TM Photography Co

Lightroom and Presets

Happy Friday Friends!

I have been playing around with Preza lately. What is Preza you ask? Preza is a web based presentation platform. Kind of like Powerpoint, but over the internet!

I used it to make a quick presentation on the 3 easy steps to apply a Lightroom preset to a photo that you are editing in Lightroom Classic! I will more than likely be creating follow up presentation on how to add a preset to Lightroom, as well as further steps I take for editing. Check out this link below and let me know what you think! I love cresting these and making things to help y’all learn!

I heard this saying once and now it is a saying that I live by.
” You never want to be the smartest person in the room” And it is so true!

Tell me below what your favorite saying to live by is!

https://prezi.com/view/EIBD9gbvgjPSfuBPbl1p/

xx Taylor

Consistency and Business Tips

Hey Friends!

Starting your own business in any industry is hard. You go through your learning phases, you’r building phases, and then finally your production phase. But during all of this you never stop learning. Like school. I learned in English that you’re not supposed to start a sentence with the word but, BUT I did! And it worked. Now you have learned something as well!

From my experience and learning everything takes consistency. Consistency runs the world to be honest. When your building your own business you have to be consistent so people know and start to trust you! When you’re trying to break a bad habit, you have to be consistent with your actions or else it will develop again. Consistency. I suck at it. I also have never been tested for ADHD but I swear I have it. I am like a squirrel let me tell ya.

Currently in My photography career I am working on my building and learning phases together. I have always been with a camera in my hands, BUT you never stop learning more and as long as you never stop learning, you will always become better.

I have given out about 10 free photoshoots this week to fellow photographers for me to practice photo taking on. And in addition to that, If they like my photos, I have asked them to share them and tag me on Instagram or Facebook or wherever they post them. This way it gives me more clients and I get to practice.

I am so excited to be able to photograph these incredible women and I am so pumped to be able to blog about it as well!

I have been doing some re branding lately with my Website and logo’s so check out the new TM Photography Logo. What do you think?

Also, Leave a comment below on your best way of keeping on track and staying consistent! I need all the help I can get

xx Taylor

Current gear and lens cleaning

Hey Friends!

I made a quick video for y’all showing you my current gear, as well as one showing how to properly clean your lens!

Check them out and let me know what you think!

**I look like a complete dork (facepalm) Can I blame this on #workfromhomelife?

My Favorite Apps

Can you believe that It is already the second week in January!? This year is already going so fast.

My goal for my blog this year Is to make sure in every post I am bringing a little bit of value to your life by showing you a tip, sharing some of my favorite hacks, or simply just bringing joy to your life with photography.

Today I wanted to share with you some of my favorite apps that I use with my photography business.

No.1 Lightroom.
– ON the phone you can get Lightroom for free and you can edit to your hearts content. They have presets that you can use as well that make the editing process so much quicker! You can get Lightroom CC as well as Lightroom Classic on your laptop. I prefer the classic version for my laptop because you can do so much more with it and you can get plugins to be able to upload directly into some web galleries for clients!
My favorite presets are by Madison Vining (obsessing over her instagram and homesteading life) and Wilde Presets. I will link them for you.
Wilde: https://www.wildepresets.com/collections/shop
Madison Vining: https://www.shopmadisoncollection.com/collections/presets/products/madison-vining-lightroom-presets

No.2 Unscripted
– This app you can get on the Mac store as well as your phone app stores. Unscripted is incredible because they have an incredible amount of poses that you can look through, favorite, and assign to a photoshoot! You can also do all of your booking and invoicing from the app as well. the design is so clean and beautiful. They really did an incredible job. In edition to poses and booking photoshoots, you can also use the sun tracker to repack blue hour as well as golden hour and the weather, There is a camera settings guide, as well as a whole section for education! I am also obsessed with their Facebook page. So much inspiration! And guess what…. I have a discount code for you!!
Use code tmphotography for $20 off!

No. 3 SCRL
– SCRL is one of the coolest apps for creating content for Instagram. Recently I have been seeing more and more posts of continuous photos. for an example, you know how on your feed you can post multiple photos to swipe between? This app allows you to turn those photos into 1 continuous picture. This is my favorite way to post now! You can also have it scroll itself in a 10, 15, or 20 second video for your story or grid.

No. 4 Unfold
– Unfold Is my favorite for classy instagram stories that I want to save and continue to use over and over. They are beautiful, simple, and clean. So many different styles that you can choose from also! You can also edit the images pretty cool while you are in the app as well.

Check out these apps and let me know how they work for you in the comments! I can’t wait to hear what you create.

With Love, Taylor

The Sweetest Nursery

When your you get the opportunity to photograph the cutest mom and baby combo, you don’t say no.

These two are the most precious people I know. Mom is a instagram Influencer, and this is baby number 1. She is one of my best friend here in Texas. I feel so spoiled being able to get all the baby time in the world while my husband and I are getting our life all set up.

With Mom having ADHD you don’t get too many quiet, “picture perfect” moments but these couldn’t have been taken at a better time. The window lighting was just right, the angel perfect, and baby nice and calm. Which let me tell you is a rare occasion, that baby is the busiest little bee around!

I love getting to be their personal family photographer. Isn’t their nursery just the cutest!?

