St. Augustine Wedding Photography | Jen's Photo Journal

Jen Shannon Photograph, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Monday, March 1, 2010

I love you

Category: Personal Tags: Florida|Grandma|Jacksonville

Today, my grandma would have been 73. “I love you” were the last word she said to me. I had left a message for my grandpa about three weeks ago to wish him a happy birthday and my grandma had called me back and left me a message to let me know that she relayed the message to him and that she loved me.

The last time I saw her was in August. You can see my blog post about their visit here. About a week and a half ago I received the call that my grandma was going to die. I thought, “What???” My dad explained that she had had a heart attack and was without oxygen for 15 minutes. She was on life support and had no brain activity. She always said she never wanted to live on a machine. My grandpa honored her wishes Thursday, February 18th and let her go home to be with God. It must have been the toughest decision he’s ever had to make.

We made the trip to Florida and spent time consoling my grandpa and each other. It was all so surreal because I’ve never had someone I’m close to die. My mother’s mom died 5 years ago but I wasn’t close to her. It hurt me to see my mom in so much pain but it didn’t effect me as much. The one thing I will say about funerals is that it brings family together. So much of my dad’s side of the family is completely unknown to me. Relatives I haven’t seen in years I’ve finally gotten to see again.

All of this got me thinking so much about how much we want to live in Florida. There are so many things I’ve taken for granted. Had we been living there we could have spent more time with my grandparents. I could have been there at the hospital with her to say goodbye but I know God has had us up here for a reason. We had planned to be there a few days to help my grandpa with the things he needed help with but it turned out other family members were helping so we decided to stay a few extra days and look at houses in Florida. It was also strange to be back because I haven’t been back in 2 years and for the first time, I didn’t recognize many of the things from my parents’ house. I lived there for almost 20 years and after only 2 I couldn’t remember what it all looked like. It was serene. Who wouldn’t want to live here? There’s peaceful wild life everywhere. I was so thankful to be home. It really is where I belong. Colby can’t get enough of it. He just LOVES my parents’ house. It really made me realize that I want so badly (more-so than I thought) to be by my family and friends. Here are some photos of it.

These gorgeous flowers were sent to my family from my cousin, Marlea, and her husband, John.

Pure Florida oranges straight from my dad’s orange tree. Nothing is better.

How could I have possibly forgotten the beautiful sunrises at my parents’ house? I mean look at the beauty? The awesome thing was that I woke up at 6:30 in the morning in hopes to see the sunrise. I could tell it was going to be an overcast/rainy day because the sky was full of clouds but I just kept hearing God say, “Grab your camera or I won’t make it happen.” I kept wanting to wait to see it before I went outside but He just kept telling me to grab it and go. I prayed he would make a beautiful sunrise for me to capture and sure enough He did. This beautiful, firey sunrise only lasted a few minutes before it went behind the clouds and it began to rain but look at the beautiful stillness of the glassy water? It was sort of an intimate time between me and God and his reminder that He loves me and that this is where I belong.

I just love the silhouette of everything. You can see some of the muscovy ducks up early to see if I had food for them (and I did-bread).

You can see it starting to go away and fall behind the clouds. You can also see a mallard swimming up to the shoreline to see if I had food for him too.

I saw the texture of the picnic table that I used to spend time at. I remember days of fishing with my dad and little brother. We’d put our tackle boxes on the table and get to fishing. It was so fun. You can see the table is old and rotting but I won’t ever forget those times.

The birds and ducks were so peaceful. I haven’t heard a bird sing in months! My mom has a couple of bird feeders right outside her bathroom window that she watches in the mornings. Notice this looks like the Twitter bird.

My mom has the muscovies trained. She gives them bread every day and they’ll eat it right out of your hand. This is Colby feeding the duck.

As if you couldn’t tell by reading already, there are tons of ducks down there. The lake they live on is home to muscovies, mallards, egrets, and geese. I remember growing up we raised 3 mallards. Only one is still alive (dang they live a long time!) but I remember when the babies used to hatch and you’d see some random ducks with their babies following them around the lake. They are SOOOOOO adorably cute when they’re small!

