8. Don't have one. Could really care less about sports.

9. Periwinkle blue - love it!

10. Mexican or Asian

11. You asked me that already!

12. Nap or read.

1. Um, I'm honestly not really much of a Disney Princess kind of person. We did like "Rapunzel", though. Does she qualify?

2. I am excited for summer. It's May 2nd, and I'm still waiting for spring!

3. I am an idea person, both personally and professionally. Sometimes though, I have a hard time keeping up with the pace that my brain runs at, especially if I've glommed on to an idea or two.

4. That's tough. My husband knows me better than I do myself, I am very close to my kids (my daughter and I probably hang out more and talk more about stuff), I'm super close to my brother Mark, who is 8 years older than I am, and my mother-in-law and sisters-in-law.

5. So many questions! Arrogance. Hate it.

6. Snakes.

7. My camera.

Oh, I'd honestly have to say either "Pride and Prejudice" with Kiera Knightly, or "The Hangover". Nice balance, wouldn't you say? :)

I have no idea, but that movie is our life right now!

Oh, Man! I haven't checked this account forever! I'm sure your birthday has been and gone, but here's my answer anyway!

I'm a Canon Girl. I'd recommend the Canon G10, which is often called a "baby DSLR". It has some advanced point and shoot features that are super nice! Not exactly sure of price though, right now. Otherwise, the Olympus xz1 gets good reviews and it is right around $500.

Yes, we will are, and we have some new and fun things and products planned for our fabulous clients. We are closed for the most part during the month of January, but things will start ramping up in February. Until then.... To learn about a wow session with MEP, visit:

http://tinyurl.com/29foqwk

Hi, Trish: First of all, my apologies for not answering this sooner. I um, sort of forgot to check formspring for a while. :(

Alien Bees have a good reputation for being pretty mobile. I often use my Canon Speedlite with an umbrella, stand and pocketwizards with really good results as well.

I recommend that you go into a reputable camera store with a solid professional lighting section and tell them what equipment you have, what knowledge you have of basic lighting and also how you would specifically be using it. Most often, the people working these departments are pro photogs themselves, and with more details from you they should be able to point you in the right direction. Just know beforehand what your budget is! Good luck!

Trish, thanks for your note. You are very sweet. What do I use? Me, my camera and a foot stool. Yep, that's it!

I shoot a Canon 5d mark ii.

Maris

I'm losing it. I thought I answered this yesterday??? Anyway, last year I did do that with a great response. I'm open to offering the same discount this year if clients are interested. They usually ask about a disk before booking and we can chat about it then. Thanks!

I do try to use natural light whenever I can except when in the studio, of course. I use a 580EX II, mostly on camera. I'm starting to use pocketwizards more, so sometimes I plug that in to the 580exII and it can have some really nice effects off camera. I also use them with my strobes. Occasionally I use a strobe with pocket wizards on a WOW session, but very rarely. I like to move fast, so dragging a light around with me doesn't suit my style all that well. I do believe in a good light meter, though - especially if you shoot mostly natural light.

Thanks for asking!

Hi there - I did a promotion last year where with $150 the client could purchase a CD for $75. I'm totally open to that again this year, so if there's interest let me know!

Getting fans on a facebook page is fun, isn't it? I always feel like these faces and names are supportive of what I am doing and/or enjoy looking at my work, so each one that gets added is important to me, and I know many photographers and business owners feel the same way.

There are a few ways to gain fans, some more productive than others, and some more genuine.

The first way is to invite your friends and family from your personal page. Simply click on the "suggest to friends" link on your fan page and choose who you would like to add.

Another route is when you post pictures on your fan page and tag them to your clients, include your fan page url with the recommendation to become a fan in the comment box.

You can post a message on your personal and fan page asking your friends and fans to share your link and to invite their friends, too. Social media's viral capabilities are what makes this actually work for some.

You can add a facebook fan
widget to your website and blog, too.

Some people run contests or ads to get new fans as well. If running an ad, I suggest you target it very specifically to your location and target audience to ensure that you are talking to the right potential customers.

I would caution you, though: The whole point of a fan base is to build a customer base. I see photographer's pages all of the time who have a kajillion fans but a very small business. It's lovely to have people admire your work and the more the merrier, but I'd rather have a smaller fan base of active people who are more likely to be my customers than to spend money and time "courting" strangers who will never become more than that. My fan list grows quite slowly at times because of this, but I'm okay with that because I have a very engaged base who doesn't seem to mind when I "talk" to them... any marketer's goal!

