Sandra Coan is Seattle's premier maternity, newborn and family photographer. This conversation was recorded in February 2020 at WPPI just before the release of Sandra's new book - Crafting The Natural Light Look
www.sandracoaneducation.com
Learn the tools. Become consistent - 4:00
It's very controlled. And because of that, it's super consistent. What that does for you when you can get that kind of consistency in your work is that those tools, those things that one would think of as technical, They just become a non-issue. They're just there.
Does that make sense? So you get it working, you know how it works, it's all set. I don't have to change it or think about it. And so then I just go back to that place [...] where it's just about me connecting with my client and just having that moment. So it's not something I think about all the time. I've learned the tools and I've learned them well enough that they become second nature.
Know how to handle less than ideal conditions - 13:34
I won an award for one of my film photos. And one of my first film photos got me my first magazine cover, you know, I was having a lot of success in perfect situations with that medium. But then when it wasn't perfect situations, it all just went to hell in a handbasket. I had this one client come in with a newborn baby in November, and it was just rainy and dark in those like Northwest days where the streetlights never turned off, and I'm trying to shoot portrait 400 which is an ISO 400 film and I was like, 'Oh, I'll just push it' which was dumb because that didn't work.
So the film came back like super underexposed. The baby is orange, it was all grainy, it was awful. I then had to call that parent and be like, 'I just totally ruined your newborn session. And I'm sorry.' I'll never forget that shoot because that was the moment I was like, 'This is stupid. If you're going to continue doing this, if you're going to call yourself a professional photographer, if you're going to take money from people, you need to get serious and you need to just get over yourself and learn how to do it'.
What's amazing about that is, 2011 I spent a lot of time teaching myself how to create the kind of light I wanted to shoot with strobes, and then 2012 was my first six-figure year and that's not an accident."
If you're feeling burnt-out shoot a roll of film - 23:48
It really such a fun medium. I feel like it's the cure for burnout. Whenever I talk to photographers, that are like, 'I'm so burnt out. I never want to pick up my camera again.' I'm like, dude, shoot a roll of film because it's fun, like, have fun.
I get that all the time. I like [film], I like not seeing my photos. Because, I don't know if you do this, but when I was shooting digitally, I would do the shoot, and then [when the client left], I would immediately put them on the computer and then immediately pick it apart.[...] There was no break. And now I' shoot the film. And then I don't look at it for two weeks because it's at the lab and then it comes in and then it's like, oh my god I love these pictures."
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