Category: Personal Tags: Florida|Grandma|Jacksonville

2 comments

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

E-Learning Session: Lindsay Horn-Great Question re: Discounts and DVDs of Images

Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking with Lindsay Horn of Lindsay Horn Photography. What a great hour we had! Lindsay is a great photographer in Texas and does family photography. You can fan Lindsay on Facebook here.

For future reference…. One of the things about the e-learning sessions that make it harder to blog is that a lot of the questions are similar to ones I’ve posted to my blog before. So I may not post 3 questions from each session a week.

1. How do you handle pricing for family, friends, or people that you know? Do you give them a discount?

I’m going to answer this question from a blogging standpoint instead of just saying what I said to her, because I think there is more to it that the outside world may not understand is implied if I only type what I said to Lindsay.

For family, friends, and people I know pricing… I DO NOT DISCOUNT MY SERVICES! Here’s why. I have found that they will not take you seriously or respect you as a professional photographer if you’re always discounting yourself. So instead I will do one of three things. If I am very close to someone and feel compelled I will gift my photography services. I never gift wedding photography services because no one else (except maybe the parents of the bride or groom) is giving a gift worth as much as my wedding packages so why should I? If you are someone I know but I am not close to I will negotiate a deal so I am getting just as much out of it as the other person. For example: A friend of mine has a boyfriend who needs head shots done. Instead of charging her my portrait rate of $250 I negotiated a deal with her so I get something out of the deal that is close to my portrait rate. This is not something I do for everyone I know. Lastly if it is someone I know, if I feel compelled I might add a value added service to their package but I will not discount my prices. For example: I might add an extra hour of coverage or throw in a trash the dress session, but I do not discount my prices.

One thing I’ve said over and over again (feel free to use this) is I AM NOT WORTH ANY LESS JUST BECAUSE I KNOW YOU! If someone I know asks me for a discount or expects it I will not do any work for them. That’s a classic sign of someone that doesn’t respect what you do. Ultimately I will not do any work for people I know unless I am gifting it or getting something that has just as much value as my charges out of it. It’s not right or fair to expect someone who has built something from the ground up to work for free or cheap just because they know you. There is so much work that goes into each session/wedding. It’s not just a “show up at this location and shoot for an hour then send me a disc with the images” kind of thing. I went into detail about this in an earlier blog post that you can read about here.

2. It’s sad that so many photographers charge so little and include the disc of images with it.

While this wasn’t a question, I thought it was a statement worth talking about. So we spoke about it. Any regular consumer has access to a digital camera, a cd burner, and a printer. Because of this they think a disc of images shouldn’t cost them anything. Here’s the problem. We spend hours upon hours and days upon days editing your photos and creating artwork. If you bought a canvas and some paint and created a painting that took hours/days to create would you turn around and sell it for the cost of the canvas and paint? No. Photography isn’t any different. Photography is an art form. Even though we are taking pictures of your family, we are still creating art so you are purchasing the art from us, not just point and shoot pictures printed on your quick printing HP printer at home. You’re paying for skill, quality, experience, and artwork. This is a very hot debate in the photography industry among photographers and the photographers who give the discs or images away are hurting the industry.

3. Do you shoot in RAW or JPEG? Why?

I shoot RAW. RAW files are more forgiving on over and under exposed images (even professionals have a few of those). It also makes color balancing easy. I’m not the type of photographer that likes to worry about white balance issues on the front end. If something ends up not being color balanced properly I can take care of that very quickly on the back end and apply it to all of the images affected. It’s easier for me to worry about controlling the ISO, aperture, and shutter speed on the front end and color correct on the back end.

no comments

Jen Shannon Photography, Chicago Wedding Photographer

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

ROP, V-day, Wedding Collection Giveaway, and My Favorite iPhone Apps!

I’m FINALLY bringing you my 3rd video blog. Gosh, I am so terrible with it! I’m sorry but hopefully I can make up for it today! I had my agenda ready and just started talking… Anyway, there’s kind of a big announcement in there so watch for that and I’ll probably post on it later. Enjoy!

Movie 7 from Jen Shannon on Vimeo.

no comments