What’s New This Week

Welcome to May from everyone at Pink Ink Studios!

OK, have you seen these?? Holly has made these goodies available and you can find the details here! Loving these!!

Reps. Reps. Reps. Have you found your senior reps yet? School is almost out and senior reps play a vital part in building your senior business. A knockout rep card is a MUST! Check out what Carrie has in her store. While you’re there, check out her sticker pack. I kind of have a sticker addiction that dates back to second grade so I think these are the bees knees.

Needing new business pieces? Here are Tisha’s client info forms to keep you organized. Kim Hill has a second shooter contract that provides a ton of info when hiring someone to work with you.

If you’re looking for a great way to package your digital negatives, Jackie has a trifold to help you pull it all together. Check out the images she’s provided to give you an idea of what this looks like … nice job Jackie!!

Kim Hill also has a selection of blog frames in her store. Cool ways to show your clients their sneak peeks. Lots of design options … head to her store!

Tons of new stuff in addition to what I’ve posted. Be sure to browse all of our new products.

Have a great week!

PS – Rumor has it that someone is having a birthday and a birthday SALE on May 6.

What’s New This Week

Happy Hump Day! I’ve realized time really flies when you commit to a weekly post! As in I swore I just did this yesterday … but I really didn’t.

Who tweets? Amy did a post on social media last month.  She’s got great tips. She just added Twitter backgrounds to her shop. Check those out!

If you’re still creating Valentine products for your clients (or yourself for that matter!), Holly has an awesome Vintage Valentine Collection of papers. Very pretty! Also take a peek at her Vintage Valentine Wallet templates … great add-ons for portrait sessions.

Tara has Cherish backgrounds available in her store. These are great for Valentine’s Day and would also work for baby girl albums.

Kim Hill has a ton of senior rep cards in her shop … ’tis the season … get your rep programs rolling!

Last, but not least … Traci just added two Frame Up collections. Easy way to add a little something to your image!

Guess I’ll see you next month!! Have a great week!

PS – Who wants an iPad?

What’s New This Week

Happy Thursday! I’m hoping this post finds you photographers as busy as the Pink Ink designers are. It amazes me how many new products are added to our site each week.

Just because Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, I’m going to start off with a few more Valentine products. Hello January … where did you go?

Tara has a great Valentine card that is also a calendar. Love it!

I’ve added a few Valentine cards to my store (MadiLu Designs). This one might be my favorite as you can use it for boys or girls and I happen to have two of each

Looking for something smaller? Tisha has a sweet Valentine wallet set worked in with a few every day ideas.

OK … fun idea from Holly’s store. These are Red Lips are printed out and used as props for your clients. Add these to your sessions and you’re sure to get a lot of smiles! Very cute way to dress up a Valentine card.

To follow up with a similar product, try her Bubble Thought printouts. I’m sure your clients will love that you’re reading their minds!

Looking for ways to improve your workflow? Amy has created a set of actions to help you resize your images for web and blog. Efficiency rocks! Seriously … check out Kim’s mix-and-match book templates while you’re at it and you will become the Jedi of workflow organization!

Not only is it the season of love, it’s a great time to be finding your senior reps for 2011. Carrie has a rep card in her store that will help you spread the word! Speaking of seniors, Heather has created a Teen Angst Bundle. Check out her store for more Teen Angst products. Do I date myself if I suddenly have Nirvana songs running through my head??

Have a great week! As always, keep checking back for great giveaways and more information. Visit our forums. You never know when cool goodies are hiding in there!

Rod Evans Fashion Lighting Tutorial Winner!

Congrats to our winner, Cindy Ellis from Albuquerque, NM! We used the Random.org generator to pick #33 and then to make it fair, we used our comment list from the admin section. This shows comments as they submit, whereas the blog will show you comments after we approve them (if they have never had previous comments before).

Cindy, we will be in touch with you on how to get your prize.

And, to everyone else, Rod’s team was so amazing to work with that they are offering a great discount to you! Get $30 off this product when you purchase it on their website using a special coupon code for our readers. That makes it an amazing $189! Remember, it’s the Fashion Lighting Tutorial for Seniors. You won’t regret this purchase!!!

