WELCOME!
Before Our Shoot
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After we decide on the perfect date + location, the timeline looks a little like this:
1 - SHOOT DAY!
2 - 3 to 4 weeks later we upload your edited photos to an online gallery.
3 - You look at them, laugh with delight, and share them with all of your friends + family.
4 - You choose which prints + products you love and place your order (with a discount on any orders placed within the first 2 weeks that your gallery is active).
5 - Your order makes its way to your house in 2-3 weeks.
6 - Hopefully we get to do it again! -
A 50% deposit is due when booking your session. Because the deposit reserves your specific date + time it is nonrefundable, however, we know that life is unpredictable (especially with kids!) so your deposit is 100% transferrable to a different date if we have to reschedule for any reason. The remaining 50% fee is due 30 days before your session date. *If session date is within 30 days from the booking date 100% of the session fee will be due at time of booking.
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Inevitably this is the first question that anybody asks, and I always tell people to stick with their own personal style and wear whatever makes them feel amazing. If you don't feel comfortable in what you're wearing it will show in the photos and you won't be as happy with them afterwards. Feel free to coordinate color pallets if you would like, but definitely don't feel the need to match exactly (just say no to khakis and white shirts. ;) ). In general the only hard + fast rule is to avoid giant text or logos because they can be distracting. Bright colors + patterns can look great, too, so feel free to ramp it up and have fun!
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Your kids will be crazy. Or quiet. Or loud. Or shy. Kids are kids and inevitably they will surprise you and be the exact opposite of how they normally are, or do something hilarious that you didn't expect. Regardless, we've been photographing kids for nearly 20 years and have seen them do everything in the book. This photo shoot is a great opportunity to let go of any stress related to making sure they look + act perfectly, let them go bonkers, and let your photographer take over. If we need your help we'll let you know, but otherwise let’s just take a deep breath and enjoy our time together while we document your beautiful family.
If there’s one thing to remember and to take into your session it’s this: your kids don’t have to be absolutely perfect for the two straight hours, or thirty straight minutes, of our entire session — those are some mega high expectations for kiddos (or anyone!). They only have be engaged for 1/500th of a second a few dozen times throughout our session. They’re totally capable of that and we’ll make it happen. :)
We'll also probably tell your kids to do something that seems really weird or over the top. There are a few reasons for this — it expends some of their energy, it lets them have a little more fun so they last longer and don't get bored with the photo shoot, and it also generally makes them (and everyone else) laugh and have really natural smiles right after they do whatever crazy thing we asked of them, which leads to beautiful natural-looking photos. Instead of trying to reign in their silliness and calm them down, it works really well if we all just let those moments play out naturally and have fun with it.
(Moment of honesty: 99% of the time if these photos aren’t included in a gallery it’s not because the kids looked bonkers, it’s because the parents looked confused/annoyed/disengaged in the background. Kids are hilarious — just roll with it and we promise we’ll get both the crazy moments and the perfect portrait throughout our session.)
If you're worried about this in any way, please shoot us an email and we can talk through it. We want this whole experience to be as enjoyable as possible and if we can peel away the overwhelming aspects before our session we would love to help do that.
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You know your kiddo best, so we would never tell you what to do in that regard. What we would suggest, though, is making the photo shoot PART of the bribe rather than framing it as the awful thing they have to trek through to make it to the donut shop afterwards. :)
If you treat this like a super fun thing that everyone is going to do together we promise they'll have a totally different attitude and mindset walking into our session.
Bribes during a photo shoot also rarely work well because the kiddos are so focused on the M&Ms/skittles/goldfish/anything that it's hard to pull them out of it that one-track mindset.
If you think a bribe of some kind might be absolutely necessary we would recommend bringing it a long just in case, but not telling them about it beforehand. That way we can work our magic to engage with them, but we also have their favorite backup just in case.
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If it's looking like the weather isn't going to cooperate with us for the session, we can talk beforehand and decide if we want to go forward with it or move to another date.
Generally we’re happy to take our chances, grab some umbrellas/hats/mittens, and embrace the weather, but we also want happy kiddos and we want you to get the family photos that you envision, so we like to have those conversations together to decide out what feels best.
AFTER OUR SHOOT
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You’re more than welcome to do either! These images are yours and we want you to use them in any and every possible way. Having said that there are a few advantages to ordering through us.
1: Retouching — We do extra retouching on every print order to make sure everything is extra perfect. We’ll triple check the colors, the light, the background and also get rid of some of the dog hair and snack crumbs. ;)
2: File Optimization — A digital file is really just the very starting point in the printing process and there are optimizations to be made to make sure it’s printed right for the final use. We use different file types + settings for different products and ordering through us ensures that’s done properly.
3: Calibration — Every computer, phone, or screen of any kind will render an image differently. It’s why, when you stand in front of that giant wall of TVs at Best Buy their colors look wildly different. Our computers are calibrated to our printer so we can have the closest match possible.
4: Quality Control — Prints and products get shipped directly to you from the lab so you get them as quickly as possible. If something looks off when you get it, though, we’ll work with you and the lab to reprint it if we need to and make sure it’s looking perfect.
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Our favorite consumer lab is Mpix. They’re the consumer side of a professional lab, so they tend to have the best quality and closest color match out there. We also love Artifact Uprising for their fun, modern products — however, their print quality can be a little bit hit or miss.
For holiday cards we love Minted.
The biggest places to avoid are retail labs like Walgreen’s, Costco, Target, etc. We’ve also seen some wild colors and printing from Shutterfly, so we avoid them, as well.
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We spend most of our day-to-day going through thousands of images so we totally understand that!
Here’s our process to make it a little more manageable:
1: Right when you get your gallery just go through your images once (or thrice!) all together as a family without choosing anything so you can just enjoy them.
2: When you’re ready to make some decisions go through them again to make one giant favorites list. Don’t think too hard about this and just heart the ones that you love and move on to the next one.
3: Once you have your jumbo list we think it’s helpful to look at it in your gallery so you can see them all as thumbnails and see if anything stands out as a perfect way to print or display them.
(Once you choose your favorites feel free to send us an email at info@hellobuffalophotography.com and we’d love to help you decide so you don’t have to tackle this part on your own! The sky is the limit and we want you to get those images off of your hard drive and into your life!)
If there are a lot in your favorites list that flow together that’s a great sign that maybe an album is the ideal way to tell the story of this session.
If you’re gravitating towards portraits or a handful of standout images those can be great as wall art or framed prints.
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This part is super duper important. We know it’s easy to slack on, but after you’ve looked through your images, before you get to the favoriting stage, please please please download the high resolution files from your session and save them in multiple places so they’re safe and you don’t have to think about it anymore.
Ideally you’ll save them on a computer or hard drive locally and then also save them to an online backup like iCloud or Dropbox.
If you’d like help with this please reach out!
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Yes, yes, a thousand times YES! Send us an email and let’s explore all of the possibilities!