You’ve been preparing for months!  You booked a portrait session, you planned the outfits for your entire family, you had your portrait session and now you are super excited about seeing your images!  Now what?  What is your plan for those images?

If you’re like many people, you know it’s time for updated pictures of you and your family.  You don’t want to miss those milestones and you value portraits – you love having professional images taken that wow you every time you look at them.  But in this modern age, what do you do with the images? 
​
Many people hire a photographer and just want digitals.  But why?  So they can sit in a drawer or a safe on a USB?  What’s the point of that?  The purpose of an image is to view it – to look at it and remember, to feel, to enjoy.  

When I was a child, we had so many picture albums!  My siblings and I used to sit together, looking through them, asking our parents about people in the pictures, listening to the stories of those people, or the stories of us.  Those pictures opened the door for those stories.  How many of you are giving your own children that experience?

In the days of film, there was only one way to see your pictures: you printed them.  And once printed, they needed to be stored.  Hence, the album.  But folks, it’s not too late!  And albums have come a long way!  Albums are but one of the many ways of seeing your images.
​
My favorite way to view images is by making them into wall art.  I LOVE providing my clients with beautifully matted, framed images of their families.  I love knowing that they will see that image every time they walk into the room.  As your children grow older, you will see them as they were in that moment.  And you’ll have memories.  And you’ll share those memories as they occur.  

So, I got an email from MCP Actions and it was like a blast from the past! This company has been around a long time and it’s nice to know they’re still thriving. Some of the first actions I used were some of theirs and that was over a decade ago!

Now I’m a full time professional photographer and I make my own actions and sell them. I collect images I take of skies and horizons and I make my own overlays. I’ve learned so much and have come such a long way… and it benefits my business, but it comes with few accolades.

But I got an email that said, “You have a great eye and your photos are gorgeous!  We would love to see what you can do with this preset on some of your upcoming shots!”

They gave me a choice of presets or overlays. I chose some really cool overlays – the “MCP Sunshine Overlays.” (If you're interested, you can purchase them HERE) I don’t offer anything like that, so it seemed like a fun choice and a creative thing to play with. I was right! Really cool!

It’s funny… I RARELY use overlays in my work. And the only time I use sky overlays is when our skies look bland, which is rare in South Texas. But playing with these fed my creativity. It reminded me that there are so many options for each image… the outcomes are limitless!

​Want to see some before and after images using some of the overlays? I made a cool video, and there is even a bit of a tutorial toward the end.