Use the code: pinkink

Special thanks to Rod and his donation! If you want to keep track of the giveaways as we start launching them, up in the menu, you’ll see a link for “vendors” – all of them will be linked to their original post here on what we gave away which will then link you to their websites. We love our sponsors!

Rod Evan’s Fashion Lighting for Seniors Tutorial – GIVEAWAY!

As a senior portrait photographer, finding ways to keep busy in the cold, blustery winter months can often be a challenge. Luckily, I found an amazing spot to call my studio and that allows me to stay out of the frigid temperatures and still have enough space to get creative with my seniors. But, when you’re in a studio, and you’re primarily a natural light photographer, how do you make lighting work for you when you’re not an expert lighting person?

I’ll be honest, you have to understand lighting to some degree. There are plenty of workshops, schools, etc. that you can attend to help you understand the basics of them, but that’s for another post.

Rod Evans, a premiere photographer that has the edge on indoor senior portraits, developed this lighting tutorial that inspired me to get more creative in the winter. I, like Rod, live in a winter-prone area, but you can apply these techniques any time of the year, not just winter. What Rod found is that seniors want to look like the pictures from their favorite magazines. And, he’s captured that need and put it to use in his business model. In this Fashion Lighting Tutorial, Rod demonstrates how he  interacts with his clients to types of lighting and you can watch him in action.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a hands on person, so this is probably the closest thing to that. If I read something, I may “get it” but when I have the visual, it all becomes that much more clear to me. Light setups that Rod demonstrates are four lights for head shots and full body shots. He shows you how to incorporate a five light setup and my favorite, a two light hot light setup (grrr). And, finally a one light set up. You can achieve so much with just one or five lights.

For just $219, you can purchase Rod’s awesome Fashion Lighting Tutorial – or you can enter to win it here!

The tutorial includes:

• Over 90 minutes of video
• Video of 3 senior fashion shoots
• Details on lighting and diagrams
• And, lessons on how he interacts with his subjects.

So…how do you win a copy? It’s simple this time! Simply leave a comment on the blog below (remember, if you’re a first time poster, we manually have to approve your comment). Tell us why you would like to win a copy of this and we’ll draw a winner on January 10th.

While you’re at it, check out his other products too. I particularly love the idea of Facebook Marketing!

Photographer Spotlight: Nancy Poole

Tell us your name. Nancy Poole

Where do you live? Broken Arrow, Oklahoma which is a suburb of Tulsa

Please link us to your website. http://www.nancypoole.com

Describe your area of expertise: high school seniors

How long have you been a photographer? 5 years

What made you decide to leave your teaching career to pursue  photography? I actually retired from being an elementary principal after 31 years in education.  After I retired, I decided I wanted to pursue becoming a photographer.  I studied, took classes and workshops, and gathered my equipment for 2 years before I put up my website.

How would you describe your style? Classic, colorful, stylish

Do you prefer to work in the studio, on-location, or both and why? Both!  I love the great lighting for portraits in the studio and like to do traditional to fashion type headshots.  But I also love the variety of ideas that can be drawn from a location shoot.

What is your standby pose (the one that everyone tends to want from you)? I have a pose that I got from a Sarah Jessica Parker perfume ad in a magazine that everyone wants.  They sit on the edge of a chair and lean over on their knees.  Their knees are together and their feet wide apart with their toes pointing inward.  They love the fashion look of the pose.

What gear is in your bag? Canon 5d Mark II, 70-200L Lens, 24-70L lens, 16-35 wide angle lens, fisheye 100-400 Lens, two Canon 580ex flashes, Radio Poppers, op tech hand grip

If you could only use one lens what would it be? 70-200L-2.8—I keep it on my camera almost all the time.

What is your go-to camera shop? I have a local camera shop, B&H, and Dury’s

Which album company do you recommend? I use WHCC for my 10×10 press printed books.

How do you stay motivated? I LOVE what I do.  I love being around the seniors and the session.  I get excited when I’m photoshopping their session.  It’s emotional to watch them see their pictures for the first time.  It’s a thrill when they get the prints in their hands.  Compared to my former job as a principal, it is no stress.  How could anyone not be motivated by a job that has all of that?

