Top Ten

Home again, after one of the most influential and life changing weeks of my life. If you're just tuning in, I was fortunate enough to be one of five photographers that were chosen to attend a workshop hosted by CreativeLIVE and Jasmine Star. The workshop was 5 days long, and involved shooting a live wedding. The five days were, well...crazy. Absolutely crazy, intense, fun, life-changing, and amazing.

Many have asked what it was like to spend 5 days with Jasmine and JD. It honestly was one of the best experiences I've ever had. If you can, once they open up another workshop, GO. It will rock your world and change the way you see your brand and experience. They are two of the most giving and honest and genuine people I've ever met.

To try to put into words, what I've gained from this experience is not an easy task. I've come away lifted, liberated, and humbled. But to try to capsulate what I've learned, I've made my very own Top Ten Countdown, of things that have "rocked my world". As I listed my top ten, I found I had two lists, one primarily on the photography side of things, and then one on the business side of things. So today, I'll share my Top Ten things that I learned from Jasmine with regards to business and branding.

10. CREATE - Are we creatures to our circumstance or creators? Chase Jarvis quoted Owen at Viget.com, saying "It's easier to be inspired than it is to create". I have often found myself busy being inspired, but not creating. Create connections, be involved in the photography community, create experiences for your clients, create conversations, create BUZZ!

9. Be INTERESTED - Instead of trying to get 200 to be interested in you, become genuinely interested in 2 people. Pay it forward, help others, again...get INVOLVED, and it the return will always be greater.

8. Under Promise, Over Deliver - This one is pretty simple. If you are always delivering more than you promise, then everybody is happy. There are SO many ways this is possible. I feel like I've always been trying to promise the sun, moon and stars to make clients happy, and then trying so hard to accomplish that. Promise the sun, and then moon and stars are a happy bonus.

7. Create "Don Kings" - Don King promoted some of the best professional boxers including Muhammad Ali, and Mike Tyson. As you share with a bride and groom their wedding photos, they immediately become Don Kings for you. But what happens when you share a same day slideshow to 50+ people at their wedding?

6. 80/20 - A successful photography business is 20% photography, 80% business. This one is huge, as I'm learning that it's not ALL about the photos!! It's about the experience. A bride and groom should like their photos before they even see them. Great photographers don't take or make great photos, they create great branded experiences, and tell the story THROUGH their great photos.

5. Connect and Repel - This blew my mind. Connect with brides that relate to YOU, repel brides that may not be the best fit. More on this later...

4. Leverage Strengths, and Outsource Weaknesses - Now outsourcing isn't for everyone, but KNOW your strengths, and expand them. USE them, leverage them, and make them even stronger. What makes you different? Jasmine is one of the best at knowing her strengths, and knowing her weaknesses, and growing where she's strong, and getting help where she's weak. There is nothing wrong with having weaknesses, just know how to use them.

3. Branding - Wow. This could have it's own top ten list, but brand. Everything. A logo is not a brand, but a symbol of a brand. A brand is an experience, even a feeling. I have SO far to go with branding!

2. KIR! - Keep it real. Don't fake the funk. People are naturally attracted to people that are REAL. "Leave your ego at the door" and K.I.R...Keep It Real!

1. Be YOURSELF - My favorite. Why? Because I feel liberated in a sense that, if you keep it real, and BE YOURSELF, then people will love you for it. OR, they may hate you for it, but remember, connect and repel. The ones that hate you for it, probably wouldn't be a good fit to begin with. Before going to the Jasmine Star workshop, I felt like I already knew her. I'm sure she has received the comment "I feel like I KNOW you!" many, many times. She's real, she's herself, and so people relate to her.

Again, what an incredible experience. Not a workshop on photography, but on YOU, on me. Thank you Jasmine and JD and the CreatieLIVE team for an unforgettable week.

Photography Top Ten coming tomorrow!

