Pixiq

March 18, 2011 is the birthday of two of my favorite clients.  Vanessa Williams and Queen Latifah.  Vanessa has the most beautiful eyes on the planet.  What if I couldn't show the color of her eyes the way they are?  The only way to ensure you get the best color in your photographs is to have a calibrated monitor.  This week I will help one lucky person win a FREE colormunki calibrator and open the door to incredible color.

 The Twitter contest starts now and runs until Friday, April 22nd at 12noon PST.  Follow the rules below and your could win.

 

 

To select the winner we will keep a record of each tweet in a database and use a random number generator to select the winner.  Due to the volume of requests, we cannot answer any questions about the contest on Twitter or via email. Good luck!

The contest will be announced at Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC) in Banff, Alberta this weekend, but you can get a head start and enter today!  Its as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Follow these simple steps:

 

1. Follow Matthew_JordanS on Twittter
2. Follow PPOC_BC on Twitter
3. Tweet the following message EXACTLY

#JoyofPhotography - Check out the new MJS blog and be Entered to win a FREE colormunki calibrator http://bit.ly/dNjmMV

 

THE COMPLETE RULES

1. You must be 18 or older to enter.
2. You must be following Twitter.com/Matthew_JordanS and Twitter.com/PPOC_BC
3. You must send out the above tweet EXACTLY as it appears - failure to do so will disqualify you - DO NOT put the @ symbol in front of either name of anywhere in the Tweet.
4. The prize will be awarded on Friday, April 22nd at Noon PST and announced via the blog and Twitter.

Now, back to photographing Iconic beauties, like Vanessa Williams and Queen Latifah.

The secret to photographing beautiful, iconic women is keeping the lighting simple and classic and concentrating your energy into making your subject FEEL beautiful.  No matter how beautiful your subjects are or arent, they will never feel beautiful until you do things that make them FEEL beautiful.  Before every celebrity shoot I always have flowers waiting in the dressing room when they arrive.  Inside the flowers I put a personal note to start the day that simple says "Here to a great shoot"!

The process for making a subject feel special starts before they stand in front of your lens.  It begins the moment they step into your space.  That space can be a studio or a location, but wherever your shooting you have the power to create an envirorment.    Think of little ways to win your subject before they step in front of your lens.  We spend hours preparing different music lists to make each of our subjects feel great.  The music list for Vanessa Williams is very different than the music for Queen Latifah.  A little thought goes a long way!

Here's a story of how music saved the day on a shoot.  

I have photograph Angela Bassett a lot in the last decade and her entire family has become great friends with mine.  On an advertising shoot for a big client, I was hired to create an image with Angela.  The night before she's worked on a movie until 4 in the morning and had to be on my set by 8:30am.  When she walked in I knew I had my job cut out for me.  Thank God we worked on a music list that I thought would be perfect.  We started the shoot but she didn't have the normal Angela energy.  My producer whispered to me to put on a song from Oprah's mix that we had, but I told her to stick to the mix we'd made.    Ten minutes later my assistant whispered in my ears, "please Matthew let me try this one song"!  I said okay but I didn't think it would hurt.  For some reason I wasn't thinking but thank goodness for a great team, (remember Together Each Achieves More)!  Well the song was Proud Mary by Tina Turner.  Angela was nominated for an Ocsar for her portrayal of Tina Turner and when I tell you she came alive!  Wow, it was night and day and, and this song saved the day.  My client later came to me and said thank goodness you had the right music!  I looked at my producer and gave her a big hug and said this is why I keep great people around me.  Thank you Dushyanthi!

  For more infomation on shooting check out Ten Ways to Use One Light Source along with a host of other great learning material that will help your photography in ways that you can't imagine.  Good luck and always dream big!

Educational Photography Videos:  www.Gallery.MatthewJordanSmith.com