Have you attended any workshops that you found to be helpful in your work?  If so, which ones? I may just be the queen of workshops.   I should be better than I am–LOL!  Kirk Voclain–posing and photoshop for Seniors, Brad Veraska–posing and photoshop and lighting for Seniors, Jen Hillenga–posing and photoshop for Seniors, Kevin Jairaj–bridals and couple posing, Julie Klaasmeyer–babies, Lori Nordstrom–babies, Tim Babin–Senior posing and business, Mike Fulton–lighting, to name a few.

Which professional organizations do you belong to? Indian Nations Guild–Tulsa PPA local, Oklahoma Photographers Association

What makes your job easy? No Stress

How do you achieve the rich, vibrant colors in your images? I think a combination between my Canon 5d Mark II and using Lightroom

Do you fully process all the proofs you show to clients or do you show soft-proofs and then finalize once you know which images they will be ordering? I used to fully process all the files before the client would see them, but I’m way too busy now to spend time on a file that they may not purchase, so I fully photoshop about 5 or maybe at least one from different lighting situations.  Then they look at all the others straight out of Lightroom.

What sets you and your work apart from other photographers in your area? We have some amazing photographers in this area.  It seems I’m getting to be known for my white on white high-key look and my location shoots with my off-camera flash, such as my outdoor field pictures.

If you could choose anyone to do a photo session of you and your family, who would your choose? Brad Veraska

If you were not a photographer, then…I’d do something artistically.  I once had a small business where I sewed arts and crafts projects and sold them.

What does photography mean to you? It is such a artistic release for me.

Best advice for new photographers breaking into the business? Learn the craft, understand business and pricing structures in order to make a profit, before hanging out your shingle and saying you are a professional.

Magazine must have? I love catalogs for poses

What’s your guilty pleasure? Merlot and my black corvette but not together!  LOL!

My weakness is… spreading myself to thin

My strength is… creativity

What do you do when you first wake up? I lay in bed with my laptop and watch the morning shows on tv and try to wake up!

Finish this quote: When it rains…just don’t let it do it on my parade!

Who do you love? My husband David.  We’ve been married for 18 years.  And our 3 children:  Casey-33, Garrett-29, and Aubrey-27

Do you read your horoscope? I read it—but I don’t pay attention to it unless it is a good one!

Tattoos…Nope—and so glad—they would look horrible on my skin at this age

MAC or PC…Desktop Mac and a MacBook Pro Laptop

Music…I love all kinds of music—I just LOVE music, but I mostly listen to Country

What’s on your iPod? Country, and then walking/running music like Justin Timberlake and Madonna—they have a great beat

Morning or night? Definitely night.  I can’t do anything in the morning and start really getting the creative ideas flowing about 3:00pm to 2:00am

My friends say…I’m sweet

Travel dreams…Traveling all the places I’ve never been.  I’ve been to all but Alaska and Wisconsin in the US, several places in Mexico and the Carribean, and I got to take a trip not too long ago to Italy.  We would love to go to more places in Europe and go to Australia.

On my day off… Compared to my education career—I feel like I’m always on a day off.

One of your top 100 to do before you die? I don’t know.  I really believe in living everyday fully.  I’m living many of my dreams right now.  I LOVE my family and job, I get to travel, I have my sports car, and my daughter just got engaged so we are planning her wedding.  Life Is So Good!

What isn’t on your top list? Bungee Jumping—-I’m deathly afraid of heights —those where you look over an edge.

Thanks so much, Nancy, for taking the time to share your inspirational work with us. 

New Product Idea – Texture/Overlay

Hello!!!  I used Heather’s large textures for this senior storyboard.  They are great to work with for two reason 1- they are large so you won’t have to resize them too much and 2- they are masculine which is perfect for my “guy” storyboards!

Product Idea

It’s Senior time!! One of my biggest sellers for seniors are graduation/open house announcements. At Pink Ink we have a nice selection of grad cards, moo templates (which they love to hand out) and wallet cards. Check Traci Murphy’s new grad cards:

You can see all of the cards here:

http://www.pinkinkstudios.com/store/home.php?cat=22

During your viewing session have these ready and Mom will not be able to resist.

What’s New?

It’s time to list out the new goodies in the store! I love this day!

From Amy – we have some more book templates! This time some different sizes!

I have a new splash page design up!

We LOVE Carrie’s new logos!

Both Carrie & Kim have some great new Senior Marketing Sets!

And, a few other goodies in the store: