Autumn Hull Photography

Making progress...

I have been popping by the studio space quite often to see how things are going.  Things are moving along pretty quickly, and it's both exciting and nerve-wracking.  As soon as they're done, I need to be ready to hit the ground running!

They finished with the construction part, so the doors and floor to ceiling windows are gone, and the wall separating the two smaller offices are gone.  Now I have two big rooms:  the greeting and slide show presentation room and the camera room.  Do you like all the junk the previous tenants left behind?  (Did you notice that computer monitor from the mid-1800's?)  They also left an entire room full of office furniture.  Thanks, but no thanks.

I finally picked my Grand Opening day, which will be on Saturday, June 7th.  A couple of the local magazines are going to cover it, and I think the chamber of commerce is going to come do a ribbon-cutting ceremony with me. 

I've got most of my new branding/packaging/presentation materials planned out and designed, so I need to finish that up and start getting it all printed so I can put it all together.

I'm almost done finalizing my product line, and I'm excited about some of the new things I'm going to be offering.  I am still only halfway done with my price list and my budget, so I still have some work to do there.

I have to go back and measure the walls and start planning out my sample prints and decide how I want to display them.  I can frame them, get them as hangable canvases, mounted prints, or a combination of all of those.  How many collages do I want to show?  How many groupings vs. large prints?   Hmmm.... 

OK, gotta get back to work to make all of this happen!

Good Baby vs. Bad Baby

Ever since the boys were born, they've taken turns being the easy-going boy and the fussy, persnickety boy.  This goes on for weeks at a time, then they switch.  When they were still babies, we called it Good Baby/Bad Baby, as in "this week Sam is the Good Baby, and Ben is the BAAAD Baby".   

Even now that they are 2 1/2, they still take turns.  It never fails, as soon as one of them ends their streak of being irritable and hard to please, the other one picks up right where his brother left off. 

Today I brought them into the garage for a quick photo session, because they were both clean, fed, rested, and generally in good moods.  Here is what happens when you ask Good Baby to sit for mommy.

Now here is what happens when you ask Bad Baby for the same thing.  Keep in mind, he was perfectly fine until I asked him to look at me and he realized I was trying to get him to do something.  Heaven forbid he actually cooperates.  Just so you know, two weeks ago I tried to do a session and I got the exact opposite results.  Sammy gave me one fabulous smile after another, and Benny absolutely refused to have anything to do with it.  All I got was the back of his head or a blur as he ran through the frame, screaming.
The part that made me laugh today is when Ben wanted to impersonate Sam having a tantrum, and he sat right in the light, made sure that I was ready with my camera, then proceeded to have a fake tantrum. 

People ask me why I don't have pictures of the two of them together.  HA!  They've obviously never met Bad Baby.

A Boy & His Dog

I had a beach session yesterday with a family and their gorgeous Newfoundland dogs.  It was a beautiful overcast day at the beach, and I couldn't have asked for a more perfect setting.  I love the new beach I discovered this week, and I can't wait to look through the rest of the images I shot that morning.  Until then, here is a sneak peek.

More From Logan's Session

All this preparation for the studio is really slowing me down.  I'm finally finishing up this mini session with Logan that I did weeks ago.  I posted a sneak peek a while ago, and mentioned that he was the little brother of my favorite little redhead, Regan.  She had the same strawberry blond hair and eyebrows when she was a baby.
Logan was so fun to shoot, so alert, so expressive, and how cute are those little chubby cheeks?

Our Afternoon at the Beach

I have a beach session tomorrow, and as much as I love shooting in Malibu, I've been shooting there for five years now and I really wanted to try out some new places.  So at the spur of the moment this afternoon, I loaded all the kids and our nanny in the car and we headed out for the hour-long drive to Ventura to check out some new beaches. 
I found Carpenteria and I just loved it.  I can get several types of beach shots there, including flat expanses of sand, rocky areas, dunes, cliffs, and some amazing trees.  I can't WAIT to photograph my clients there tomorrow.
Today though, was just for the kids, so instead of exploring all the different areas to shoot, I just let them play with the surf and I photographed them as the sun started to go down. We had such an amazing time.  The older kids ran wild, chasing the surf, and even the boys got into the game after a while, even though they stayed where the water was ankle deep!
I normally would never head out for the beach at four in the afternoon, but if I had planned it better, I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the amazing light as the sun glittered off the water.  I got to try out some fun stuff with silhouettes that I've always wanted to try with sunset lighting too, which was great.  I've only had time to peek at the huge folder of images I took today, but here's a few just for fun.

More from a recent session

I'm almost done with this session from a little while ago, with Nadia and her baby brother Joseph.  They were both so sweet, and had the most beautiful eyes.  All I have left to complete now are the shots of Nadia in her tutu... so adorable!

My son, the photographer

I needed an updated bio picture for an article in a local magazine and for my website since my other one doesn't really look like me anymore (It was 20 pounds and two haircolors ago), so I asked my 9 year old to take my picture for me.  I had the lighting all set up from a session I had just done, so really, all he needed to do was point and shoot.  He did such a great job!  He really tried to think about it and looked at each shot carefully before shooting another, and after a bit he got more confident and tried some cool angles.  This one is my favorite, because it's a natural reaction to me seeing him twist and turn the camera to get a cool shot.  He's still more of his father's son with his love for movie making instead of photography (which I tried to interest him in, believe me!), but it's nice to know we can share this interest a little bit once in a while.  Plus, I got a great bio shot out of it!

Nadia

I've been proofing a session with this little cutie-patootie Nadia and her little brother.  We did some classic black and whites, and at the end of the session, we threw on the new pettiskirt for some fun color shots.  It's taking all my willpower not to skip to the end and proof those first!  Check back tomorrow for more from this session...

The Ultimate Challenge

I am editing and retouching the images shot by the students at the February Ten For The Weekend workshop, and I had to laugh when I came to this group of images.  This is a family I've photographed before, so I knew it would be a great challenge for the workshop.
They have three boys, two of them toddler twins.  Ready... and ... go!
It was a hilarious practice session, if you have a sense of humor about these kinds of things.  And really, if you are going to photograph children for a living, a relaxed attitude about boisterous children is a must.
I have twin toddler boys of my own, so I am quite used to putting in a great deal of effort to get one or two images, instead of the 5 or 10 minutes it takes me to get a few dozen great shots of my daughter or older son.
These little guys definitely put the photographers to the test.  The goal was to get all three of the boys together in one image, in something that resembled a relaxed, attractive pose.
We had about 20 minutes, a mom, a nanny, and 5 photographers.  This is what we came up with.  Not bad really, compared to how it seemed to go at the time!

Just for fun, here's one last shot that probably won't be framed over the fireplace...

Time to start decorating...

I signed my contract today, and I get my keys on May 1st.  Suddenly it's time to start moving!  I have to decide on my walls and floors this week, and then it's time to start furnishing it.  I have to decide on the wall arrangements for my sample prints, and figure out how I want to frame them.  I also need to get my projector system for my slideshows worked out, and work on the layout of the room. 
It's going to be a great space, I can't wait!