Aug-Dec 2020 Recap

Wait. Is this really the first blog post of 2021! And almost exactly 2 months to the day from my last? 🤦🏽‍♀️ I appreciate you hanging in there with me cuz your girl has been a serious slacker with this blog 😩

But that changes today because I finally made time to get the rest of my 2020 recap done! Yes, we are in a new year, but I need to give my 2020 clients the shine they deserve!

In the first (Jan-July) recap, I mentioned that moving forward booking would be done via waitlist. Books hadn’t yet opened for the fall, but when they did?

Listen. I have NEVER done so many shoots in the span of 4 months ever in my life! And in a pandemic no less!

I have noo plans to repeat that, so today’s recap will be the longest I’ve ever done, and the longest there ever will be lol.

AUGUST

August was a combination of rescheduled mentoring sessions, brand sessions, and an editorial for Glamour Magazine! It was a fun month and it gave me an opportunity to catch my breath before the fall busyness began 😅

The last photo was shot by my mentee Samantha!

The last 2 photos were shot by my mentee Tykesha!

SEPTEMBER

Was filled with brand sessions, a mentoring session, and a sweet post-wedding session with my beautiful friend and longtime makeup artist Denyelle! The weather was so finicky this month- a couple of these sessions were literally shot just after it had rained!

The middle photo was shot by my mentee LaTonya!

OCTOBER

I did way too much this month, no two ways about it. My calendar was already at capacity and then I fit a couple sessions in for clients that had super limited availability, but guess who won’t be doing that again 🙋🏽‍♀️ (it’s me lol). October was all about brand & family sessions! I also did my annual session with my nieces and nephew too- check out the carousel to see their growth over the past 4 years 🥰

2020. 2019. 2018. and 2017 with my babies! 🧡

NOVEMBER

The finish line is in view 😅 More brand and family sessions this month! I also just realized that all of my November family sessions were repeat clients, which is super dope!

2020, 2019, and 2018 with Morgan & Maddie 🧡

2020, 2019, and 2017 with the Missmar family! 🧡

DECEMBER

And to round out the year? Just 3 brand and 2 family sessions in December! Funny enough, I RARELY have cancellations, but I had about 3 this month! They were welcomed with open arms though because I was pooped lol.

Did you make it all the way to the end? I told you it was a super long one 😅

Thanks for playing catch up with me, I look forward to sharing some new fun stuff with you soon!

-Danni

A Few of my Fall Favorites

It's been a few months since my last post (late summer and fall had me SWAMPED) but I had to get this blog post up! Last week I shared a few of my favorite brands with my mailing list and the response was great! So I’m sharing the goods with you too :)

One of my long-time clients reached out to inquire about where I get my graphic tees and I realized I’d never formally shared that with you guys! Now, this is absolutely a late post as Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales have passed, but in this case “late” is relative because there is never a bad time to support small businesses!

I'll be sharing a few of my favorite clothing brands, new books from 3 of my clients, and my all time favorite wellness brand. Let’s dive in!

APPAREL

Tees & Hoodies

I’ve been a huge fan of graphic tees for as long as I can remember and in recent years, I've been very fortunate to come across some amazing brands. Check them out below!

Spoonful of Faith

Jena Holiday is an illustrator and the creator of Spoonful of Faith. Each time she drops a new collection I need at LEAST 2 tees lol. Check out the current fall collection here. Note: She closes her shop for a few weeks in December so if you don’t have a chance to order before the shop closes, it will reopen in January.

Be A Good Person 

Be A Good Person is a Denver based brand I first learned about back in 2018 and I have been a fan ever since. Not only do I love the messaging, but I'm continually impressed with the quality of their clothing! No exaggeration, this hoodie is legit the best hoodie I've ever owned. Check out their collection here.

Late Four Brunch

I stumbled across this Philly based brand randomly on IG a couple months ago and fell in love with this 80's baby tee (pictured in the second photo above). This awesome Stevie Wonder sweatshirt has also quickly become a new favorite as well! Check out the tee and sweatshirt collections here.

Dopeciety 

Denisio Truitt is a visual artist and the creator of Dopeciety. I have been a fan since the brand's inception 7+ years ago! Denisio consistently creates beautiful and inspiring designs; it's always exciting to see what she's been up to in the lab when a new collection drops. Check out the current collections here.

BOOKS

2020 Releases

My clients have been BUSY! 3 of my clients released books this year and it's been so awesome to see their work in book form! Learn more about each of them below.

