feel really really you.
Visually you can say a lot about the pictures that you take. Focus so much on visually sharing what you want.
Advice:
It’s a process. Getting to the place you are trying to get to, is a process. The people that make it have two things. One, they know what they are going for, they know what they want. Two, they are ready to fail, make mistakes, and work with clients they realize they never wanted to work with.
What is the biggest lesson you have learned in business?
I see myself so much more critically than everyone else. In business that is so hard. Every year I always come back to the same realization that people have a lot of trust in me. People are willing to pay me a lot more, I am the one that is putting this lid on my business.
I have to take my lid off and believe that what I do is worth this much money and is going to be successful no matter what I take on.
Show notes
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www.annigraham.com
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