Going pro

One of the things that's kept me so very busy this fall is my growing little photography business.

...And I'm pretty sure that's the first mention of Christina Keddie Photography I've made on this here blog.  Which is a little absurd, since I've been legally in business since May 2012!  So let's backtrack just a bit, shall we?

When I left my last law firm job, a dear friend of ours, who is himself a photographer and also works at the University communications office, mentioned that he might be able to throw some freelance photography work my way, as a small way of supplementing our family income.  So I went through the process of making myself a legal small business owner, thinking I would take the occasional job from the University but not do much more than that.  I registered myself with the state and filled out all the appropriate forms, did a little bit of market research to figure out a fair quote for freelance event work, and slapped together a portfolio.  Which was thankfully pretty diverse and full of Princeton-related event photos already, thanks to being the unofficial PEF photographer for so many years!

I got to do a few paid gigs for the Princeton Alumni Weekly and the Ivy League Christian Observer, and had such a blast doing them.  I found, to my surprise, that not only did I enjoy the photographing and post-processing work, but I also really liked thinking about the business side of things and being an entrepreneur.  Slowly, I started diving into the world of running a business -- writing up a basic business plan, learning how to market myself, painstakingly figuring out a good and sustainable pricing model, drafting contracts (for myself, not for a corporate client!)... I found myself voraciously reading everything I could get my hands on about pricing, client relations, photography business structures, and following all kinds of rabbit trails through this exciting new world -- usually while I was up late at night nursing Sophia.  ;)

So last October, I officially launched my business Facebook page.  I ran my first mini-sessions special, and started putting myself out there to attract portrait and wedding clients.  This past April, I shot my first wedding as the primary photographer.  And over the summer and fall, I've had a steady trickle of bookings -- referrals from friends of mine, and, excitingly, people who just found me via a Google search and decided to hire me!

I'm consciously keeping this a part-time venture for now (you know, while I have another part-time job and two very young kiddos at home!).  My goal is to have an average of two portrait sessions per month and two to three weddings per year.  And this fall, during the photography busy season (October into November), I'm booked solid!

So I just wanted to share a few of my favorites from this year.  I feel like sharing them here makes it even more real that I am, in fact, a professional photographer.  ;)  I'm so thankful for work that I love and that fits well with our family's needs in this season of life!

Our very girly almost one-year-old girl!

Let me state once more for the record: I love putting together train- and car- and animal-themed parties for Joshua.  And I do enjoy building tracks and pretending to be an airplane with both our kids.  And it's really fun teaching Joshua to share his cars with his sister, and watching him teach Sophia how to hook trains together.

But for Sophia's first birthday party, I'm totally throwing myself into stereotypical pink girliness, and I'm loving it!!  :)

We're doing a flower garden theme for her party, and I had so much fun planning the photoshoot for her birthday party invitation!  I made a pink tutu and long string of pink pearls, both of which absolutely fascinated Sophia.  I dressed her up right after breakfast one morning and took her outside to take advantage of some lovely morning light.  And we got so many fun photos!  Below are just a few (okay, a ton) of my favorites...

Sophia's birth announcement!

As I'm pretty sure almost everyone on our list has received this by now, I'm going to go ahead and post our very pretty and very girly birth announcements for little Sophia.  :)

Like I did the first time around, I started designing the template for Sophia's announcement well before she was born.  I'd hoped to take some photos of her, plop them into the template, and get the announcements sent out very soon after her birth.  Of course, adjusting to life with two kids took a bigger toll on us than I thought it would, and then Sophia's second hospital stay threw another wrench in my Martha Stewart / Emily Post plans.  But better late than never, right?  We sent out the announcements a couple weeks ago, using photos from when Sophia was just a week or two old -- and it's crazy how much bigger she is already!

The front of the announcement:


And the back:


We had to include Joshua as well, of course.  :)

It's so much fun making such happy announcements to our family and friends.  Thank you all for sharing in our joy!

Sophia's newborn photos

Back when Sophia was just one week old, I decided to try my hand at getting some posed newborn photos of her.  This is one of those areas of photography where I've always had a healthy respect for the pros who really know what they're doing -- like Amy Ro or Amber of Little Moon Photography.  I know so much goes into getting a beautiful newborn shot, and I had no delusions as to my own skills -- I'd never tried taking newborn photos before!  But I knew some of the theory (aim for the 7-10 days old window, make sure the baby is well-fed and sleepy, keep the room super warm, have white noise running, be very patient and slow in trying out poses, and never ever actually put a baby in this kind of pose since it's actually done as a composite in Photoshop), so I figured I'd give it a go.

And yeah.  My already-high respect for newborn photographers went way, way up.

I tried taking some photos of Sophia on my own when she was 10 days old.  And then I had some photographer friends over for a fun morning of hanging out and trying out different blanket and beanbag configurations when Sophia was 12 days old.  I got some cute photos on both days, but that's just because little Sophia looks adorable no matter what.  :)  It's hard to get a baby to fully cooperate with your artistic vision!  ;)  And Sophia showed her displeasure with one of the blankets by, um, pooping all over it...

Next time around, I'm going to seriously consider hiring a pro to handle these photos.

But look at Sophia in all her newborn adorableness!


Headband by Amy of Happy Gnome Headbands






Viewed through my mommy goggles, I think these are pretty perfect.  :)

A fall day full of photography

One beautiful Saturday in October, I had not one, but TWO awesome get-togethers with friends who have been bitten by the photography bug. It was so good to reconnect with my old friend, the camera...  :)

The first get-together was with a group of amazing women I initially met through an online photography forum, but have since gotten to know in real life and now consider dear friends.  I brought Joshua along and took some photos of him for the first time in weeks -- and took advantage of having other photographers there to get some really cute shots of the two of us together!  (The two below of the two of us were taken on my camera, so I'm not 100% sure who they were taken by, but I think both were shot by Kim Schmidt, local photographer extraordinaire and amazing kid-whisperer!)






