We had so much fun!
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Valentines Special
I just finished doing some test shots for my Valentines Special. I love how they turned out!
We had so much fun!
We had so much fun!
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Casting Call for Models
I have been having so much fun painting props and designing new backdrops for the studio. I have so many ideas and I can't wait to try them out.
Therefore I am looking for adorable little models to try out some new ideas. If you know anyone with children newborn to age 7 that would like a free session along with a complimentary 5x7 please contact the studio asap. I would like to get samples of new props and backdrops to use for my website and marketing within the next couple of weeks. I especially need little models age newborn to 18 months.
Therefore I am looking for adorable little models to try out some new ideas. If you know anyone with children newborn to age 7 that would like a free session along with a complimentary 5x7 please contact the studio asap. I would like to get samples of new props and backdrops to use for my website and marketing within the next couple of weeks. I especially need little models age newborn to 18 months.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Upcoming Specials
Well I finally sat down with my calendar and scheduled all of my specials for the year.
But you may want to keep checking back. Every once in a while I may add a new one or need to make changes on the existing ones.
I have all the specials and the dates listed on my website under upcoming events.
But here is a quick recap of what is on the books so far.
January
Wednesday's Child - 26th
I have made some changes to this one so make sure you check out the website for all the details.
February
Valentines Special - 3-5th
Quick Takes - 14-19th
March
Tippy Toes & Tutus - 8-12th
Take me out to the Ballgame - 22-26th
Wednesday's Child - 30th
April
Peter Rabbit - 1-16th
Wednesday's Child - 27th
May
Gone Fishin' - 4-11th
Wednesday's Child - 25th
Bathtime Babies - 26-28th
June
A Day at the Beach - 1-8th
Wednesday's Child - 29th
July
Vintage Fields - 9-16th
Wednesday's Child - 27th
August
Vintage Icecream special/Urban Child - 11-13th
Wednesday's Child - 31st
September
The Wild Wild West - 9-10th
Me & My Best Friend - 14-21
Wednesday's Child - 28th
October
Wednesday's Child - 26th
November
Winter Wonderland - 5-12th
Wednesday's Child - 30th
December
Christmas Angels - 1-8th
Wednesday's Child - 28th
After I get my computer back from the shop I will post sample images of all of these specials.
I am also looking for little models to get some more current samples for my website with some of these specials. If you are interested let me know. I give special perks for my models!
But you may want to keep checking back. Every once in a while I may add a new one or need to make changes on the existing ones.
I have all the specials and the dates listed on my website under upcoming events.
But here is a quick recap of what is on the books so far.
January
Wednesday's Child - 26th
I have made some changes to this one so make sure you check out the website for all the details.
February
Valentines Special - 3-5th
Quick Takes - 14-19th
March
Tippy Toes & Tutus - 8-12th
Take me out to the Ballgame - 22-26th
Wednesday's Child - 30th
April
Peter Rabbit - 1-16th
Wednesday's Child - 27th
May
Gone Fishin' - 4-11th
Wednesday's Child - 25th
Bathtime Babies - 26-28th
June
A Day at the Beach - 1-8th
Wednesday's Child - 29th
July
Vintage Fields - 9-16th
Wednesday's Child - 27th
August
Vintage Icecream special/Urban Child - 11-13th
Wednesday's Child - 31st
September
The Wild Wild West - 9-10th
Me & My Best Friend - 14-21
Wednesday's Child - 28th
October
Wednesday's Child - 26th
November
Winter Wonderland - 5-12th
Wednesday's Child - 30th
December
Christmas Angels - 1-8th
Wednesday's Child - 28th
After I get my computer back from the shop I will post sample images of all of these specials.
I am also looking for little models to get some more current samples for my website with some of these specials. If you are interested let me know. I give special perks for my models!
Friday, January 14, 2011
Troy - Waseca Senior
It was frigid cold the day Troy came in for his senior pictures so we didn't last very long outside but the pictures we got were so cool. I love the snow on the pine tree behind him.
Baby JJ
Like the song on my website "Miracle Baby", this little guy really is a miracle. Little JJ came in for pictures January 12th. Believe it or not this little 5lb 15oz cutie is already a month old. But his actual due date wasn't until the end of January. I could not wait to take his pictures. They had a session scheduled a week earlier but unfortunately I came down with a cold and didn't want to take the chance of giving it to JJ.
He was amazing for his first photo shoot. We spent over 2 hours taking well over 200 images and he didn't cry once. He put up with me squishing him in buckets and constantly fiddling with him to get just the right shot. I was having so much fun I didn't want to quit! I love photographing newborns!!!