Photographer's love to join other people's pages, which I do support! I've learned a TON from other photography pages, and I always enjoy hearing from a photographer in another part of the world, too.

Facebook is a great way to communicate with your current and potential clients... just make sure you respect their time and post relevant and valuable things or they'll stop reading!

LIGHTROOM! I do not use Bridge at all, except for the odd project now and then. Lightroom is an amazing tool - the most important thing is to learn to utilize all it has to offer to get the most out of it. Learn it and you'll love it!

Hi, Kietra: I know that it gets glowing reviews, and deservedly so. Several of my friends who are professional photographers have purchased the G11 camera for their "candid" use, like vacations, kids activities, etc. It's fast, great in low light situations, has a wide variety of options and features. Best of all, it can shoot RAW files (you might not want or need this), and it has the equivalent of a 28mm wide angle lens.

I would highly recommend it, and it's likely it will end up in my candid bag at some point, too. :)

~Enjoy it!

Hi, there:

That's a really difficult question to answer without knowing your budget, what functionality and features are important to you and if you have a "brand" that you prefer.

Since I am strictly a Canon user, I'd be likely to steer you to the new Canon EOS Rebel T2i (550D)which was just released this year, mostly because it's a lot of camera for your money and has a lot of cool features.

Having said that, you really need to go to a store, look at a variety of them side by side, see which ones you like the feel of, compare features AND prices.

I've included the link to a great article about buying a Digital DSLR. The writer gives you several different categories to compare cameras: price, by brand, by photography style, etc., etc. I'd read it, print it and then take it to the store with me to physically look at them.

http://www.digital-slr-guide.com/what-is-the-best-digital-slr.html

Good luck! Let me know what you end up purchasing!

Hi, Auntie Diane: She can call me on my cell at 763-370-4704, or send me an email at maris@marisehlersphotography.com

Hope you're doing well!

Here's a hug!

Maris

While I'd definitely like to not have to worry about money, I don't think I'd ever want to have so much money that it diminished my passion for working hard, creating and being in control of my own destiny. Fame? While I think most of us want to be known for our talents (or appreciated for them), I'd NEVER want to live a life under a microscope. Ish.

If you shoot in RAW, save as a JPEG and choose a file quality of about 8 or so (you should be able to go to 10 or 12). This will compress the file but will not compromise quality in a noticeable way. I always try to keep a 300dpi for printing, but some do go lower. If you shoot in JPEG just save at that slightly lower quality level and you should be fine.

You might want to consider a second folder on your disk that has images sharpened and compressed for web. The files will be much smaller and will upload more quickly for website use. I now include the two folders, and label them "FOR PRINTING" and "FOR WEB USAGE", and this works well.

Oooh, I love Lightroom!

Do you understand the basic premise of Lightroom? It's non-destructive editing at it's finest, which means that when you import the images into Lightroom you are actually importing the thumbnail, not the entire image. When you go into the develop module, you are actually editing the thumnail as well. What is so awesome about that is that you aren't doing anything to the original - it ALWAYS remains as it came out of your camera. In Photoshop, when you worked on the file you worked on / changed the original unless you saved a copy.

In Lightroom, you never hit save. Isn't that awesome? It also keeps track of your changes so you can always jump back 3 or 30 changes, depending on how you many you've made with just one click.

So, what all of this means is, in order to get the jpeg, you click on File, Export and a dialog box will come up. You want to save it to your disk, choose an existing folder or create a new one, and then choose JPEG as the file format with all of the qualities you want it to have. Lightroom will export all of the files and save them as jpegs to that folder. That's it!

NOW... before you do that... I hope you will go through them and eliminate the ones you don't want to see again and hopefully rate the ones you do with either a star rating or a color code. Once you do this, in the library module you can click on the grid view and then at the top of the screen click on "attributes". You can then choose which images to see based on the attributes you gave them. Super slick - if you want, you can highlight those and export only those with the attribute you are looking at. I use this feature constantly!

Sorry if this is hard to understand - I never said I would make a good technical writer. ;)

Hope this helps!

Well hi there, whoever you are. :)

If you send me an email at maris@marisehlersphotography.com I can send you all of the info you need.

We will officially start booking these sessions in May. They are SUPER fun!