The Missing Pants - Wedding Day

Hi gang,

What an amazing day yesterday, right!? I hope that you all were able to tune in and see the wedding. Hats go off to Jasmine and JD, who did an INCREDIBLE job yesterday. And Laura and Billy, who looked absolutely fabulous. I'm so happy for them, that their wedding was such a huge success. They're the funnest and cutest couple, and I can't wait to write more about them when I post the wedding pictures.

I just wanted to write a few notes from yesterday and post just a few "behind the scenes" pictures, but first...the missing pants. Oooh, those missing pants, how I loath you.

So I always try to pack light. Really light, and if I know I'm going to be shooting a wedding, I'll only be there one day at the wedding, so I only bring one pair of dress pants. Thursday night I got home on the highest high of learning and excitement with everything that had happened that day. Absolutely amazing day. I finished my blog post at about 1:30 AM, and decided to get things set up for the wedding the next day: Clean my lenses, load my Shootsac, format all my memory cards, layout my shirt, tie, and pants. Pants...I swear they're around here somewhere. Nope. I begin frantically searching for my dress pants, tearing my room apart. Nada. Perfect, it's 2:00 AM, and I don't have pants for the next day's wedding. Freaking out...just a bit now. Turns out they're hanging up, ready to be packed in my suitcase...at home.

Next morning, wake up...it's GO time. Without pants. Dang it. I find the closest store that might have pants: Men's Warehouse. I get there when they're opening, and amazingly, they're able to find me pants, tailor them to me, and I was walking out the door 20 minutes later. PHEW! I'm just glad that I didn't wake up that morning, go to get dressed an hour before I'm supposed to leave, and THEN realize I don't have pants. Count your blessings right?

Now, moving on, here's how everything worked. Jasmine and the CreativeLIVE team were SO wonderfully respectful to Laura and Billy and wanted to remind everyone that this was still an actual wedding of a real bride and groom. This being said, they obviously didn't want Jasmine, JD, and 5 other photographers all shooting at once, not to mention the camera crew filming everything. So the 5 students were all a tag team. We each had 40-50 minutes to literally be the backup shooter for Jasmine and JD. It was intense, and fun, and crazy, and exciting, and busy, and INCREDIBLE! Honestly loved it. The 40-50 minutes went by way too fast. It was so incredible to watch Jasmine in action! Wow, she's so amazing and on top of things!

So some things that were very much reiterated in my mind today:

KEEP CONTROL! Jasmine was AMAZING at keeping control of the situation. Wow, did you see her work her magic!? It goes to say again, if you are not confident, you're bride and groom will never have confidence in you. If you are not in control, then you're in trouble.

EVERYONE needs a JD. He was amazing yesterday and it was incredible how JD and Jasmine can literally communicate without words. He showed me the value of a great and reliable second shooter.

BRANDING...again, those three words of Jasmine's: Fun, Fresh and Fabulous. I could tell Jasmine was thinking of her three words the entire day.

Also she solidified the thought of same day slideshows. Wow, what an amazing way to create same day "Don Kings"! Plus, it means, the first images the bride and groom see of their wedding, are YOUR images.

I'll talk more about the wedding when I post the images from the wedding day, but the two time segments I got to shoot, were some of the getting ready shots, and then the first dance pictures. Too much fun! I hope you tune in today here, we're going to do a Q&A with the students and the Wedding Designer, and then Jasmine will be in at 3:00 to show her images. It'll be a fun Saturday.

Have a great weekend!

"Epic Adventure" - Day 2

Jasmine wasn't kidding when she said this would be one epic adventure. In fact, that's a HUGE understatement. Day one was incredible. Day two was unbelievable, quite literally. Like we (the other attendees and I) can't believe it. We were out to eat afterwards just trying to take it all in. The four others by the way, are the coolest ever. Learning new incredible things is extremely fun, but learning it alongside others is even better. So if you haven't checked out Sachin's, Audrey's, Victoria's or Stephanie's blog, you seriously should.