I think he's trying to give his Mommy a kiss!
I love my baby toes!
It may not look like it but he loved this pose!
He was amazing for his first photo shoot. We spent over 2 hours taking well over 200 images and he didn't cry once. He put up with me squishing him in buckets and constantly fiddling with him to get just the right shot. I was having so much fun I didn't want to quit! I love photographing newborns!!!
I think he's trying to give his Mommy a kiss!
I love my baby toes!It may not look like it but he loved this pose!Do Professional Photographers really make money?
I recently read this on another photographers site and had to share it. I know there are people out there that can't understand why photographers charge so much. After reading this I don't think we charge enough!
Posted by Heather Lilly Photography
I’ll never forget within the first week of quitting my newspaper job (in February 2006) I was at the gym and someone asked me what I do for a living.
“I’m a wedding & portrait photographer” happily rolled off my tongue.
They perked right up and said “oh that’s a GREAT job! I bet you make a lot of money, since most weddings are like TWO-grand! And you have the weekdays off!”
Even at that point, I knew I wouldn’t be technically pocketing that much per wedding and I knew I would be editing and marketing Monday-Friday.
But I had NO idea how the actual breakdown of a professional photographer’s fees would be.
I get a lot of inquiries asking about business tips or photography tips. I even have a workshop that allows these eager minds to pick my brain for a day.
But I wanted to set the record straight right here on my personal blog about being an artist: it isn’t glamorous (unless you become very, VERY famous).
I stick to my career because it is my passion and I can’t NOT do it. It’s how I think and everything around me inspires me to continue doing it.
With that being said, here’s a breakdown you may have never thought about.
Taxes - Remember when you were a teenager and you got your first paycheck? I do. I was getting paid around $5.10/hour and after doing the math was expecting a paycheck for a certain amount. As I opened it, I thought “what…on…earth?!” It seemed short. Very short. Looking at the bottom of the stub, it showed the breakdown of why my check was about 30 percent shorter than I anticipated. Good ol’ Uncle Sam.
When a bride & groom cut a check for their photographer, about 30 percent of that check AUTOMATICALLY isn’t the photographer’s for the keeping. It’s Uncle Sam’s.
My husband (the numbers guy) is diligent about transferring over this set percentage to a “tax savings” account. So at year-end, I have that tax money ready to hand over.
Overhead – Being a professional photographer is DARN expensive. Beyond the normal phone, fax, computer, office supplies, website, etc. overhead, there’s marketing, cost of prints & albums, massive backup drives, insurance, seminars to stay on top of the latest trends, Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop software (and yearly upgrades) – I could go ON & on about this category. It’s kind of the invisible category that people tend to overlook but it allocates a whopping 30 percent of every dollar that comes my way.
Even with a home-office & studio, my overhead is upwards of several hundred dollars a month. And this doesn’t include attending any awesome workshops or upgrading my computer. These are what I consider “luxury overhead” items and I only get to do them if I I have covered the essentials, have given myself a cushion for the next month, and make over a certain amount each month.
Equipment Savings – This is another overhead, but it’s so critical, it has it’s own category. It takes a LONG time to save for a new camera body when you stash 10 percent at a time away. Let’s put it this way: a Canon 5D Mark II (with insurance & a warranty) is approximately $3,000. That is 10 percent of $30,000. If each wedding is $2,000, that’s 15 weddings. Or, if each portrait client spends $300, that’s 100 portrait sessions.
I realize this is a tool, but I also don’t advocate credit card debt.
I personally cannot actually handle that kind of volume (alone) without outsourcing or sacrificing quality of product. (So, obviously, I need to make up for that in sales… that’s another blog post all together).
So when you hear a photographer getting a couple new big-ticket-items: camera body and nice L lens, you know they have either
a) saved for a year to do so
b) invested much more than 10 percent (borrowed funds from another “category”).
I guess there is another option there:
c) they have a sugar momma or fund their business with personal funds. (And last I checked, I think they call that a “hobby”…)
Retirement - Ya, I want to retire someday and I thank my lucky-stars that my husband is so patient with me finally realizing I need to always, always put 10 percent of each check that comes in the door into the 401K. Seriously, I can’t be hauling around 20+ pounds of gear in my senior-citizen days.
College Fund – Maybe you don’t have a kid [yet], so you can call this your vacation fund. Either way, you will want to have a little nest-egg and 10 percent is a nice round number to work with.
