Summer of Senior Portraits

     Summer is here and that means it’s time for the class of 2019 to get the glam on in front of the camera before they graduate next spring and head off into the great wide world as adults. First, there is one more year high school, reports, tests and as some young women love and some young men dread the senior portrait session ahead of them.

     For most it’s their chance to show a more adult side, be the jester for one last time or just be the person they really want to be. It is all meant to show the world I have arrived. At Vagabond Photography we strive to help bring those dreams to the photos we create with our Seniors.

     We understand that sometimes what our Senior’s has in mind for an outfit is not always what the parent had in mind or will approve of. Recently with changes in the fashion industry to push young kids to dress more like adults (not necessarily always in the best ways) we have seen that trend reflected in our photography industry as well when clients bring outfits. The one thing we always recommend to all our clients (seniors, families and engagement couples) if it’s not something grandma and grandpa would hang on their walls at home or mom and dad would put on their desk at work because it might be seen as a little to provocative maybe it would its best also if you bring an alternate outfit so both parties are happy in the end.  

     The great thing about senior portraits is that is doesn’t just have a be a quick simple headshot for the year book like in years prior where we all lined up sat for a minute and a half and then were back in class. We can feasibly go anywhere and do almost anything (but not hanging your photographer from a rope off a cliff). Vagabond Photography is nestled out in East Troy, WI we are 40 minutes from the lake front & downtown in Milwaukee, 50 minutes from our state capitol in Madison and all around us in the perfect lake and nature settings. If there is another place outside of those areas that holds special meaning to you and your family we can travel there as well.

     Including sports and hobbies into our photo sessions is something we have always tried to get our clients to do more of. It brings the feeling of this is part of who I am into the photos and allows our Seniors to experiment with different poses that include their passions.  If possible bring your pets as well. While we understand at some locations it is not possible to have them there but when they are it always brings in the possibility of unexpected hilarity which translates into beautiful photos.

     Dates book fast we only do few sessions a day at Vagabond Photography and we do this to give out Seniors the right amount of time in front of the camera to bring their ideas to life. We are also able to do group sessions so if you want to incorporate a senior portrait session with your friends. We have all had that one friend we have grown up with who might as well be family and it is always a fun time when we can bring friends like that together.

     We look forward to hearing from you.

The positives and negative of being an outdoor, on-location photographer in Wisconsin.

The one thing we have always prided ourselves on, is being an on-location photographer with a willingness to go pretty much anywhere (minus dangling from a cliff) for our clients. Being an on-location photographer is not for every photographer though.  In this blog post we are going to look at the positive and negatives to being an on-location photographer.

In the beginning when we started our business there was a decision to be made where were we going to be located the majority of the time, in a studio or on location? Yes, we started out as a sports and journalism photographer but as we progressed to portraits and other styles of photography we had a choice to make. In the end, we decided it was in our best interest to be an outdoor, on-location photographer. For us at Vagabond Photography we are outdoorsy people and love the ability to bring the outdoor world into our photos and being indoors day in and day out become repetitive to us.

Now understand we are not saying that if you decide to invest a brick and mortar studio and work out of one place you won’t do on-location work as well far from it. This blog post is mainly designed to address some of the upfront ups and down of deciding to work exclusively outdoors.

The pro of photographing most of your clients outside is that your back drop is ever changing. Every location can be found and sculpted to fit the clients own personal style and that works great because some clients may want a more country/nature setting while others may want more of an urban setting. While this does have its upsides the down side is that as a photographer we should really only use these locations two to three times a season/year to keep it fresh for future clients. Also one thing to keep in mind when photographing in a urban environment is your surrounding and is it safe for you and your clients to be there.

When setting up for a client’s session the main thing we as photographers must keep in mind is the weather. In Wisconsin and like other states in the snow belt we are all aware that the weather is something we always keep an eye on and it is constantly changing. It’s been stated that in Wisconsin you can have three of the four seasons all in one day and over the year we have seen it happen. In the summer, you still have to keep an eye on the temperature and with the added inconvenience of whether or not it may rain. Which is why having reschedule date in mind for you and your client is must even though we hope you never have too. Now this works for family and senior portraits and some corporate clients, but for weddings it’s a one day only deal with no reschedule date. For us in the north, come winter we keep in mind about how cold it is outside and what your clients are wearing. While a colored snow ball fight between loved ones on a field or ice-skating engagement sessions seems like a cool ideas for a photo session if it’s under 20F it may not be the best idea. This has two reasons one; clients and photographers get cold quick and frost bite is nothing to fool around with, secondly is gear can become brittle and is easily damaged when the temperatures get bellowing freezing.

One of the better things about working on location is we can go bigger. It allows photographers to incorporate larger things such as a cars, trucks, bikes or animals. Its comes in quite nice for senior portraits especially if a client would like to incorporate a classic car that they may of helped restored with their family. Also incorporating animals can bring extra life into a photo especially if it is a horse or the family dog and it is something that we always recommend our clients to consider incorporating into their sessions. The down side of both of these is going too big and not being able to deliver in said session this can hurt the image and return business. In addition, with large animals they can be easily spooked by flashes and noises if they are not used to being around those. Having recently attended ImagingUSA in Huston we watched as a long horn steer get spooked from behind when a fair amount of people were around it, thankfully no one was seriously injured granted this animal was not spooked by a flash but still this is an example of what can happen if you as a photographer are not prepared for what could happen. Animals decide when they are done, not you and you can only string them along so long.

