Mentorships || dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer

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

Summer internships {dallas, tx engagement & wedding photographer}

Hey hey!  It's back, hoooray!

I was getting ready to march myself right up to photobucket HQ and put someone in timeout until they could get themselves straightened out!

That little hitch in the giddy-up kind of threw off my blogging groove for the week, so instead of blogging the pictures I was plaaaanning on blogging yesterday, I'm changing my mind (I do that alot;) and we're gonna talk about intern/mentorships.  

The good news is, I'm doing more!  The even good-er news is, I'm doing alooot more!  And the good-est news is, I might even be doing one near you! :)  Oh, pluuuus, there's free stuff involved ;)

So, because of some very sweet and convincing emails over the last few weeks (I'm such a sucker when people butter me up;) I'm not only hosting several more internships this summer, I'm going to be holding some of them out of state.  Meaning--yes, I will be doing several here in my great state, Texas, at my homestead ;)  But I am also for sure planning 1-2 weeks of internships in Colorado (my second favorite state) aaaand I'm open to the possibility of doing one in either Minnesota, or Georgia.  And if you want to see a few more details about what an internship with me looks like you can watch this video I made of my first interns or read either this or this post about two of my spring internships.

So here are the details.

The dates are flexible and subject to change slightly, but right now it looks like that's what's going to work best for me.  I already have 4 girls who are coming to my Colorado internships and I'm only going to be able to accept 2-3 more, so if you're interested in coming to that one, email me asap!  I also loooove to have out-of-towners for my TX internships, so if you're from out of state, nooo prob!  

If you're from one of the other two states I mentioned as possibilities, and are interested in hosting one near you, then shoot me an email and we'll talk!  Basically I'd need to have at least 4 girls interested in attending from that area before I could start planning definitely :)

The second opportunity that I want to tell you about is mentorships!

I get soooo many emails every week with questions ranging from, how to set up pricing, to who do I order prints from, to "I'm about to shoot my first wedding, do you have any tips??"  And let me tell ya, not only am I terrible at replying to emails, it's sooo hard to type up clear answers to some of those kinds of questions!  I'm a face to face kinda gal, so here's the dealio ;)

I'm offering a limited number of free mentorship spots.  You can take me to coffee or lunch, orrr if you live far away we can set up a a skype date, and talk!  You'll have 1-2 hours of my undivided attention and I'll try my best to answer all your questions!

The reason I'm doing this?

Several reasons.  One, because I know everyone doesn't have the time or the money to come to an internship.  And maybe you don't need a whole week of teaching you just have a couple of quick questions.  I want to do it for free because when I was just starting out, there were soooo many people that gave of their time to answer my million and one questions about everything under the sun.  Actually, forget the "when I was just starting out" part, there are still people to this day who I know I can call for help if I need it.  So I want to do that for someone else, or maybe several someone-elses ;)

So if you're interested in a mentorship spot, email me at jessica@jessicashae.com and let me know 5-10 questions you have for me.  

And I just have to say as a disclaimer to alllll of this.  I don't have all the answers.  I'm not the best qualified photography + business instructor in the world.  NotEvenClose actually.  But I love making new friends, I love teaching, I love helping people learn, and I love photography.  So come join me in all of that!

You have until the 25th of April to apply for both the internship and mentorship positions, and then I'll be announcing who's been accepted on April 27th!

Much Love.

Jessica Shae