It is indeed an honor to be doing something that you truly enjoy. Photography is not only the creative aspect of creating something genuine of each individual, but it is the special relationships that I have had with my clients in the over twenty five years as a professional photographer.
I can't believe that I started my first studio in the Conejo Valley in Thousand Oaks, CA over twenty years ago (Before that I had a studio in Granada Hills, CA). Weddings and wedding photography was so much different than it is today. I remember lugging that large and heavy black camera bag (it was especially heavy towards the end of the evening) that had several large hasselblad cameras, over 20 rolls of film, many lights and batteries, and lots of other stuff. Whereas now, I work with a relatively light professional digital camera and a small light camera bag. Now, instead of changing the film after 10-20 images, I change one simple memory card after 100 images or so! By the way, although the wedding day was more diffcult before with the film cameras it was also a lot easier after the wedding. We sent the film to a professional lab and then they created 5x5" color corrected previews of the entire wedding day. Getting this ready for the lab took me ten minutes. Now, with digital, it typically takes me from 4-6 hours to get my images ready to be processed to the lab!
At our home based studio in Thousand Oaks the majority of the family, children, and baby portraits came from the Thousand Oaks, Simi Valley and Newbury Park areas. I really liked the flexibility of that home based studio, one level of our tri level house was a studio, where I could photograph the babies, children and families either in the studio, our outdoor studio, beach portraits, home portraits or portraits at a nearby park.
Blinking a couple of times it has been 5 1/2 years that we have been in our beautiful present location in Westlake Village, CA. I have seen my work evolve as a photographer and as an artist. I am much more aware of creating a more balanced and natural portraits. Portraits that better reflect the heart and soul of each individual. Family portraits are much more difficult to create than individual portraits because you have to be so aware of creating body, color and expression harmony with all of the participants. Let's face it, we all want to look our best! There are times when I have to work double time when clients come for their family portrait session but they are overweight and want to look thinner, the dad or children refuse to smile even with mom's threats, or their clothes don't look right because they are either too light, too dark, or it's a completely different color than everyone else in the family is wearing! At this point, diplomatic body positioning is necessary and it makes a difference with the final results. I have noticed that when I make these adjustments clients who normally say,"I hate my pictures" are now saying, "Wow, this is the best picture of me in years."
Another area of change as an artist has been with my photographic retouching of my client's portraits. You can have the most perfect picture in the world (great lighting, expression, location, etc.) with your family, children or business portrait but if the retouching looks either uneven and blotchy, or excessively blurry then you will not be happy with your portrait. Now, as a result of over ten years of day to day experience and advanced training from many experts in this field, I am creating very natural photographic portraits that I am very proud of. From small desk size portraits to larger Canvas Master Portraits benefit from this expert retouching on my customer's portraits.
More and more of our clients want me to make their old family photos come alive again through my photographic retouching and restoration work at our Westlake Village studio. Last week, I just finished restoring a small 3x4" old black and white photo of my client's parents, when they were first dating,that was dated around 1946. My clients who live in Newbury Park, CA wanted me to make this picture larger, sharper, and remove the creases and spots that were in the original image. They will be giving the completed image, which will be an 11x14" black and white portrait, to their parents who will be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in November.
I feel that it is so important to keep in touch with our clients. One way that we do this is by letting our clients know the changes at the studio, different specials that we are offering that month, or just updating the pictures at the website: www.photographybyjoel.com. It's a lot of fun when our clients email us at the studio, joel@photographybyjoel.com, or call us and tell us that how much they like the pictures of their family.
There is so much more to say... for another time.
