I love teaming up with other photographers to collaborate on a styled session.  Add in a stylist and you have a dream team and one crazy fun day of photography!!  If you haven’t done this yet, I highly recommend it.  Not only will you get great photos and have fun, but you will build a bond with another photographer and create a support system that we need in this business.

Two of my very good friends in this industry, Amii Wroblewski of Amii Wroblewski Photography and Misti Davis of Pink Fly Photography teamed up and created a Back-to-School Shoot that is spectacular!!  They enlisted the help of one of my favorite stylists (she styled Seniorologie’s Shoot Out in Vegas last year!) Vanessa Warren of Butterfly Sparks and the results are AH-MAZE-BALLS!  Yes, I stole that term from the host of E!  Check out what Misti and Amii had to say about this experience and read how you can create this wonderful experience for yourself!!

From Misti – Around 9 months ago I connected with the ever talented and ridiculously adorable, Amii with Amii Wroblewski Photography. We met up for coffee and as we chatted we realized we had a lot in common. We just clicked. And not just our cameras!  Okay…bad joke. I had always felt this industry can be tricky to make friends with so many feeling like it’s a competition. It was refreshing to meet someone like Amii that was as little worried about that as I was and just liked having a friend that could totally relate.

Together we would brainstorm and at one point we talked about how neat it would be to team up and do a styled session. Something neither of us had much experience with. We figured this was an amazing opportunity to try something completely out of our comfort zone. And of course what could be better than doing it along side a sweet friend?!  We both loved the idea of a “back-to-school” theme and I had several of my senior model reps ready and excited to be our guinea pigs!

I remembered meeting Vanessa with Butterflysparks in Las Vegas where she had styled the Seniorologie shoot out. The whole setup was fab and I loved her handmade use of props! I called Amii and she agreed we had to call her! Vanessa listened to our crazy brainstorming and scatterbrained minds and got to work putting together some great looks and super cute props to use. Although we were ready to try a stylized shoot we also knew our strengths and being crafty was not one of them (although I secretly wish I was a Martha Stewart) so Vanessa was a must! It really took some of the stress away and we loved everything she came up with!

Since both of us viewed this as something fun there was no pressure and shooting along side each other was a breeze!  We played with video, posing multiple girls together, incorporating props in different ways, etc. Sometimes we would split the girls up and rotate them around so we weren’t just trying to shoot the same thing. It really was a creative avenue that we enjoyed experimenting with and we had a blast doing it together.

I see it as a true blessing that Amii is in my life. I love giggling with her over silly stuff, chatting about life and of course the occasional discussion of photography. I am lucky to call her a friend.

I highly encourage you to reach out and make friends in the business if you haven’t already. I think we can all grow and learn together and even collaborate to do something fun that’s out of our comfort zone. Some of the best ways I’ve made friends are at workshops and shoot outs like the ones provided by Seniorologie. Not to sound like a commercial but seriously it’s true! I have a great group of girlfriends all over the states that I met attending some of the very workshops and shoot outs that Seniorologie has hosted and I love keeping in touch with all of them! 

From Amii – This past fall, I had the wonderful opportunity to team up with an amazing senior photographer (and my friend!) Misti Davis of Pink Fly Photography and Vanessa Warren of Butterfly Sparks.  We put our heads together to come up with a fun back-to-school themed shoot and what came of it was so awesome!  One thing that I loved about doing a concept shoot with another photographer was that we both were able to put our ideas (and our budgets) together and create something even more amazing than if we were on our own.  I also loved that I got to just shoot for myself…this was not a paid client shoot but rather something to just shoot for me.  Vanessa was wonderful to work with!  Her ideas that she brought to the table were definitely not ones I would have been able to think up on my own and it was so fun to see her ideas come to life.
 
I have to say that the images that were produced from this shoot far exceeded my expectations!  And I can’t wait to shoot another concept shoot with my pal, Misti!!