Amber Cabral: Allies & Advocates

First up is actually the latest release! On November 17, Amber's book was released and I'm especially excited about this one because our work together is on the cover! Amber is a diversity & inclusion expert and it's so cool to see her dream of writing a book come to life! 

Kahran & Regis Bethencourt: Glory

The amazingly talented duo behind CreativeSoul Photography released their book in October and it is such a joy to see how well received it's been! Their work is ALWAYS gorgeous and to have it accessible in this beautiful book? I can't even tell you how awesome that is! 

 Dani DiPirro: Grow Through It

Dani is the brilliantly talented illustrator behind Positively Present and her book couldn't have been released at a more perfect time! Through the colorful illustrations, her book aims to help you cultivate a positive mindset no matter what season of life you find yourself in.

WELLNESS

Soaps & More: Herpothecary

Herpothecary is my all time favorite wellness brand! A featured maker in my 2019 Makers Series, Maya hand crafts the BEST products and well… see for yourself!

Maya's last restock of the year was this past week, and this may be one of the big regrets I have about getting this out so late because she sells out FAST! If this is your first introduction to Maya and Herpothecary, please keep her on your radar and be sure to catch the next restock! A few of my favorite artisan soaps are Island Gyal, #MCM, and Ohagi.

This blog ran a bit longer than intended but I'm grateful I had the chance to highlight these awesome brands and creators. I hope you discovered some new favorites!

 I'll follow up soon to share a bit more about what I've been up to these past few months, I have so much to show you!

Talk to you soon,

-Danni

Jan-July 2020 Recap

Man. What a year it has been! I hope you and yours have been doing as best you can given everything that’s going on in the world right now.

It feels almost foreign to be blogging again. This is quite possibly the longest unplanned hiatus I’ve taken from the blog… well, ever! But, I’ve also never lived through a global pandemic so it’s definitely taken some time to find my footing.

 When the pandemic began, it was like the depression switch was flipped for me. And even though I had been working so hard at trying to get myself together, I just couldn't get out of the funk! That was really tough to manage and my “managing” initially involved a lot of sleeping. Eventually I was able to start implementing a few more healthy coping mechanisms- eating better, taking my supplements, getting some kind of physical activity in, prayer, bible reading, etc. And although those things are helpful, they can take a lot of energy, so I had very little left to be present online and well, that’s where everything is taking place these days!

 A few weeks ago I tiptoed back onto social media and have been sharing some photos from recent sessions... and that actually leads me to today’s post!

Since I haven’t been able to share much over these past 6+ months, I wanted to do a recap that highlights the amazing folks I’ve had the honor of working with this year! So let’s go month by month, shall, we?

January

The year got off to an intentionally slow start. I was doing a lot of planning and preparing for things that ultimately didn’t happen as they were supposed to 🙃 but I did have the pleasure of photographing a couple sessions this month- engagement photos for my little brother Nahshon, and some updated photos for the amazingly talented Nicole Crowder- who was just featured in Better Homes & Garden’s magazine this month!

February

This was the busiest February I’ve had in all of my 10+ years of shooting. It was an honor to work with so many beautiful black women! Most of the sessions this month were brand and headshot photos, and we shot what we now know was our last Mini Headshot Special 😭 We definitely made it count though!

March

Before everything shut down, I’d only managed to photograph a handful of brand sessions and one artist session with Aliana Grace Bailey. I was so inspired by my clients this month and really looking forward to the additional clients I had scheduled for the Spring! That made the sudden stoppage of everything a bit more difficult to manage 😓

April

Was spent at home! After letting myself feel sad (for longer than I would have liked lol), I started working on a project that I hope to be able to share soon! I also created the Zoom Guide this month, but then I went MIA so I didn’t promote it- at all lol.

May

As things started to (prematurely) open back up across the country, I tried to figure out what working safely would look like for me and my makeup artists. Additionally, I stayed in touch with my rescheduled clients keeping them abreast of things and towards the end of the month, was able to safely shoot a couple of those rescheduled sessions.

June

I did way too much in June, let me just tell you that 😩 I had 2 rescheduled sessions at home, then traveled to Atlanta to photograph the 8 clients I was originally scheduled to to work with in April. Now that may not sound like a lot, but to accommodate all of the Atlanta sessions, I had to double-up, and on one day triple-up on sessions! Thankfully all of the photos turned out great, but the last hurdle I had to overcome this month, was my 128gb memory card being corrupted 😣 It had 2k+ photos on it from 5 different sessions! The night it happened, I sobbed myself to sleep. Thankfully my dad was able to help me find recovery software (EaseUS) so I could pull the images, but man. What a physically and emotionally exhausting trip that was!