Owner’s Draw – Owner’s Draw means money in your pocket. It’s like you are taking cash out of the business cash drawer. This is the category people often assume is the big one. Nope. Maybe it is for your business model, but it isn’t for mine. Of course if I have a really good month, I’ll do the Happy Dance and want to spend a little extra on something my husband and I have been saving for, but in general, 10 percent is what I actually get to “pocket.”
Owner’s Draw isn’t always for fun things, however: this is also to pay our personal bills (*sigh* adult responsibilities).
So in case you haven’t been adding all this up in your head, here is the breakdown:
Taxes 30%
Overhead 30%
Equipment Savings 10%
Retirement 10%
College Fund 10%
Owner’s Draw 10%
Equals 100 %
For ease-sake, let’s drive this point home with a cut & dry example:
$2,000 for a wedding:
Taxes 30% $600.00
Overhead 30% $600.00
Equipment Savings 10% $200.00
Retirement 10% $200.00
College Fund (or Vacation Fund) 10% $200.00
Owner’s Draw 10% $200.00
Even when you lump Retirement, College Fund (or Vacation Fund) and Owner’s Draw into ONE category, that is $600 for a $2,000 wedding.
If you are doing the math and thinking, Heather: stop complaining!
$600 / 8 hours of shooting = $75 per hour…. erase that concept from your mind!
There’s countless behind-the-scene hours that go into a wedding. I don’t just say that to make it sound like “so much work” goes into what I do, so I can charge more. It’s completely and totally legit. I tend to invest 60 hours of time in one wedding (start to finish: i.e. consultation, engagement portraits, travel, preparation, wedding, editing, album design, etc.). Most of that time is editing each image, but that’s my style and business model.
So, if you confirm that math $600 / 60 hours = $10 per hour.
And for every $30 dollars of that, I’m not even touching $20 (into 401K and college fund it goes…)
One more example. It’s pretty common for NEW photographers to charge for a session and images on CD. Let’s be generous and say they are charging $200:
Taxes 30% $ 60.00
Overhead 30% $ 60.00
Equipment Savings 10% $ 20.00
Retirement 10% $ 20.00
College Fund 10% $ 20.00
Owner’s Draw 10% $ 20.00
Hmmm, “pocketing” $20 for one session is kind of depressing. They probably spend 6-8 hours (maybe longer) on shooting and editing this session.
For example-sake: if they spent 6 hours on it, they are making $3.33 / hour. YIKES!
Posted by Heather Lilly Photography
I’ll never forget within the first week of quitting my newspaper job (in February 2006) I was at the gym and someone asked me what I do for a living.
“I’m a wedding & portrait photographer” happily rolled off my tongue.
They perked right up and said “oh that’s a GREAT job! I bet you make a lot of money, since most weddings are like TWO-grand! And you have the weekdays off!”
Even at that point, I knew I wouldn’t be technically pocketing that much per wedding and I knew I would be editing and marketing Monday-Friday.
But I had NO idea how the actual breakdown of a professional photographer’s fees would be.
I get a lot of inquiries asking about business tips or photography tips. I even have a workshop that allows these eager minds to pick my brain for a day.
But I wanted to set the record straight right here on my personal blog about being an artist: it isn’t glamorous (unless you become very, VERY famous).
I stick to my career because it is my passion and I can’t NOT do it. It’s how I think and everything around me inspires me to continue doing it.
With that being said, here’s a breakdown you may have never thought about.
Taxes - Remember when you were a teenager and you got your first paycheck? I do. I was getting paid around $5.10/hour and after doing the math was expecting a paycheck for a certain amount. As I opened it, I thought “what…on…earth?!” It seemed short. Very short. Looking at the bottom of the stub, it showed the breakdown of why my check was about 30 percent shorter than I anticipated. Good ol’ Uncle Sam.
When a bride & groom cut a check for their photographer, about 30 percent of that check AUTOMATICALLY isn’t the photographer’s for the keeping. It’s Uncle Sam’s.
My husband (the numbers guy) is diligent about transferring over this set percentage to a “tax savings” account. So at year-end, I have that tax money ready to hand over.
Overhead – Being a professional photographer is DARN expensive. Beyond the normal phone, fax, computer, office supplies, website, etc. overhead, there’s marketing, cost of prints & albums, massive backup drives, insurance, seminars to stay on top of the latest trends, Adobe Lightroom & Photoshop software (and yearly upgrades) – I could go ON & on about this category. It’s kind of the invisible category that people tend to overlook but it allocates a whopping 30 percent of every dollar that comes my way.
