Last week I had the pleasure of meeting with this darling couple for a mentorship session.
Erin is a photographer in the DFW area, and wrote me a while back asking about the possibility of a mentor session because she was wanting to hone her manual shooting skills :) I was happy to meet up with her and her husband so we spent an afternoon last week at starbucks and a local park talking photography and having some hands on practice time shooting. They're a fun couple who despite the fact that they look suuuper adorably young, are coming up on their 3rd wedding anniversary! We had so much fun together and I was happy to take a few pictures of them as a couple and of just Erin to use for bio shots. So enjoy the pictures and when you're done go check out her
fb page and leave her some love!
Oh, and you should definitely scroll to the bottom to check out a rather lengthy (sorry, I just have somany words) announcement about mentor sessions this spring!
While we're on the topic of mentorships, I have an announcement to make about mentor sessions this year! I get emails weekly with questions from all of you sweet blog readers about everything from how to start a photography business, what camera/lenses you should buy, how to advertise, how did I design my blog, how to shoot in manual...etc. I currently have about 20 emails sitting in my inbox that are just questions from you all waiting to be answered. They come in so frequently and are so often the same (kinds of) questions over and over that I feel like I'm writing the same emails back to you all over and over. And seeing as my mantra for my business this year is simplify I have buckled down and tried to think through all the ways that I'm spending my time in my business and ask myself if I'm doing it the most efficient simple way.
And so, because I dearly love to help young just starting out photographers (Hey--I was there not to long ago, and I'm super grateful for those who helped me!) I've come up with several solutions. One, I'm planning on posting FAQ blogs on a monthly basis from here on out. Oh gracious, quite honestly this is the scariest one of them all...but I'm determined to do them. Not because I think I'm brilliant, but because I think that it will be the most helpful way to answer a lot of peoples questions in one fell swoop. Then, I'm going to create a FAQ/for photographers tab on my blog where you can go and read all the archives (once I have them) of the different FAQ posts I've written.
And then the last one that I'm most excited about is that I'm going to be offering FREE mentor sessions again this year. A lot of you may remember that I offered these last year, and here's what the offer was: You take me out for coffee or lunch, and you get 1-2 hours of my time to ask me as many questions as you like! I also said that I would be open to doing them over the phone for those of you who lived too far away to meet up in person. Well, the results were faaarrr greater than I expected. I received over 30 applications for mentor sessions and more than 2/3 of them were from girls who lived far away and wanted to do phone sessions. Needless to say I was a bit overwhelmed and started making my way through the list, meeting with girls in my area when I could, and then doing a few via phone call...but I never could figure out a way to schedule all the girls who applied from far away. And I felt terrible about leaving you all hanging!
So here's the newest plan :) I'm going to be doing group video chats! I love talking face to face about a thousand million times more than I like writing emails, and getting to answer your questions in a group setting will be a more efficient way to handle them I think! I'll probably have them once a month, and accept 5-6 applicants each time. And the first one is scheduled for February 17th, at 12PM central time! All you have to do to apply is shoot me an email at: jessica@jessicashae.com with your name, link to your fb business page/blog/flickr/website or wherever you post your pictures, and the three biggest questions you need answered right now! I'm really excited about it, so shoot me an email asap, the deadline for you to apply for the February date is a week from today, the 14th!
p.s. I'm also currently working on details for a new improved internship program this summer. I can hardly wait to share it with y'all! Seriously...it's going to be the best thing ever, this is not just hype :)
Much Love.
Jessica Shae
