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Workshop Registration is Open!
Salt Lake City and Sacramento

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The Youngrens are headed to Salt Lake City and Sacramento!

Registration is officially open for our Two-Day Workshops in Salt Lake City, UT, on June 19-20th and Sacramento, CA, on July 10-11th. We’re so excited to be heading out to your neighborhoods because this content is crazy transformational for our attendees. You’ll get to dig into your business to discover your specific ideal client, how to attract them with a powerful and strategic marketing strategy, and how to make them crazy happy with a customized client experience. Plus, we have an entire day of shooting and workflow with The Youngrens!

Check out all of the rad details here.

To sweeten the deal, we’re taking $200 off the full registration price for earlybirds! We have ten seats available, so register for your spot before they get gobbled up like hotcakes!

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4 Crazy Simple Tips For Confident Posing

View More: Technique
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Spoiler alert: Jeff and I love to throw parties. Which isn’t much of a shocker with how much we love food, wine, and general merriment. In fact, crafting the perfect party has become an art form for us with years of trial and error on party greats and party fouls under our belt. What we’ve discovered with this hobby-of-sorts is that the best parties are the ones where guests feel comfortable and connected. Physically, they need to feel as if their needs are met – that they’re comfortable. Emotionally, they need to feel important and known – connected to the people around them.

It’s the same with our shoots. Think about it – isn’t it when we’re able to fulfill our couples basic physical and emotional needs (whether we realize it or not) that we have the most fun in our shoots? That our couples really loosen up in front of our cameras? When we’re able to capture the best stuff?

In other words, it’s only when we’re a great host that the party really starts.

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Starbucks, Shoots, and Lots of Client Lovin’
San Diego Workshop Recap

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Our very first workshop officially took place here in San Diego on April 2nd and 3rd, 2012, and it went better than I ever thought possible. After countless exhausting hours of researching, prepping, writing, planning, organizing, re-writing, beta testing, dry running, launching, marketing, and practicing, practicing, practicing – even after the mountain of deep, soul-searching, gut-wrenching work that Jeff and I put into this thing – it went better than we could have ever planned.

It was as if everything came crashing together into the perfect tornado of photo-love-session-awesomeness. Only it was better than that.  And it was because of the attendees.

The 14 folks who got to be a part of The Youngrens inaugural Two Day Workshop were PERFECT. The one-of-a-kind content that we wrote specifically for this workshop fit their hearts and minds and souls like a sleek leather glove. With soft cushy wool on the inside. On a snowy day in December. With a Chai latte in hand…

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Ten Must-Dos for Your First Year of Business

View More: Business & Marketing
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So you’ve decided to take the plunge and hang out your shingle as a wedding photographer, huh?

First, congratulations. It takes a lot of courage to do that.

Second, be strong. Because as much courage as it took to hang out your shingle, it takes even more courage to keep it hangin’ out there when the going gets rough. As many of us have learned these past few years, there is no magic Easy Button in this business.

By the way – could someone please get on that? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

So here it is folks – a list of ten things Jeff and I believe that you should do in your first year of business as a wedding photographer, in no particular order. Continue Reading

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How We Edit Our Images in Lightroom 3

View More: Workflow
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Have you ever called yourself and listened to your own voice on your voicemail message? Don’t do it. It’s totally creepy.

Now have you ever recorded a 20 minute screencast? Ick, ick, ick.

ICK.

I had to crawl under my desk when I heard my voice play back on this – my very first ever screencast. The sound of my own voice felt like somebody completely different. Am I really that high-pitched? Is that why everybody backs up when I speak? I always thought it was my breath… But Jeff just smiled at me from across the room, leaned back in his ergonomic desk chair, stretched his arms up high, yawned, and said, “Great job sweetie. That was pretty awesome for your first time.”

In this screencast (again, my first ever), I demo how Jeff and I edit our wedding and engagement images in Adobe Lightroom 3. This isn’t a tutorial on how to use Lightroom, it’s simply an explanation of the editing process we use to achieve our natural style for our wedding and engagement shoots.

I even give away our ‘secret ingredient’…

This screencast is open to our newsletter subscribers only, so sign up to receive our updates and you’ll be sent the exclusive password for subscriber-only content just like this.

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Kathy Bauernfeind Howard - Thanks for sharing all this great info! I love LR and the clarity slider as well. Please do keep us posted on your sharpening ‘experiment’.

Carrie Vines - Jeff Youngren would love to know the results of your sharpening comparisons.. I also use magic sharp, but only for web images…never thought to use it for printing, so I’m very curious to see what your results are.

David Bjorgen - @[64300092:2048:Jeff Youngren] I would assume that if you switch completely over to Lightroom’s sharpening, wouldn’t you then be able to export images sizes on a per needed basis rather than exporting full size images all the time?

Chris Mallet - You say stinkin’ a lot.

Cassie Russek - Super informative. I had no idea I could “auto sync” where’s that function been all my life!

The Dark Side of the Lens

View More: Cup of Inspiration
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I found this video a while ago, and if I’m being honest, I go back and watch it all the time. But only if I’m being honest…

It’s a promo video of sorts for the acclaimed surf photographer Mickey Smith, but honestly it’s more of an art piece than an actual promo video. If it WERE a straight photographer promo, though, this would be the best one I’ve ever seen. Ever. Big respect to Allan Wilson, the DP.

When I watch this, I can’t help but feel empowered, encouraged, and excited to pick up my camera and create something that is going to be meaningful and remarkable. I can completely identify with the part where he talks about how cameras help him interpret and understand the things he sees. I get that.

What about you? How does this video make you feel? What thoughts do you find going through your head as you watch this and listen to the words? 

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