Irvine Family Christmas-11

This article was wonderful, touching on the conversations I try to have with each of my family clients.

8 tips for families before their photo session

by Krista Campbell

1.  Ask your client to choose their clothing carefully.

Have your clothing chosen way in advance and make sure that your outfit choices are comfortable and attractive.  What do your dream family photos look like?  If they are soft and elegant?  Chose neutral colors with soft, flowing fabrics…. think creams, very soft pastels, oatmeals, light browns, tans, grays, and slate blues.  Want to showcase the fun and spunky side of your family?  Choose coordinating colors (but not matchy, matchy) with bold accent colors, such as hues of gray with yellow or bright red accents.  Adding fun accessories like scarves, headbands, hats, etc. can add a modern twist and sassy flair to your images

2.  Recommend that your clients be well rested and well fed.

Be certain not to schedule your photo session around your child’s nap or bedtime.  The best time for lighting is the two hours before sunset and after sunrise.  If this is a bad time for your children, talk with your photographer.  Good photographers will be able to shoot at any time of day by utilizing areas of open shade that will give your skin a beautiful hue and put a sparkle in your eyes.  Don’t show up to a photo shoot on an empty stomach.  I meet many families who come to a photo session with dinner scheduled at the end.  If this is your plan, be sure to give everyone a healthy snack before the photo shoot.

3.  Be sure to leave plenty of time to get ready.

Moms are often rushing around before a photo shoot, making sure that their family is dressed and ready.  I always encourage mothers to have their hair and makeup professionally done.  This will prepare mom for her pictures and when mom is feeling pretty and confident, this will reflect on the rest of the family as well.  Leave plenty of time for showers, baths, dressing, and grooming.  When a family shows up to a family photo session rushed and disorganized, it sets the tone for a rushed and disorganized session.  Give yourself extra time so that you are ready before it’s time to head out that door.

4.  Ask the dads to be cheerful participants.

Dads, please cheerfully participate.  I know that many dads dread the family photo session, but fathers, please understand how important capturing your family is.  These images will be left as a legacy, when your children are grown, with families of their own some day. Family photos are treasured forever and they are so important.  Please, please, dads… cheerfully participate in your family photo session.  Once you see your happy wife and amazing photographs, you will be so glad that you gave this time to your family.

5.  Cheese is for crackers.

Please, parents… leave the “cheese” at home.  Cheese is for crackers.  So many times I have found parents who stand behind the photographer and scream, “Say cheese to the lady kids!”  Yelling and demanding young children to look at the camera to smile will only stress your children out (not to mention the photographer) and will result in strained, unnatural and often unflattering photographs.  Step back, and allow the photographer to naturally interact and talk with your children.  This will result in natural, gorgeous smiles.  Help the photographer capture the true essence of your child’s personality by talking with and coaxing out those smiles naturally and easily.

6.  Have fun with your family.

Don’t be afraid to pick up your children and toss them in the air.  Give your wife a sweet kiss on the check.  Tell your husband how much you love him and appreciate him for being there for your family.  Have fun.  Laugh. Giggle. Joke. Embrace.  Kiss.  Snuggle.  Play.  Doing these things will allow the photographer to capture the emotion and true beauty of your family.  Leave the stiff “cheese” faces for Aunt Marge at the next family reunion.  Show your photographer who you really are, so that she has the opportunity to capture your love through her lens.

7.  Bring an activity that you enjoy doing together as a family.

My most successful family sessions have incorporated an activity that the family loves to do together.  This gives you something to do with your hands and feet, engages the little ones, and brings an authentic smile to your face.  Do you love to read together?  Bring some books.  Is your favorite dessert ice cream?  Bring some ice cream bars or drumsticks to your session or better yet… hire an ice cream truck to come to your session.  Love to play board games or cards?  Plan to play a round of Uno or Monopoly during your family photo session.  Other ideas include: football, piggy back rides, races, bike riding, hiking, singing, picnics, the ideas are endless.  When families are engaged in doing something that they love together, the photographer will have the opportunity to take some beautiful and authentic photographs.

8.  Let your clients know that NOT everyone has to be looking and smiling at the camera at the same time.

The best photographs are often the ones where everyone is engaged or interacting with each other.  Understand that not every picture needs to have everyone looking at the camera and smiling at the same time.  If you are engaged as a family and loving on each other, your eyes will be on your family members and your smile with be natural.  These are the photographs that you will cherish most because they depict your family connection and your love.