July

After such an intense month, July was a WELCOMED slow down. Only 3 sessions this month 😅 A couple brand sessions and one grad session!

August is still in progress so I’ll share what we’ve been up to this month in a future post :)

So much has changed over these past few months and even though folks are out and about more than ever, the pandemic has not gone away. It’s actively gotten worse here in the US, and it’s difficult at times trying to manage my anxiety with everything that’s going on. ⠀
⠀
Too many times I’ve been nervous thinking is this covid? or allergies? or stress? or some other unrelated issue but that has covid-esque symptoms 😭 This is not going to be a thing that’s over quickly, so I’ve really been reevaluating how I do things and how I want to do things in the future.

That being said, the one thing I have adjusted so far is the booking process. The majority of the sessions I’ve shot over the past few months have been with clients who were already on the calendar, but moving forward the booking process will be done via waitlist and the calendar will only available for booking 2 months at a time.

Yep! So if you’re interested in working together, you might want to add your name to the waitlist!

Booking for September and October will open tomorrow (Monday, August 17) to those on the waitlist.

This post is much longer than I intended it to be, but I hope it brought a smile to your face to take a look back at the amazing clients I’ve had the privilege of working with so far this year!

What’s that saying- thank goodness we don’t look like what we’ve been through? That’s exactly how I feel when I look at these beautiful faces. 2020 has been a tough year for all of us, but I’m grateful that I get to be apart of (and capture) even just a few joyful moments with my clients and I can’t wait to do the same for you in the coming months 🧡

-Danni

Develop Your Creative Eye. How?

A few months ago I was asked: “What do you think is the most important thing to have as a photographer- equipment, skills, or editing?” In reference to what they should invest in as a new photographer.

My response? None of those things. You can have the best equipment, the skill to take a technically sound photo, know how to edit it, and still be a meh photographer. The “glue” that pulls all of those things together is your creative eye. That’s what’s most important to develop! So I thought this would be a great topic to tackle on the blog.

One thing before I dive in- just as our literal eyes are unique, each of our creative eyes are as well! There’s no one size fits all approach to developing it, but there are certain elements that you can incorporate if you feel like you don’t know where to begin OR if you feel like you’ve lost inspiration with your work.

Here are a few things I’ve personally found helpful to develop creatively:

Pay attention to what attracts your eye in every day life

Is it an interesting print on a dress, the way the light shines through leaves, the bright green of freshly cut grass, the contrast of a bright door against a neutral wall, the texture of a wood panel, the symmetry of a stairway between two buildings, the unexpected color harmony of a food truck and the patrons in line...

Each of those very different things have one thing in common- you’ll notice them if they catch your eye. But WHY they catch your eye is important.

If you aren't already in the habit of doing so, take a mental (or literal) note each time your attention is drawn to something. This will help you identify what inspires you! You may find that you’re consistently drawn to certain things, and this will help give you direction when it’s time for you to pick up your camera!

Are you consistently drawn to symmetry? You may want to look for locations that will allow you to incorporate symmetrical framing into your photos. Love natural textures? You may find your preference is for more green and rustic locations as opposed to the city. Love colorful prints? You may want to encourage your clients not to be afraid of wearing prints and/or find colorful murals to incorporate into your photos!

Seems simple enough, right? 

In writing, yes. In practice, not always lol. That's why the next step is so important:

Practice regularly

When you practice, you have a chance to see if you’re moved by those same elements you observed elsewhere, in your photos! That can help you to either build on or get rid of them.

What do I mean by that? I’ll use a personal example this time.

I loveee evening light. The way the sun shines through everything and creates a beautiful glow… it’s just so yummy! But after shooting in the evening light for some time, I realized that it’s something I enjoy more IRL, and not always in my photography. That helped me see that it’s not something I need to incorporate in my work!

Once you get in the habit of practicing regularly, you’ll see what truly moves you and what you’ll want to do more of vs what you may not want to do at all.

Pretty cool right? This blog post was actually last week’s email to the Photographers List! And this week I’ll be sharing Part 2 of this series because I have a bit more to share on the topic. Interested in receiving it? Join the list!

