Higher Focus Photography

My last week of Senior Project was supposed to be spent at Higher Focus Photography- just 15 minutes away from school- assisting Jill Gray with client portrait sessions, this includes: holding/positioning lights and reflectors, looking for hair or clothing distractions on the subjects, and giving posing suggestions. I would have also been: learning Jill’s editing style and editing photos alongside her, checking client orders for accuracy, auditing order revenue to be sure income and expenses are recorded properly, checking client photo uploads, creating Graduation Galleries online for all 2020 seniors, and assisting with creating future social media campaigns. However, instead of spending a whole week working with her and being taught the operations of a small business, I went over to her studio on Tuesday. 

When I arrived we went to her office and she showed me different aspects of my camera that I hadn’t discovered yet, knowing what your camera can do and how to make it do it is a time consuming task with lots of trial and error but in the end you get a very rewarding result. Later on in the day we set up her studio to take pictures of different flavored coffee beans for one of her clients. We had to make each picture cohesive but get creative by adding different props so the viewer would be able to distinguish the flavor just by looking at the image; some of the flavors included: Chocolate Raspberry, Caramel Cream, English Toffee, Blueberry, Bourbon Pecan, Buttered Spiced Rum, and many other… interesting… flavors like, “Mudslide”… what is that even supposed to be?After taking the photos she taught me how to edit on Adobe Lightroom.

It was such a great experience and I had a lot of fun being with her. She let me express my creative ideas whilst shooting and encouraged them all, even if they missed the mark. I wish we got more time so she could really show the inner-workings of her small business instead of just talking about it for an hour or so. Jill is very welcoming and even offered to let me assist with client portrait sessions when businesses open up next week! If you are or know someone who would be interested in getting photos taken by Jill for a variety of occasions- business headshots, family photos, senior photos, etc.- I have three $50.00 gift cards that I would love to give you!