Hey friend!

Do you have a DSLR or Mirrorless camera that you bought to capture the world around you with? Are you struggling with the settings, unsure of how to photograph what you're actually seeing? Ready to choose your own settings instead of letting the camera decided for you? Tired of letting the camera or lenses you invested in set on a shelf and collect dust? Constantly buying something new for photography, but always getting the same results?

I get it. I've been there too!

Here's a photo of my son when I got my first "big, expensive, and fancy" camera.

He's totally cute, but WHEW. I was 100% just recreating what I knew from watching those those "professional photographers" at the big chain stores.

Remember going to Sears for photos??? (Or was that just a southern thing?) Anyways, there would have a neutral background to be photographed in front of.... I had a dark brown blanket + chair to mimic this. They would also have flashes going off everywhere... My fancy camera agreed with that too and forced the dinky little flash on top of my camera to pop up when I least expected. And I just went along with it because the camera knows best right?

But when I listened to the camera my photos, taken inside or outside, NEVER look like what I had envisioned.

They say you look a photo and remember how you felt in that moment. Wanna guess how I felt? Frustrated. I simply didn't have an understanding of how to balance the creative fun and technical side of photography. I wanted to take photos that captured his spirit of just being a kid that also looked great, but I didn't know the ingredients to make that work!

Fast Forward..

During our travels I decided to leave my "big, expensive, and fancy" camera and lenses at home in favor of a smaller, cheaper and more travel friendly option. Don't get me wrong it was still an investment, but it didn't have nearly the same amount of "power" or price tag that my professional gear had.

And I don't regret that one bit!! It still provided me with some seriously beautiful images and some of my most cherished memories. Like my daughter hiding under the covers trying to sleep in (for only once in her life) in the photo above. Even my iPhone served me well for getting lots of creative photos!

But if you tried to put the same camera in the hands of my husband it would become a bit useless for anything other than taking a quick iPhone-like snap. WHY? Because he doesn't have the creative knowledge or technical understanding for photography that I do!

So what are the ingredients needed for better photos?

First, let me tell what they are not. The ingredients are not to simply go out and buy a more expensive camera. For your personal goals, they may not even be buying a more expensive lens. There are people who take better photos on older cameras and iPhones than others that are using thousands of dollars worth of camera gear. (For example me with an iPhone vs. my husband with my professional camera haha!)

Frankly, the main ingredients to achieving your photo goals are a solid understanding of the creative "rules" of photography and a technical understanding of what gear or settings to choose for the subject you are trying to capture. Other ingredients include learning when to break rules in a creative way and best practices for editing.

My desire for this workshop..

I truly don't want anyone to feel like adding a new camera to their amazon cart is the only thing that will push them towards the results they want, I don't want them to feel like *all* the magic just happens during editing, and I certainly don't want anyone to let a camera they already own sit collecting dust while memories pass them by! That is why I created this workshop in 2013, and that is why I am passionate about continuing it 10 years later. I want to help others understand their camera and develop new skills. I want you to be able to ask questions about how to achieve the specific results you want and us to work together to achieve that! But maybe you're reading and asking yourself..

"Is this workshop right for me?"

Well... If anything you read here resonated with you today, then this is for you. If you have a camera on a shelf that you want to finally learn how to use, then dust it off because it's for you. If you find yourself looking to a new gear purchase for the answer to all your photography problems, then *pause* the shopping for a moment because this workshop is for you. If you wonder if the missing piece for your work is editing alone, then this is for you. If you're just starting off with photography and have dreams to own your own photo business one day, then this is likely for you too.