Why Headshots Are Important

Why Head shots Are Important : Chances are that if you are in business, you have heard about corporate head shots and how all the biggest and brightest CEOs take great pride in their image this way. You might have just brushed this off, thinking to yourself that a professional head shot isn’t necessary. On the other hand, you might already realize the importance of a professional head shot and are just reading this to solidify your opinion.

Representing Your Business the Right Way!

Whether you want to post your head shot on your company’s website, or want to post it on your social media pages, you are always representing your business in one way or another. You might deal with other businesses or with the general public, but a professional head shot will put confidence into your business and make your clients (both businesses and public) more willing to deal with you.

Think about it for a moment, if you were searching for a new supplier and found that a certain company was a very viable supplier, but the CEO had an unprofessional head shot in casual clothes – would you be willing to deal with this company?

Utilizing Platforms Such as LinkedIn

LinkedIn has grown in popularity ever since its inception, it has become of the biggest platforms for businesses and professional individuals. It has an abundance of advantages including networking, advertising, recruiting, and so much more, so it really should be utilized. If you’re not utilizing LinkedIn to its full potential then this is only going to have a negative impact on your business.

By having a profile on LinkedIn you will be able to connect with business and professional individuals alike, but you need to look the part if you want to get the most out of this platform. A professional corporate head shot will allow you to portray your business the way it should be portrayed.

Getting the Most from Your Head shot

There are many tips and tricks that you can implement in order to get the most from your head shot. One thing that many executives do is try to portray themselves as seriously as possible, this doesn’t always have to be the case! In some industries you might have to look serious, but if possible, make sure to show a bit of personality, people will remember!

All in all, make sure that you go to the right photographer! You can’t have a professional head shot without going to a professional photographer. 

Written by Robert Montgomery at RecruiterMixer - National Multifamily Executive Recruiters

Light in Texas Photography Headshots

20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design

http://www.cybnetlogics.com/dos-donts-effective-web-design/

When you are creating a website (or hiring a web/blog designer to create one for you), there are specific items you need to be aware of. Things that normally wouldn’t cross your mind. For the average person who wants a website or blog for their business, they are after one very important thing – sales. Now, they may tell you that they want the big flashy logos, or the overdone textures/gradients, but it is the job of a well skilled web designer to steer their clients in the right direction.

Below are twenty do’s and don’ts of effective web design. Study, read, (re)read and print this page. It will help either make or break your website. And don’t hesitate to let us know of anything we might have left out, in the comments below. We love getting your opinions on things and discussing the articles with you – after all, you’re quite possibly the coolest people in the world.

DO: Keep your page structured

In the recent months we’ve seen an explosion of great grid layouts and css files. The most famous (in my opinion) being 960.gs and one of the cooler, more light weight grid systems being the 1kb grid. Following after the structure and balance of a great magazine/newspaper, these grid systems help lay out information in a structured and easy to follow format.

DONT: Just place boxes everywhere

We’ve all seen these types of websites before – 20+ boxes, all different sizes, nothing lining up properly and not on piece that actually grabs your attention because you’ve just ran into a whirlwind of craziness. if you’re a web designer and you cannot properly place items in a structured environment, well, I would’t really call yourself a web designer.

DO: Focus on what’s important

Are you building a website for a business that sells one specific product? If so, make sure that’s the focus of the home page. Allow yourself space on the inner pages to place calls to action for that specific item. If you’re building a blog that gives out freebies or writes tutorials, make sure they’re getting the proper amount of focus and attention. Websites like WOO Themes do a great job and putting forward what their main focus is – wordpress themes.

DONT: Place irrelevant ads across your page

If you’re going to try and make money from your website/blog, do yourself a favor and lay off the excessive advertisements. If your page loads and has 70% ads and only 30% content, odds are high that people will leave and never come back. Making your ads the #1 priority is a bad idea. Try blending them in and making sure they don’t take away from the content.

DO: Choose the right color scheme

Knowing what your readers emotions are will help you in choosing the proper color scheme. You won’t want a bright and ‘loud’ color scheme if your website is in the meditation niche. You’ll notice that most punk rock bands have CMYK color schemes (pink, yellow, black and blue), while a doctor/medical website will generally stick with a lighter, more ‘open’ color scheme

DONT: Overdo it with 20 different colors

Having every color that is inside the 64 set of crayons on your screen will not only look bad, but it will annoy your readers and drive them away. Your colors should blend well together, not clash. If you’re not good at picking color schemes, I’d suggest a site like Colour Lovers which has user generated color schemes posted. Find the right color scheme (at most, 5 colors) and see how much better your designs turn out.