Right before we start. Funny how everyone here is on their laptop or phone.

I want to touch on a few of my favorite aspects of the day, show some behind the scenes pics, and talk about the greatest things that I'm learning. Kind of a giant recap of sorts. But again, first before anything...huge thanks to the CreativeLIVE team. And Jasmine and JD, you guys just continue to amaze me and I'm pretty sure everyone else. HUGE Thank you. You're so generous with your life, your love and your passion. I've had the time of my life so far.

Having fun out in the parking lot before we started.

Recap! If you missed part or all of today, then you're seriously crazy not to buy the workshop, even JUST for today.

Again, HUGE theme: Attract or repel. This is monumental to me, since I've always felt you have to try to appease everyone, which makes it REALLY hard to be yourself. If you are TRULY yourself, you will attract amazing brides, and repel the ones that might just not be the perfect fit. "My brides hire me to be ME." - Jasmine

Another theme: CREATE!! Create conversation, create connections, create BUZZ!

Organization. I am blown away by how organized Jasmine is, even down to the way she shoots.

80/20 rule. A thriving photography business is 80% business and only 20% photography. Interesting that most people (especially me) invest most of their time, energy and money into improving their photography without any investment into learning the business side of things.

KEEP CONTROL of the day. You lose control, then you lose confidence, and if you lose confidence, then your bride and groom lose confidence in you and their wedding pictures. If you are not confident in your shooting, you will NEVER get confidence from your clients.

Let your brides know that it's ok to feel and be beautiful. To even be gorgeous, stunning and even hot! Communicate with your brides! Show them, instruct them, LAUGH with them, and don't be afraid to be yourself and make a fool of yourself.

VIRAL MARKETING. Don't even get me started on this. What are your thoughts?

Same Day slideshows = same day evangelists. LOVE it! "Create Don Kings!"

And my three words. Jasmine asked us all to pick three words that described our brand, our experience we want brides to have when they look at their photos. I am still exploring with different words, but when asked on screen, I said Evocative, romantic and dramatic. Almost there. Needs a little fine tuning.

Chase getting ready to go live, and Jasmine and JD smiling for a picture.

These are honestly just a FEW things, maybe 3-5% of what we've been learning. There has been so much and I'm sorry that this blog post is so long. Actually, no. I'm not. Today has seriously be remarkable for everyone, and a few sentences here and there just wouldn't cut it. Honestly, if you haven't tuned it yet, you need to. Tomorrow is the wedding and will be broadcast live.

Now just a bit about the day. Two main words come to mind. Learning and laughing...a lot. Jasmine is so fun to work with and is seriously a fireball of energy. How she does it...no idea. But she does, and she OWNS it. Seeing her work in action is like magic.

LOVING window lighting. I'm just experimenting here with light.

As for the photos, you'll notice all the photos today on the blog are "behind the scenes" kind of photos. I don't want to post any pictures of Billy and Laura until Jasmine has posted her own images, but I was given 5 minutes to "work my mojo" in the spotlight. Good flippin' night was I scared. Terrified. I had a silhouette/rim lighting idea in my head that I wanted to run with, something that I haven't really done before which made it even more nerve racking. After watching it back, I made a ton of mistakes, and there are quite a few things I would do differently, but I'm still super excited about the shots I got, which I'll post as soon as Jasmine posts photos of the First Look.

Today was truly enlightening and inspiring. Billy and Laura were absolutely beautiful and were perfect. I can't wait to talk more about them when I post my pics. They're an incredible couple. Good night and hope you tune in tomorrow for the LIVE wedding here.

I think my favorite moments are right after the camera and live feed go off. Everyone relaxes and cheers and the laughs break out and everyone just mingles. Here's a shot of everyone just hanging out afterwards.

