This year I had the honor of teaching a class and leading a shoot at Photo Native. Photo Native is a workshop for photographers and creatives, a three event with an incredibly supportive community. I taught a class on balancing your art and your business (more on this later) and my styled shoot was about “honoring the imperfect.”
First, let me tell you, it’s pretty tricky to put a styled shoot together about honoring imperfections. Styled shoots are all about photographing the perfect. The moments aren’t real. The couple is often just two models who don’t even know each other. For this shoot I wanted to offer my students a space where they could have freedom to create and experiment and photograph a real couple, capturing and cultivating real moments.
I decided to have two sets of models and several stations for my students to photograph. I’ve been a student at workshops in the past and it’s always stressful trying to climb over each other to get the same shot. This way, I had hoped that everyone would get to spread out and work with the people individually and have plenty of time to photograph the amazing details our vendors had staged for us.
We started off the shoot by gathering together to talk about my intentions for the class, and then I had my lovely students frolic on the beach first to get our playful energy and creative spirits going! It was so much fun. I will post more behind the scenes photos from the whole conference.
I finished this shoot completely full of gratitude for this opportunity and for my students who trusted me to share my story with them.
I am forever grateful to the incredible, talented team of vendors who travelled from Utah to California to put this shoot together. They trekked up and down hundreds of stairs, carrying all of this gorgeousness with them, and pulled off a beautiful shoot. I could not have done this without them.
Workshop: Photo Native @photonative
Photographer: M. Felt Photography @mfeltphotography
Design: Forevermore Events @forevermoreevents
Floral: Bloomers Flowers @bybloomers
Hair/Makeup: Sarah Boling, Lunatic Fringe Salon @sarahbolinghairmua
Models: Tigerlily Trammell @tigerxily
Ava Nania @avaguavacado
James Herb: @james_k_herb
Cake: Cupcakes by Julie @cupcakejulie
Rentals: St. George Party Rentals @stgeorgepartyrentals
Paper Details: Black Julep Studio @black.julep.studio
Dress: Wilderly Bride @wilderlybride
