I needed to get more family portraits. You can never have enough, but I needed more diversity in my portfolio. Heck, even now I still think that. I could have formulated a niche with my shots of individuals, but remember the growth thing we talked about? Plus, I didn't want to get pigeon-holed. The whole point of a portfolio is showing that you can provide variety. So I needed a gimmick to help me get more variety.
4th of July was coming up. We all know that means families and barbecues. What better place to do a family portrait? I didn't expect to get any traditional family poses, but a family nonetheless. And I came up with the brilliant idea of offering one family group shot in exchange for a free meal. My only regret is that I didn't think of it sooner. Coming up with the day before may have limited my responses. It still seemed to work out though. I was able to score some of the best jerk chicken wings ever from my my friend A.J. Singleton. I'm STILL having hunger pangs over getting some more of those wings.
My hope was that by doing this type of deal I would accomplish a couple of different things. I would get more family pictures like I wanted and maybe even drum up more business on the side by networking with more people at different locations. The latter part didn't work out quite the way I wanted to. I'm trying to think back now on the number of appointments I made as a result of connections made at the stops I did make. That would be a big fat zero. Heck, even running into a friend of mine whose son needed senior pictures didn't pan out for me like I hoped. I'm still rather baffled by that one. However, I was able to score the capture at this slot.
My friend Michelle of First Fridays fame was having a get together with her family. It was the first stop I made that day, but it was very early and no one was there yet. So I came back later to a house full of people. And on a day when the temps were toying with the 100 degree range, there wasn't enough A/C to go around. You would think that would be enough to make folks irritable and grumpy. Not these folks. They couldn't have been more hospitable.
So when it came time for the group shop I was faced with the challenge of where to position myself to get everyone in the photo. It's not like I was toting a latter in the truck. Even if I did, I wouldn't have had one big enough to get this crowd. Then someone came up with the idea of getting on the roof. It was one of the roofs that wasn't steep at all and you could climb out on it from the second story window. I had to channel my younger days of being a property damage claims rep working storm duty in order to get me up there. Don't know if I'd ever do it again, but it was definitely worth it in this instance.
It wasn't until I got home later to do editing that I really got a good look at this shot. I couldn't help but smile. Looking at it reminded me of what I had seen in that house the whole time I was there. You had people of all different ages, ethnicities, backgrounds and everything gathering as one family. Not one group of friends. One big family. Here I was looking for diversity in my portfolio and I found diversity in just one shot. It still makes me smile everytime I see this picture.