Jasmine Star - Day 1

Hi there! If you don't already know, I was chosen to attend an INCREDIBLE 5 day workshop with Jasmine Star and the CreativeLIVE team that will be broadcast LIVE from http://www.creativelive.com/. You can check out a post all about it here. If you didn't tune in yesterday, I think they're running a "re-watch" until today's workshop starts, and if you haven't tuned yet, you're seriously missing out, because it's been incredible. Jasmine and her husband, JD...are absolute rockstars. They're absolutely amazing to be with. I have learned so much already and have about 9 pages of notes to go through.

First off, the team is amazing. The other 4 that were chosen to attend are so fun to be with and it's a blast to be able to experience it all together. Here we are the day before the workshop starts at Pike Place Market

Now here are the biggest things that I've learned so far:

First and foremost! BE YOURSELF! Jasmine is EXACTLY like she is on her blog in real life. Honestly, I felt like I knew her already before I came, and in a sense I did, because she keeps it real. Which is number 2. KIR...KEEP IT REAL!

Another HUGE point. Attract and repel. Don't try to please everyone, or you'll just end up being boring. Jasmine doesn't just get lucky with the coolest brides ever, she ATTRACTS those kinds of clients, and repels the ones that wouldn't be a good fit.

And then don't even get my started on branding. We'll talk a bit about this later. But all I can say right now for it is...holy cow, it's important.

Anyways, I need to leave to our second day of the workshop, so tune in right here: www.creativelive.com. Here's a picture of Jasmine and me at the end of the workshop...

...and one of Sachin and me from my iPhone, who can't believe that we're actually here. Crazy!

Happy Thursday! More pics and behind the scenes to come.

Catch up!

Life has been crazy lately, and I've definitely neglected the blog. But great and amazing things are happening. For example, I'm sitting in the Las Vegas airport waiting for my connecting flight to Seattle to attend the Jasmine Star and CreativeLIVE workshop! I'll be posting every day this week bits of "catch up" and also pieces from the workshop.

So I guess I'll start with NYC. As you've seen in the previous post, I did a bridal shoot in NYC which was so much fun. I also took the opportunity to explore New York: walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, eat at fun hole in the wall restaurants, and even visited some of the touristy sites.

I didn't take a ton of pictures, but I liked these ones. The pano of the city was shot from about 12 vertical shots stitched together in CS5.

Anyways, happy Tuesday, and come back for more catch up and updates on the Jasmine Star and CreativeLIVE workshop. Can't wait!

Jess+Manhattan Bridal=Photographer's heaven!

En route to Boston for a corporate photo shoot, I met my Mom, Jen Perkes, in NYC to do a Bridal shoot of Jess. The shoot was unbelievably fun; lots of laughing, lots of screaming because the light was so good, LOTS of staring onlookers, and lots of getting kicked out of buildings I guess you're not allowed to shoot in. Four to be exact. Who knew!?

We started at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side. There are some GORGEOUS buildings, and we were getting beautiful light bouncing off nearby buildings. It was like our own natural reflector. Perfecto! Lovin' it! And Jess was absolutely amazing. So fun to work with; sweetest thing ever, unless of course you're a security guard trying to kick her out from shooting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or Grand Central Station, or the Library. Don't mess with Jess...that's what I learned. : )

We even got kicked out of St. Bart's Church RIGHT while Jess and I were working on a shot. Jess was determined to get the shot, and went back in and told the lady we would only take ONE more picture if we could just have 3 minutes. I'm glad she did because we got this picture which is one of my favorites from the day.

It was an absolute blast working with Jess and my mom, Jen. She got some amazing shots that you can see here on her blog. Truly inspiring!

NYC!

Been MIA for a bit. Don't have a ton of time right now to post but here's just a preview of what I've been up to: Manhattan+bridal shoot=boo ya! More to come...

Why shoot at f/1.4?