Let me know what you thought of today's post and if there's anything specific you're interested in learning more about- I'm all ears! I have a list of topics that I'm happy to add to :)

-Danni

5 Tips: Planning For a Brand Session When You Don't Like Being Photographed

A few weeks ago I was asked a great question on instagram:

“I do NOT like being photographed, but I’m the face of my brand. How do I deal?”

And man. My mind went in TONS of different directions on how to respond because I can relate to this from being on both sides of the camera! I shared a partial response on my stories, but definitely wanted to go a bit more in depth on this topic because I’m sure it’s something a lot of us have struggled with in the past or are currently dealing with now.

So…

How do you manage being photographed when you don’t enjoy it?

My first suggestion? Consider if it’s really necessary for you to be the face of your brand. In some cases, it may not be. There are successful “faceless” brands. However, a brand that you can put a face to, does tend to connect better. If you want that to be the case for yours, here are a few suggestions that may make being photographed a little less daunting:

1. Remind yourself of why you’re choosing to be the face of your brand.

Who does your product or service help? Why is it important that you show up for them despite your discomfort?

This one is a bit more mindset related because when you focus on the fact that you DON’T like being photographed, you will find every reason not to be. But when you think about how not being photographed relates to not being able to connect with the people you want to serve, that may feel a little different. If needed, take some time and weigh out the pros and cons so that when you decide to move forward you’ll be fully convinced it’s the right decision for you!

2. Have a clear goal with your photos.

Going into a shoot with no direction can often cause even more anxiety. When you’re clear on what the photos are for, it will help the experience feel more purposeful.

Here’s where having a plan comes into play. And what should that be? Your plan depends on the product or service you offer and your end goal re: the photos. Are you looking to update your website? Have a more engaging social media presence? Or maybe you simply need a great headshot. Once you know how your photos will be used, you can create a plan. Need help coming up with a plan? Check out my Brand Guide for a few suggestions.

3. Choose a photographer you will be comfortable with.

This is super important. You can be good with the first 2 items but a photographer that makes you feel uncomfortable or one that can’t help you relax will likely make you hate the experience, and then the photos.

So how do you know if a potential photographer will be someone you feel comfortable with? Fortunately in the age of social media, service providers have a unique opportunity to share more about themselves than they may have previously. Here are a few questions you can consider when deciding on a photographer: How do you feel when you see or interact with them online? What feedback have they shared from other clients re: what it’s like working with them? How does their brand messaging resonate with you? Do you know someone personally who has worked with them? Those are just a few questions you can consider, but in all honesty, a lot of our decisions are emotional ones, so if you don’t have the best feeling about that person from their online presence (no matter how much you like their work), you should probably choose another photographer.

4. Share your feelings with your photographer.

You’re not in this alone! Let them know that you’re nervous/anxious about/not looking forward to being photographed.

Likely you are not the first client to share those feelings with them. And if they are a kind and considerate photographer, that knowledge will help them approach your session with even more care, making sure that you are comfortable and helping guide you along the pathway to great images :)

5. Try your best to relax.

You have a plan. You’ve chosen a photographer whose work you enjoy and who will help you feel comfortable, you’ve got your wardrobe all set, hair and makeup are done (those last items weren’t mentioned here, but they are in the Brand Guide :) You’ve decided to show up despite your discomfort!

Given all that it took to get here, you should be super proud of yourself! Try your best to relax and let the photo session unfold as it should. What does that look like for you? I’m not sure. Maybe it means having a shot just before you begin, listening to soothing music, drinking some tea… whatever helps you calm down- do it! Lol. Let yourself be open to the direction of your photographer who is there to help you look and feel your best!

---

Now… I’ve answered this question from my perspective so I can’t speak for how another photographer would approach this. But I can tell you that I’ve worked with a number of clients who have expressed anxiety and apprehension about being photographed, and by the end of their session, unanimously they share how much they enjoyed it and how the experience wasn’t as bad as they thought it was going to be!

I can’t tell you how much that feedback means to me! It really brings me joy that my clients allow me to bring them out of (but in most cases INTO) their comfort zone.

So what’s next? Depending on where you are, it could be one of 3 things:

1. Do you need to consider whether or not it’s important that you show up as the face of your brand? Set a few minutes aside this week and brainstorm!

2. Have you decided that you are ready to move forward? If it’s with me, shoot me an email and let’s make it happen! With another photographer? Reach out to them this week!

3. Have a question for me? Ask away!

That’s it for today! It’s been a while since I’ve shared a really long post. Hopefully you hung in there to the end :) Let me know if you found today’s post helpful and if there are any more topics that come to mind you’d like me to chat about!

-Danni