Amelia J. Moore Photography

Twice a year, I try to attend a photography class or workshop. I heard one of my favorite photographers, Shannon Sewell was hosting a workshop in Atlanta, so I jumped at the chance to connect with her. I am pretty sure I was the second person to sign up for her workshop. Shannon is a children’ portrait & commercial photographer and what Kayla and I LOVE about her work is her creative ideas and sets. WOW! They are super inspiring! And she does an amazing job at capturing the essence of a child’s spirit. Look at her site after reading this… because you’ll get lost on her site looking at all her creative stuff! She doesn’t do anything twice, she everything is completely different! (yet her style)

SO… I joined 11 photographers from the southeast region in Atlanta for a day with Shannon. She started out sharing about her background and approach to her work – and how that has evolved.  What I appreciated about her philosophy is that she takes and finds jobs that she enjoys. She challenged us to really evaluate what it is we enjoy and to go after that. Many people start in the photography business just thinking if they take a lot of photos and get a lot of clients then they will be successful. Her approach is to do what you love, set boundaries and then you will be successful. Therefore, she only photographs children. She loves their spirit, creativity and imaginations and she creates environments that depict that.

Shannon also encouraged us to really study what inspires you. So i have signed up for pintrest.com (follow me!). And am trying to spend some time each week looking around – not just at other photographers, but art, design, culture, global events and “pinning” what inspires me. Then, I’ll look at my boards and collaborate with Kayla and what we might want to include in our sessions. I don’t want to copy others, but I want to find inspiration from others’ ideas. SO – Do the same for some ideas that you might like for your next photo session and send my your pinned ideas! Let’s share and inspire each other together.

And then we got to do a style shoot with Shannon together. It was fun to watch her (and other photographers) approach their work. Shannon really encourages creatives to collaborate – not just at the workshop, but in general. What I really enjoyed about her is that she is laid back and flexible. She had a plan, but if it doesn’t work out, then she readjusted. Our first set up was against a white wall. Shannon had the models draw some simple objects to tape on the wall which included dogs, flowers, balloons, kites which the models would then interact with. We shot in a studio using all natural light (she uses very little artificial light which was shocking to me). We also shot with window light – how glorious! I was reminded that this is a great resource if I need to shot inside. Look at these stunning images!

Then we shot outside in broad daylight around 1:00 in the afternoon. This is the horror time for most photographers, but she wanted us to see how she’d approach it. Her plan was to draw a hopscotch and have the kids jump on it. But the chalk drawing wouldn’t show up on the ground in a photograph because it was so bright. So we adjusted and had the kids play on the hopscotch a bit – they had fun and then we moved on. She had them pose together and then each with an object. I loved how she positioned with them with the hola hoop and skate board. Both were “natural” poses that she directed. And Shannon positions them with the sun behind them and meters their face to get the right exposure for their skin. This will blow out the background which is typically fine.

Since it was blazing Atlanta hot (and Shannon is from Portland), we had to find some shade. Shannon had brought these simple props for the kids to interact with in their shoot: tin can stilts, soda pops and of course cool hats. I’m pretty sure you’ll see me using these ideas in your upcoming shoots! Then main thing I learned during this time was to find natural light reflectors – like the sidewalk or white building to use to bounce light. (instead of using a reflector, although I love my reflector).After our photographing session, she then demonstrated her post-processing procedure. It was surprisingly simple and yet inspiring. I gained some great insight into how I might cut down my work-flow (one tip being to just shoot JEPG and not RAW… but I don’t know if I can mentally handle that yet!) Shannon then opened the discussion for questions and was very generous in sharing insight from her business to offering to critique our work after the workshop. I really appreciate her sincere desire to invest and inspire others. Her heart and creativity are genuine and beautiful.