Then later that day, I got together with a bunch of PEF girls who were itching to go off-campus on a photography ramble.  We first went out to the hiking trails in the Mountain Lakes Preserves, and then to an overgrown 17th-century cemetery in the middle of West Windsor fields.  As I didn't have a (delightful but in need of much supervision) toddler along with me this time, I had more of a chance to actually take photos on this excursion!












I'm thankful for every opportunity I have in our crazy busy lives just to enjoy sharing a hobby with friends.  And I'm so thankful for the wonderful friends with whom I made these memories!

Joshua's new BFF

So that one girl from Alabama who came up for our Longwood Gardens get-together?  That was Melissa, who got to stay with us last weekend for her visit.  :)  She's an absolute sweetheart (and an amazing wildlife and nature photographer), and we all had so much fun hosting her!

But especially Joshua, I think.  He discovered within minutes of meeting her that she had a collection of tasty lens caps just like mama's, and was completely won over by her from that moment on.  :)  He was definitely on his best behavior for our house guest -- up to and including a rare dinner out, where he peacefully played in the high chair and ate most of a kid's meal!

I got this sweet series of photos of Joshua playing with his new friend, and just had to create a blog post specially for these shots.  :)


Melissa, we all loved having you visit us.  Joshua misses you!

Longwood Gardens photo get-together!

I've mentioned this here before once or twice, but the single biggest reason for any growth in my photography skills over the last year is my membership on a private photography forum, where I've found so many other women who are as passionate about photography and dedicated to learning more about all of it as I am.  But I've also actually made some really dear friends through this forum -- much, I think, to David's chagrin.  :)  Because yes, on paper, I suppose it does sound weird to have "e-friends."  But what can I say -- I'm just community-oriented no matter where I go!  ;)

So occasionally, there will be a local get-together of women from this forum.  Last fall, a few of us in NJ/NY/PA went to Terhune Orchards for some photography fun.  As a follow-up to that trip, we decided to do a day trip to Longwood Gardens for some experiments in macro photography.  I thought it would just be a small handful of us again, and was looking forward to seeing the local ladies I'd seen at earlier gatherings.  But somehow, this get-together just exploded.  A couple girls from Maryland decided to make the trip up, since it was just a couple hours away from them.  That got a few girls from the DC area interested in joining in.  Then some from central/northern Virginia decided to make the much longer drive up.  Then one girl all the way from Alabama had a free plane ticket to use, and decided to spend it on this trip.  Before I knew it, there were 21 of us signed up to come!

It was such a fun trip -- in part, of course, because of the opportunity to spend several hours just focused on playing around with a type of photography I rarely, if ever, get to mess around with.  And Longwood was full of absolutely stunning flowers to practice on.  But mostly, I loved getting to hang out with these incredibly fun, kind, interesting, and all-around lovely women.  :)

So this was me pushing myself outside of my comfort zone, playing with a friend's extension tubes (which dramatically shorten your lens' minimum focusing distance, enabling you to approach 1:1 macro work with non-macro lenses), and also getting some faux macros with my 85mm lens and some creative cropping...


And here's me jumping right back into what I'm used to doing -- candid shots of people having fun.  :)


And a group shot of all of us, taken on my friend Michele's camera (check out her blog for some truly amazing macro work, and for tons of incredibly useful photography tips):


I may never be a macro photographer (I have SO much more respect for those who consistently pull it out and get beautifully composed macro shots -- it's hard figuring out focal planes and good compositions while working with such small focusing distances and shallow depths of field!), but it was a ton of fun pretending to be one for a day.  :)  And I had such a blast with all of these fun girls!  So glad so many of us could come together for the day!

Photo session with Deborah Cull Photography!!

And a brief break from the Christmas blogging...

We had a wonderful professional photo session with our dear friends Deb and Matt Cull -- Deb was Princeton '03, and is an absolutely amazing photographer.  They live in Florida, but were up here to photograph Andrew and Miriam's wedding back in October, so we jumped on the opportunity to get some family photos while they were in town!

And oh my goodness, did we get some absolutely breathtaking photos...

I'm only posting about them now because we just got our prints from that session hung up on our walls.  It was SO hard picking just a few to print -- if only we had unlimited funds and wall space and could get ginormous canvas prints of all of them!  :)

So here's our new photo wall display!





The first side (going along the wall towards our kitchen) has my canvas of Joshua (still one of my favorite photos I've taken of Joshua to date).  But the rest are all the work of Deb and Matt.

David had the idea of doing a "faces" and "places" theme for our display, as a hat tip to iPhoto.   :)  So side one is our "faces" wall -- the Joshua canvas, a photo each of one of us with Joshua, and a sweet family photo to tie it all together.  And side two is our "places" wall -- the large canvas was taken on the bench in the garden where David proposed, the vertical photo with that beautiful stand of trees is on the Princeton Battlefield, where we used to go on long rambles back when we were dating, and then a photo of us in a little library at the Grad College (where we spent some of our first dates) and one on the little bridge on the golf course that we crossed right after David proposed.

We love, love, love our photo display.   :)  And because my photos of the prints don't even begin to do them justice, here are the images we chose!









Deb and Matt, thank you once again for such a fun session and such amazingly beautiful images!  We treasure each one of these prints!