Guess Who Finally Has An Assistant?

This girl! Lol

It’s been a long time coming, but I finally have an assistant and he was right here all along!

Meet Nahshon you guys!

Nahshon has been working with my brother Adrian and I for the past 3 years as our wedding photography assistant and recently began to do more with his photography personally. As my responsibilities have increased and I’ve been struggling with effective productivity, somehow the idea formed to see if Nahshon would like to work with me in an even larger capacity, and he was completely on board!

Nahshon is like my little brother and I couldn’t be happier to have him working with me. This is definitely going to be an adjustment process though because I’m used to doing EVERYTHING lol. Letting go is an art that I’m learning slowly, but I’m thankful for his patience lol. Having an assistant is teaching me not only to let go, but that everything doesn’t have to be done exactly as I’d do it. Caring less about certain things frees you up to be more awesome so I’m hoping that will be true in my case :)

Enough rambling from me though, let me introduce you to Nahshon and let you hear directly from him:

“I’m really excited to be working with Danielle assisting with weddings and office responsibilities. I became interested in photography about 4 years ago when i started working with Adrian (AJ Finney Fine Wedding Imagery) who was doing wedding photography at the time. Ever since then, I fell in love with photography! I enjoy photography because it’s the single unique way to capture a moment, with sadness, joy, frustration, or love jumping out at you. Even when your memories fail you, pictures won’t. I appreciate the work I am doing since it helps me build a solid foundation with my photography and also understanding the business side of things. I look forward to helping Danni along with finding and perfecting my style of photography along the way!”

-Nahshon Murray

So please welcome Nahshon to #TeamDFinney!!

Today’s Truthy Tuesday is up next ;)

-Danni

Spring has kicked into high gear!

Happy Tuesday loves!

I’m back after an unplanned two week blog hiatus and with tons of goodies to share! Things have been beyond busy over here and I’m just now getting a chance to kinda catch my breath.

I was going to start with this past weekend’s Natural Light Workshop, but then I realized that so much has happened since March began that I haven’t officially shared on the blog! So let’s go in order, shall we? :)

MARCH began with a fun mentor session with Terri! 

The next weekend, I had a beautiful engagement session with Mel & Chad!

The following weekend was Tiffany & Alonzo’s wedding- that I was both in and photographing.

Huge thank you to my team (my brother Adrian and our assistant Nahshon) for doing an awesome job on the photos! In case you’re wondering how that was done- I did all the portraits/pre-ceremony shots and they took over from there ;)

The next weekend? Another great mentor session! This time with Yolonda :)

Quite an action-packed month and Spring had just started!

APRIL began with a busy busy weekend- 5 sessions in 4 days! I photographed my sister Latoya, 2 senior sessions with Regina & Harriet, a fun “just-because” session with Le Quan, and a great vintage engagement session with L+R for their wedding in August.

The following weekend was a super fun wedding in Baltimore with lovebirds Mel & Chad!

The next weekend was an absolutely beautiful one! Filled with great weather, bright colors, and beautiful people :) I photographed my loves Dori for her senior photos, Yasmin & Calvin for their maternity photos, and a fun just-because session with the ever so lovely Michel!

And that leads us up to this past weekend when I held my Natural Light Workshop! I will do a full recap, but I’m really happy with how it turned out and I can’t wait to see this lovely group of photographers progress even further in their photography journeys :)

What’s ahead? MAY promises to be just as action packed with minis, a wedding in Charlotte, group mentor sessions in both Charlotte and DC, along with regular portrait sessions at the end of the month.

This has definitely been my busiest Spring season ever and I couldn’t be more thankful to you guys!!

Also, please forgive my manners! I secured a new assistant during this time as well :) I’ll have an official announcement post shortly, but since this is the “News & Updates” post, I’ll share it here too.

Stay tuned today, I have lots of goodies to come including the official assistant announcement, and a brand new Truthy Tuesday! It’s been a while, but I haven’t forgotten about them :)

I hope your Tuesday is off to a great start!

-Danielle

Springtime in the City | Spring Mini Special

As promised, TODAY is the day you get in on the action- Spring Mini Sessions are here! 

Those who signed up for our mailing list got exclusive access to book on Monday- a full two days before anyone else! 

Now is your chance!

Mini Sessions are $275 and include the following:

• Pre-consult to ensure your photo session will be just what you want! 
• Professional makeup application for 1 
• 30 min photo session for up to 4 people 
• 1 outfit 
• Custom editing of the best 10-15 images selected by the photographer 
• 1 mounted 5x7 print 
• Private digital proof gallery for ordering

All prints and digital negatives are sold a la carte.

To make sure everyone looks as fabulous as can be- makeup will be included in the session fee! That way you save a bit because it would be an additional $25 if you paid for makeup separately. You can expect the same flawless look for your photos that you see on my site because you’ll be working with my favorite makeup artists :) 
______

To take advantage of this special mini session offer, you must be located in (or willing to travel to) Washington, DC, Charlotte, NC, or Atlanta, GA on the dates listed Your session must be booked no later than April 19, 2014 for a session to be photographed on one of the dates listed above (depending on your city ;). All mini sessions will be photographed at an awesome location in the city!