Even with a home-office & studio, my overhead is upwards of several hundred dollars a month. And this doesn’t include attending any awesome workshops or upgrading my computer. These are what I consider “luxury overhead” items and I only get to do them if I I have covered the essentials, have given myself a cushion for the next month, and make over a certain amount each month.
Equipment Savings – This is another overhead, but it’s so critical, it has it’s own category. It takes a LONG time to save for a new camera body when you stash 10 percent at a time away. Let’s put it this way: a Canon 5D Mark II (with insurance & a warranty) is approximately $3,000. That is 10 percent of $30,000. If each wedding is $2,000, that’s 15 weddings. Or, if each portrait client spends $300, that’s 100 portrait sessions.
I realize this is a tool, but I also don’t advocate credit card debt.
I personally cannot actually handle that kind of volume (alone) without outsourcing or sacrificing quality of product. (So, obviously, I need to make up for that in sales… that’s another blog post all together).
So when you hear a photographer getting a couple new big-ticket-items: camera body and nice L lens, you know they have either
a) saved for a year to do so
b) invested much more than 10 percent (borrowed funds from another “category”).
I guess there is another option there:
c) they have a sugar momma or fund their business with personal funds. (And last I checked, I think they call that a “hobby”…)
Retirement - Ya, I want to retire someday and I thank my lucky-stars that my husband is so patient with me finally realizing I need to always, always put 10 percent of each check that comes in the door into the 401K. Seriously, I can’t be hauling around 20+ pounds of gear in my senior-citizen days.
College Fund – Maybe you don’t have a kid [yet], so you can call this your vacation fund. Either way, you will want to have a little nest-egg and 10 percent is a nice round number to work with.
Owner’s Draw – Owner’s Draw means money in your pocket. It’s like you are taking cash out of the business cash drawer. This is the category people often assume is the big one. Nope. Maybe it is for your business model, but it isn’t for mine. Of course if I have a really good month, I’ll do the Happy Dance and want to spend a little extra on something my husband and I have been saving for, but in general, 10 percent is what I actually get to “pocket.”
Owner’s Draw isn’t always for fun things, however: this is also to pay our personal bills (*sigh* adult responsibilities).
So in case you haven’t been adding all this up in your head, here is the breakdown:
Taxes 30%
Overhead 30%
Equipment Savings 10%
Retirement 10%
College Fund 10%
Owner’s Draw 10%
Equals 100 %
For ease-sake, let’s drive this point home with a cut & dry example:
$2,000 for a wedding:
Taxes 30% $600.00
Overhead 30% $600.00
Equipment Savings 10% $200.00
Retirement 10% $200.00
College Fund (or Vacation Fund) 10% $200.00
Owner’s Draw 10% $200.00
Even when you lump Retirement, College Fund (or Vacation Fund) and Owner’s Draw into ONE category, that is $600 for a $2,000 wedding.
If you are doing the math and thinking, Heather: stop complaining!
$600 / 8 hours of shooting = $75 per hour…. erase that concept from your mind!
There’s countless behind-the-scene hours that go into a wedding. I don’t just say that to make it sound like “so much work” goes into what I do, so I can charge more. It’s completely and totally legit. I tend to invest 60 hours of time in one wedding (start to finish: i.e. consultation, engagement portraits, travel, preparation, wedding, editing, album design, etc.). Most of that time is editing each image, but that’s my style and business model.
So, if you confirm that math $600 / 60 hours = $10 per hour.
And for every $30 dollars of that, I’m not even touching $20 (into 401K and college fund it goes…)
One more example. It’s pretty common for NEW photographers to charge for a session and images on CD. Let’s be generous and say they are charging $200:
Taxes 30% $ 60.00
Overhead 30% $ 60.00
Equipment Savings 10% $ 20.00
Retirement 10% $ 20.00
College Fund 10% $ 20.00
Owner’s Draw 10% $ 20.00
Hmmm, “pocketing” $20 for one session is kind of depressing. They probably spend 6-8 hours (maybe longer) on shooting and editing this session.
For example-sake: if they spent 6 hours on it, they are making $3.33 / hour. YIKES!
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Photography items for sale
If there are any fellow photographers stalking my site (jk) and are looking for any backdrops or props I have posted lot's of goodies for sale on my facebook page. Don't worry customers I am not closing shop, just need to downsize. I have way too much stuff!
And the cherry on the cake!
As long as I was talking about cute kids I had to post just one more. It was taken over the summer in my wild flower field. I was playing around with this image and loved the way it turned out. Makes me really want summer now!
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