Today I was finishing up my edits for Carlo and Amy Jo, when I came across these two photos, both almost the same, except one was shot at f/7.1 and the other was shot at f/1.4. We had just shot a few photos of her beautiful ring, which is why I had it set at 7.1. I wanted as much detail and crispness as I could get. I then shot this picture of them:

...and realized that I was still dialed in at f/7.1 So then I opened up my lens to f/1.4 and shot this:

Now in this particular example, the bokeh (blurry background) in the second images almost looks like it was done in photoshop. It wasn't! Both images are SOOC (straight out of camera). This is the benefit of shooting "wide open". In other words, put your camera in Aperture priority mode, dial that thing WAY down, or as far down as it goes, and enjoy the beautiful blurry backgrounds that really makes your subject stand out and pop. Also note the natural vignetting to the f/1.4 version. I love this! I recently bought a 70-200mm 2.8 lens, and don't get me wrong, I LOVE IT! It's unreal. The sharpness of the lens blows me away. But I'll be honest, I KEEP switching back to my little 50 mm 1.4 lens, so that I can open the lens all the way to 1.4. You lucky Canon users even get a lens that goes down to 1.2!

But I just wanted to post that small example. I plan on doing little tips and tricks every once in a while here on the blog. I will soon post a "What's in my Bag" post and talk about the equipment I use. Thanks and enjoy your day!

Jasmine Star Workshop

If you've seen my "Favorites" section at the top, you'll have seen that Jasmine Star has been one of my favorite photographers for quite a while, among a few other photography "giants", that I look to for inspiration and motivation to continue working, and shooting, and improving. A few weeks ago, I saw this post, where Jasmine announced that Chase Jarvis (another featured favorite photographer) had come to her with an idea. And instead of explaining it myself, take a look at the video that Jasmine posted on her blog.

So I thought...I should try this. And sadly enough, that's all that happened. I thought about it. Thought it would be an amazing thing to try, thought that it would be a life changing event, and thought about finding time to make a video. Thinking that the deadline was only a few days away, I missed my opportunity to turn my thoughts into action. My Mother called me that Saturday to tell me that I HAD to apply and make a video, but I told her that the due date had already passed. She showed me that I actually had another whole week till the deadline, and so I still had time to make my video.

Long story short(er), my wife and I noodled over idea after idea and did three "takes" three days in a row. Every time I finished editing another take, I realized other things I wanted to say or do. So here was the final video that was submitted:

And guess what? She PICKED ME! You can see the other 5 photographers she picked on her post here. I couldn't believe it. I am going to be able to learn for 5 days from one of the greatest photographers, and be able to shoot a live wedding with her and 5 other great people from around the world.

Needless to say, I'm ridiculously excited about this incredible opportunity. I plan on keeping updates flowing on the blog during the workshop, as well as on twitter @nateperkes. Thanks so much to Luisa for being patient with me, and for returning each day for "take 2" and "take 3" when there was only supposed to be a "take 1". Also a big thanks to my family who all pitched in and had great ideas, especially my older brother Josh, who was visiting town on our "take 3" day, and had some really great input that helped a lot with the video. I had a blast making it. Hope you enjoyed it!

Carlo+Amy Jo

It's been an amazing last few days. I got chosen as one of six photographers to attend a workshop with Jasmine Star (more on that later), I turned 24 (woohoo! Getting old), and I had the awesome opportunity to photograph this incredible couple's engagements.

Carlo and Amy Jo are getting married next May in a beautiful church that I posted pictures of a few weeks ago (seen here). What an amazing couple! They are so in love and so happy together, and just ridiculously fun to be around. Thanks so much for the amazing time!

Kelsey's Bridals

Again, Kelsey was such a champ, so willing to experiment with different lighting, poses, locations etc. So we started at the Capitol Building downtown. Aparently there aren't too many places to change into a wedding dress close to the Capitol Building at 6:30. Luckily we met a wonderful security guard for the Capitol that after making a few "red leader to gold leader" calls on his radio, was allowed to literally escort us inside to the bathrooms to change.

After the Capitol, we headed out to the country to get some shots in a beautiful field.

And lastly, I just did a little experimenting with off camera flash!

Have a great day!