Bring on the baby Tylenol because your about to need your baby fever broken!

PHOTOGRAPHY NOTES: These were taken in their nursery with all of the lights off. the only light was coming in from the window with the light slightly defused upwards from the blinds and the curtains open.

Looking for someone new to follow? Check out mom on instagram! @Megdiaries.

xx Taylor

Love Makes Family

Starting up a new campaign today called Love Makes Family.

Being adopted, this phrase means a lot to me… but you don’t have to be a blended family for this to work.

There are many moms who have trouble connecting with their babies, are unable to breast feed, have PPD. Friends who you spend time with and have become apart of your family. Even families that are perfect. This works for every situation.

Check out my top 5 photoshoots below. You might see a familiar face. My incredible model and best friend, Mom and her baby E.

Tips for Christmas Portraits

With it being Christmas time I wanted to share little bit about lighting. It is always tricky getting the perfect picture in front of the Christmas lights or roaring fire in the fire place. Far too often pictures are over exposed making the picture dull, or not exposed enough and the people end up black. Some times you want the people to appear like shadows but other times you want to be able to see their beautiful faces.

This is when lighting, and camera settings come into play.

Slight change to the exposure in my camera. No post processing edits.

When I am trying to take a low light photo, there are a few tips I follow…

Turn off your flash unless you’re going to defuse or bounce it.
Use natural window light if at all possible. YES! Choose to take them in the daylight.
If you are using window light…. Turn off all overhead lights and or lamps.
If its dark or no windows are working, then try changing your ISO.

When your staging a photo, Stage it as if you are coming through the window so that the window light is directly in front of the person you’re photographing. This is going to give you the most natural light and there is less of a change that you will have to edit it in post processing.

If you want to blue your background some, move the person that your shooting a few feet in front of the background that way you can change your aperture (make it larger) it changes your depth of field and create Bokeh. Bokeh is the lights on the tree becoming blurry light balls.

Try out some of these tips and let me know what you think!

With love,
Taylor

Photo Blunders… UH OH!

When you are new at something, it is expected that you might suck at it… at first. You work your ass off, study, learn, practice… soak up all that you can and little by little you get better! I am in the progress of that right now with my portfolio

Everyone makes mistakes, even a seasoned photographer.

I am not quite there yet….. But I can’t wait to be.

I was doing a photoshoot outside at a extremely high clocktower. It was November in Texas. Cold and Windy. This was a family of 6 with a preteen, 2.5 yr old twin boys, and a 6 mo. old baby girl. Cold and windy with littles doesn’t work very good. Being outside without anything to block the wind was not super pleasant. We got the photoshoot done in about 12 minutes.

My first mistake was wearing my contacts.

Normally I shoot in my glasses and don’t wear my contacts very often but I thought I would be able to do better with nothing between me and the view finder. I was wrong… With the wind, my eyes kept getting dry, my vision was blurry, and I just couldn’t see as well as if I was in my glasses.

My second mistake was playing too much with the ISO. I have sense learned that you have to be careful with it because it can make your pictures grainy. It is great if you want a film look, but not when you are trying to shoot a family session. ISO Is definitely a powerful setting that can do some amazing and cool things. I don’t recommend using it for exposure unless you absolutely have to and don’t have any other options though.

There is only so much that you can fix when your photos have too much grain. Make sure that you take the time to study your camera and really really get to know it so that you can change between settings in a fast pace environment and the photos still look great.

The long and the short. We all have good days, but we also have bad days. Every day is practice for the next. We need to take the lessons we learn and move on to the next. Luckily this was a portfolio shoot so It was free for the family and we will be doing another photoshoot when hit gets little bit warmer so that we can have lots more time photographing their beautiful kids.

Lessions learned:
1. Wear your glasses or get new contacts.
2. Check your settings and leave them. If you have to change them, don’t mess too much with the ISO change the F-stop instead.
3. Check the weather and wind before shooting with littles.
4. STUDY YOUR CAMERA! Know it inside and out.

Here is the website that I love for learning about my DSLR. I use this as a staple and am always studying it. https://photographylife.com/photography-basics

What photography mistakes have you made before?

Love,

Taylor

My first ever blog post!

This is a tremendous occasion. MARK THE DATE! December 6th, 2020; Taylor is making her first blog post.

This blog is going to be a journey into my adventures here in Texas, my photography, some tips and tricks I’ve learned, mistakes I’ve made, my infatuation of homesteading, taking care of two crazy dogs and one insane husband…. Pretty much my life!

Let me tell you what…. This is frightening.

I have always wanted to be able to blog, but I never thought I would be able to. you know that feeling? One where you are super gung-ho about something but you just can’t keep momentum…. I do that a lot. I don’t know if it is ADHD, if I lack desire, lazyness, or my why isn’t great enough, but I am doing this now.

We’re going to do it and I’m actually going to keep up with it! Tomorrow is Monday and I am going to start going back to the gym as well after 3 weeks off. It is time to kick ass and take names. I am ready to hit the world running and hit it hard. Have I used enough metaphors yet?

This is the beginning of Christmas season and I am getting all of the warm fuzzy with my tree up, presents under it, and hallmark movies on the tv while drinking my hot cocoa in fuzzy socks.

What is your favorite thing to do this time of year?