Top 5 things when starting a newborn home business

Are you thinking of starting a newborn home business?  Maybe you have and are feeling overwhelmed?  Rest assured we all felt like that at some point in our career. We still do come to think of it.  Running your own business from home is a lot of work! Here are some things that will help you get started and steer you in the right direction.

1. Being Organized

Everyone needs some sort of organizational flow. This will help you keep on track with things, prepare you for your day and help you through the unexpected issues or dilemma's that arise.  Use a calendar, keep track of your personal and business schedules separately.  Make a mental checklist of what is needed for your sessions, props, what lens you will be using, lightsource,posing etc so that as you are setting up you can walk yourself through your session to keep yourself focused.

2. Work/Home Balance

Do I hear laughing?  At times it is stressful and very frustrating, however remember that your family must come first.  This may mean working into the wee hours of the night at times, but it is can be done.  Again, being organized plays a HUGE part.  If you are not organized, the domino effect will quickly turn your week upside down.  Those of you who have children at school during the day, schedule your appointments, sessions and editing time around school hours.  For those of you with little ones, early morning hours or after bedtime/naptime may be where you need to be focusing to get things done.  Try not to get ahead of yourself with unrealistic daily goals. Aim for 1-2 things to be done.  If you manage more...high five to you!  That's awesome!

3. Create exceptional service

Okay so you've taken the plunge now what? You have some sessions under your belt, building your portfolio and earning some money. Great!  But your business along with countless others in your area offer the same thing.  So what are you going to do about it?  Well, at the end of the day, anyone can be a photographer. It does however boil down to you.  Your style, your originality, your professionalism and not the just service you offer but an experience.  Create an experience that will be beautiful lasting memories for any new parent.

4. Know your products

Whether you offer one product or 10, selling your products to your clients needs to be an enjoyable one.  Pushy sales stink let's face it.  Guide your client and get to know them. Likes,needs and must have's! Know your products. research your vendors and test them out yourself!  It's your job to do that.  At the end of the day if you are not confidant with it don't offer it!  You need to represent what works best for you and your business.  Life is full of choices these days.  Market yourself well and you will attract the niche that you are aiming for.

5.  K.I.S.S Rule (keep it simple)

Try to avoid taking on too much. Be it sessions, learning curve,marketing,accounting,social media,website and blog etc etc...the list seems endless at times.  As a new business owner you need to keep things simple.  This goes back to being organized.  During your sessions, aim for 3-4 different set ups. Anything more at times will only be overwhelming for your clients and extra work for you.  New parents are stressed,exhausted and still on an emotional high that baby is "actually here"  It's your job to make this experience smooth, positive and most importantly stress-free!

Before and After: Post processing help

I frequently get asked about my work. About the workflow and how you get from point A ( taking your a picture) to point B ( the final result). So I thought today would be a good time as any to help you and explain a few simple steps what I do.  So let's start with a simple image.  Attached here is one from a recent newborn session.  This is straight out of the camera. Or in a photographers lingo SOOC. So let's start with an image. These twin brothers were in studio a few weeks ago. My studio set up consists of a single Elinchrom Octabox.  I use an awesome bean bag that the little ones lay on. I absolutely love it.  By far one of my best investments for the business. The bean bag is from Shoot Baby.

This set up was pretty simple.  Babies were laying on the throw, a space heater off to the side. It's VERY important that while photographing newborns, they are kept warm, comfortable and full tummies. It makes ALL the difference in your images.  My lighting was off to the side at a 45 degree angle from where I was ( straight overhead babies) After a few test shots, I decided to raise up the octabox slightly higher so that baby B ( on your right) wasn't in too much of a shadow from his older brother.

Camera settings were 1/125th, ISO 100 ( I always keep at this when shooting with studio lighting) and I used my 50mm 1.4.  My f/stop was at 5.6 here.

SO here is my SOOC.

It's important to me to get a good exposure as best as possible in camera.  The more you practice with your camera and get to know your settings, the easier this will be. Benefits of doing so will allow you to cut your post processing time down drastically!  Therefore creating a smoother and quicker workflow for your business.

Seen above, image is not too bad, however here is the final image I created for mom and dad.

Sweet isn't it?  Ok let me tell you how I got here.  I opened the image up in Adobe Lightroom and adjusted the white balance.  Babies had a slight bit of jaundice so I needed to remove some yellow in the skin tones.  Once done, I exported to Photoshop.  I still use CS3 ( have an upgrade just not got there yet lol) Why do I need to export? Because I need to convert my files from my camera into a DNG format.  I do 90% of my work in PS vs LR.  After I've opened up the image in PS I can then do any cropping and editing I would like. I crop all my images to an 8x10 format.  Once done, I knew I wanted to lighten the image some more.  I added an curve layer to the image and increased ever so slightly. Again, the more you work with your images in Photoshop, the more your eyes will be trained to know what looks good and what doesn't work.

Since I already adjusted the white balance on this image, and when I lightened it I wanted to add a slight bit of color back into the babies skin. The lighter an image is, it tends to wash out your tones. In order to do this I again added a layer adjustment and increased my saturation to 3-5%.  Can't remember exactly.  Almost done!  From here I used an action called "Clarify". I always use this as a layer so that I can go back and adjust as needed. I never leave it at 100%. For me I can easily tell a digital image over a film one.  The clarify action was run about 25% I believe. And voila! My finished product.

Mom and Dad loved this image so much they used it for their Birth Announcements as well as a gorgeous 16x20 Canvas to hang in their home.

If you enjoyed this post, that's awesome!  I will be posting more content that will be helpful to you as well as educational.  Should you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask!

Drop me a line at petraking@rogers.com

Thanks a million and chat soon!

P