Working outdoors and on site means that the light is always changing and that is something you always should be attentive to. If you start in the early morning around sunrise if will go from blue hues, to golden, to full white light and the opposite it true before sunset.  This is a great thing because depending on what/who/where you are photographing a photographer can get several different moods in a short amount of time. On the other side of the coin it can also be a hindrance if you are not ready for how fast the light is going to change. Working outside also means that you have to contend with the sun due to your time of day during your photo session. This is a time where one would want to remove excess light by using scrims and gobo’s. This is quite the opposite when working in a studio where light is much easier to control.

These are just a few of the positives and negatives we have encountered in Wisconsin over the past few years and it is just something you may like to consider when working outdoors. We can say that even though it presents several unique challenges the benefits far outweigh the negatives.

Love is in the air or is it cabin fever?

It’s that time of year where love is in the air or maybe it’s the cabin fever or some form of both.

For us at Vagabond Photography it’s where we come out of our winter hibernation and start gearing up for spring/summer weddings, corporate events, senior portraits and so much more. Also, we will be traveling around to a few of the areas comic cons for fun.

It’s been a long, kind of dull winter here in Southern Wisconsin. We have had a lack of snow and an abundance of rain and abnormally high winter temps. It seems though, weather is finally starting to change for the better, hopefully, and we would like to reach out to the recently engaged or couples looking to have a unique on location photo session. There is still some snow in parts of Wisconsin so if you were thinking “hey I’ve always wanted pelt my significant other with a colored snow ball (provided we still have snow) or ice skate on a lake” for a photo session we can help with that. The joys of Wisconsin the possibilities are endless you just need to have a love of outdoor spaces and the willingness to brave the cold.  As spring progresses and it gets warmer out we can even change it up to suit you and your significant others outdoor activities. That could be anywhere from activates on the lakes and waterways, to the riding trails of Northern WI or relaxing on the beaches of Lake Michigan/Superior to the cities Madison/Milwaukee or anywhere/anything in-between.

This spring we are also looking forward to getting back to some of our fun personal projects and we will be looking for some people to collaborate with to create some new and exciting photos. We’ll discuss those more at the spring rolls along.

We look forward to hearing from you and bringing your dreams and imagination to prints that will hang on your walls. We also hope that you and your loved ones have a great Valentines Day.

Leaving our online home: Switching website providers

Leaving our online home: Switching website providers

For a while now I’ve noticed diminishing clicks on my website vbphoto.co and it wasn’t easy at first to understand why? Nothing has really changed I still add new and updated photos ofclients and updated projects but the metrics were just not there anymore when studying my Google Analytics sheets.

So I started to do an investigation on why this may be. I have always been good at my keywords, SEO and Metadata but still could not understand why when I Googled my company I was way, way, waaayyy at the back of the list if you typed in Milwaukee or Greater Milwaukee Senior Portrait, Family Portrait or Corporate Events Photographer/photography.

Currently for my website I use a host company called Zenfolio and I think they are great, for photographers. Also my clients have told me they like the ease of use of the website when using a computer. In addition, if you are just starting out they offer many different package levels from beginner to seasoned veteran. Also, they have basic templates so if you do not understand a lot about website design it is relatively easy to set up. There are a few pit falls with them but, hey, no company is perfect and these small things will probably get resolved in time.  These few pit fall are in relation to their blog design and mobile site.

After going through a few web tutorials about SEO on Youtube and a few other blog pages I learn that Zenfoilio as great as they are, are terrible at SEO. I spent a slow afternoon trying to figure out if this is something that could be easily fixed. Unfortunately, it is not. I can add more keywords to my photos, and on my text based pages. Though this only goes so far.

The real problem stems from URL’s on my website. For most web sites you want your URL to read as simply as possible.
For example, one would ideally like their gallery too ready like this:
-vbphoto.co/gallery/people/portraits-bw/-
The problem with Zenfolio is your links tend to look like this:
-vbphoto.co/p493259340/h74baf075#h74baf075-

I learned the second link is horrible for spider bots on the web to be able to index your site properly. The reason behind this is there is no words that would indicate to the bot this is either a gallery, a photo or a page with text. It also does not help to promote your brand online using your keywords that these bots probe the web for. If I understand it correctly. Also Al Anderson Photography blog post explains Zenfolio use a # instead of / which also causes some problem with bot crawling because it considers them as page markers not URLs. If I understood his blog post correctly.

So that right there is the major problem for why my website does not appear sooner in the results when searched by Google or Bing or Yahoo as I would hope for. Potential clients tend only to look at the first two pages it does not help that I am back on the fourth to tenth pages.

The plan now is to find a new web hosting venue and say a sad goodbye to my long term host at Zenfolio.com. Vagabond Photography will still remain the same but we will just have a new website provider. The URL will remain the same so my clients will not have to worry about looking for us under a new website address.

Currently we are looking at a move to Squarespace or WordPress. Both seem to have their ups and downs. I currently use WordPress for my company’s blogging needs which is great. I really like both of their mobile phone site capabilities they are both easy to use and navigate around.  Over the next couple of weeks we plan to make this change and we will let your our readers and customers know what we choose and how we like the new platform.

If you our valued readers and clients had recently made a switch I would greatly like to hear about your experience and why you chose your current provider.