DO: Make it easy to scan your pages

People will not spend 5 minutes trying to figure out what your website is about and what it has to offer. The best way to ensure you’re getting the right information out to your reader is to make the page easy to scan. Use proper H tags (similar to how this post is using h3 tags) to focus on the important items. You can also use pull quotes, block quotes and images.

DONT: Write one paragraph per page that is 1,000+ words long

If there’s one thing that stops me from subscribing to a blog is that the posts are literally 1,000+ words and have no paragraph breaks. This, and they normally don’t even have blog words or any indication that there’s anything important inside their content. Break your content up and make it easier to read – please, and thank you.

DO: Keep it simple stupid

It’s a proven fact that sign up forms with more than 3 items (usually – name, email & one other item) will have a significantly lower sign up rate than the easier forms. People HATE doing things for too long – so don’t over complicate things. Make things as easy as possible for your readers by pretending a 4 year old will be viewing it. It definitely helps get things out in the open where they need to be.

DONT: Go on and on (and on) about nothing

Rambling, excessive LOL’s, too many smiley faces and random dribble will drop attention spans of your visitors. You want them to stay – act like it. If you have a personal blog where you write about your life, thats one thing, but to randomly post about what you ate, or where you went yesterday on your business website will definitely drive people away.

DO: Focus on killer copywriting

Words matter. Keep them short, sweet and to the point. If you have trouble writing copy that attracts the readers attention to where you need it to go, hire someone. Copy is just as important as the design of your website. Choosing the right words for sign up buttons, page headings, navigation items and calls to action can be the difference between 50% sign up rate and a 90% sign up rate.

DONT: Stuff your pages full of keywords

Google isn’t stupid. Neither are your readers. If your page has the main keyword for your site stuffed into each paragraph 30-40 times, it will not only read very poorly, but you’ll be penalized. Writing should flow naturally and should only mention your keywords where they fit.

DO: Set your navigation up properly

If you’ve got a sign up page on your website, maybe you’ll have your main navigation in a blue color, while the sign up button is in a green color. Regardless, you’ll want to make your navigation easy to spot and easy to use.

DONT: Make your readers search to find something

Your readers shouldn’t spend 30-40 seconds trying to find a contact or about page. They also shouldn’t have to click through three pages just to get to a sign up form. Get the important things out in the open. For the items that aren’t required to have a strong focus on your website, you might want to invest in a search box – I HATE when websites don’t have a search box. Web design 101 maybe?

DO: Optimize your load times

If there’s one recurring theme in this entire article it is the fact that visitors are impatient. You need to build your website with optimal speeds and allow your page to load in around 1-2 seconds. You can do this by making sure your css files are compressed, using the google hosted javascript files and ensure your page is coded and designed with optimal speeds in mind.

DONT: Make everything on your page an image

Text on a website is there to be exactly what it is -text. There is no need to make the text blocks of your site jpg images. Also, making your website background 1MB or more in size will also cause your page to load very slow. I’ve seen websites also use 2 different javascript libraries and load 10+ plugin scripts for them in the headers and their websites took around 20 seconds to fully load.

DO: Choose the right fonts and sizes

I’ve only recently got into typography and have realized that it is a highly important aspect of web design. Making your section titles the right size and making sure the fonts you’re using will greatly effect the experience your visitors have when viewing your websites. Generally speaking, you should use one main font for the content and then you may switch the titles of the pages to a different font.

DONT: Have 5 different fonts in 10 different sizes

Picture this: Page titles are in times new roman, content for those pages are in Arial, navigation links are in comic sans and the sidebar is in impact (yes, that impact). How ugly does that look? Now, remember that vision the next time you want to build a website with 5 different fonts.

DO: Make your page visually appealing

The world may tell you that people don’t judge a book by its cover, but thats a lie. The first thing people see is the web design you’re branded with. That first impression better be a good one. Utilize textures/gradients that give your website depth and draw attention to the beauty of your design. I would strive to ensure each of your website designs are accepted to galleries like css mania.

DONT: Throw a bunch of crap together and think you’ll do well

Animated gif’s are your first no-no. After that comes the marquee scrolling text and the jumbled mess of text and graphics that resemble a 13 year olds myspace page. It isn’t cute and in case you’re not aware of it, it’s no longer 1980. Things have changed and people don’t expect to see something that looks like a 7 year old made it. If you’re a professional, act like it and make sure your designs are up to par.

By John Stone / October 25, 2009 

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