All set and ready to book your session? 
EMAIL ME to snag your spot!! Make sure you indicate what city you’d be interested in.

DON’T DELAY! These spots will go quickly and once they’re gone, they’re gone!

Definitely looking forward to bringing minis to three cities this year and I look forward to working with you all :)

-Danni

Terri | Alexandria, VA Natural Light Photography Mentor

Happy Wednesday!

I hope you all have been able to get out these past couple of days and enjoy this beautiful Spring weather finally! It’s definitely been a welcome change from the frigid longest winter ever lol.

Today, I want to share with you a fun mentor session that I had last month with fellow photographer, Terri! And yes, mini sessions will be posted today as promised ;) That will be at noon!

But for now, it’s all about Terri!

Terri and I met at Blink last year and discovered that we didn’t live too far from one another. She’s in central VA and I’m just outside of DC! We actually ended up seeing each other again at the Munaluchi event in DC shortly after the conference :)

Fast-forward a few months later and here we are! Terri was looking to fine-tune her natural light shooting a little further and see what was necessary to get her photos as close to what she wanted in-camera so as to minimize post-processing. By the end of the day, she learned that and much more :)

We had an interesting start to the day as there was a huge St. Patrick’s Day Parade happening in Alexandria which had King Street and many surrounding streets closed for blocks! That traffic caused major headaches… Once we managed to park a million blocks away and get back, the crowds were absolute madness. So after a quick decompress we were able to get together and the rest of the day went very smoothly lol.

Here are a few faves from Terri’s headshot session:

Then we met up with our lovely couple Ash'Leigh & Marcus. How cute are they :)

Here are a few words from Terri about her mentoring experience: 

“I have nothing but positive things to say about my experience with Danielle. First, she is very knowledgeable and does not come across as arrogant. She understands both the technical and business side of photography, which is why I think she has been so successful. I like that we started with a conversation about me, which told me that she wanted to know more about me as a person, my goals with photography and my goals for the mentoring session. We also discussed the basics of photography and exposure so she could gain a better understanding of where I am skill-wise and it allowed her to adapt her teaching to my skill level. I like that she shared with me what she does and looks for when shooting but didn’t expect me to mimic her or her style. At the end, I enjoyed being able to debrief on what I learned and major takeaways from our time together.”

Also check out her recap on her blog! She got hers up a lot quicker than I did, so don’t judge me lol. I love her recap though! It always makes me happy to see how different photographers can shoot the same scene, edit the resulting photos, and end up with a completely different result. That’s why developing your own eye and eventually your style is so important.

If you’re interested in booking a one-on-one mentor session and would like to have the DFinney Experience yourself, email me today to secure your date! Currently booking: June & July 2014.

Minis & Workshops & Mentoring. Oh my!

Happy Monday loves!

I have soooooo much to share this week, I’m sorry in advance and I hope I don’t overwhelm you!

Because there’s so much going on, I created a new Current Events page! Check out that shiny new “What’s Happening?” link in the right column :) It takes you here: http://dfinneyphoto.tumblr.com/currentevents that way you can keep up with everything at a glance on a weekly basis.

Today’s post is basically what you will see in the Current Events section, but once I blog the many things on the agenda for this week, this post will be buried. That’s where the new page comes into play :) It will stay updated so that will be your easy way to see what’s going on.

So what’s happening this week?

SPRING MINIS ARE BACK!
Stay tuned for full details on Wednesday! And sign up for the mailing list so you don’t miss out on being first to book next time :) Once the blog goes live, the flyer below will link to the blog post.

The NATURAL LIGHT WORKSHOP is almost here!
And there are just TWO seats left! I can’t wait to share just how to get great natural light photographs straight from the camera and show how that can greatly cut down on your post-processing time. EMAIL ME ASAP if you’d like to snag one of those remaining seats :)

MODELS NEEDED!
After teaching about all about the awesomeness of natural light photography, we’re going to go shoot! But we need models :) I’m looking for 4 ladies of different ethnicities to model for us. I need skin tones of every shade so the class participants can have practice putting their skills to use.

All models must be able to pay $70 for professional makeup. For your participation you will receive a mini gallery of high-resolution images from the session. Interested? Email me with a photo!

GROUP MENTORING!
So this isn’t a new offering, but this is a reminder that spaces are moving! Currently we’re down to 2 left for Charlotte, 1 left for DC, and 3 left for the second Atlanta date. Email me ASAP to secure your spot while they’re still available!

What else is going on this week? I’ll also be sharing pictures and have a new Photographer FAQ post for you guys too.

See? I told you there was a lot going on! lol.

Please email me if you have any questions! Thank you again for all of your amazing support and I look forward to possibly working with you all :)

-Danielle