I was asked by PPA (Professional Photographers of America) to be a guest blogger to help promote their upcoming Imaging USA convention.

I stewed on it a few days and thought, “is this something I really want to do? How will it affect my image? What’s in it for MEEEE?? Do I even have time to help this organization out right now?”

I’m totally lying- I was like:

“AWWWW HECK YEAH! Of course!!!!!!” I dropped everything and immediately got started. Mama didn’t raise no fool. PPA is to photographers like the bar exam is to lawyers….I guess….idk about that analogy, but it’s a BIG organization that I’ve been a member of for over 5 years- they’re a big deal to me.

 

I’m not sure when they will publish it, but I thought our own little blog would be a great place to share it. Many of our clients ask how we got started in this business, and this blog is a little peek into how Lonnie became the photographer he is today.

A little background: Imaging USA is a national convention held every January for professional photographers. It’s in a different city every year, and is put on by PPA.  It’s 3 days of non stop learning and FUN! (5 days if you attend pre-convention classes).  In January 2013 I attended my first one, and took Lonnie along for company. The rest is history! We’ve been every year since, including this past January when we went to San Antonio Texas!

Here’s a visual for you of how the trip getting there looked:

Scroll on down for the blog post I wrote 🙂

 

 

A life changed- Imaging USA.

Karen & Lonnie Bentley

Strawberry Hill Photography

Bremen, GA

That’s me, the “other photographer” as I am now lovingly yet jokingly called.

Professional Photographer- it’s a title that I (Karen) dreamed of since I was a young teenager in the mid 90’s. A lot transpired to get me safely into my 26th year of life, but for the sake of time we will start with the facts.  I was a mom of two small children, married to Lonnie, a factory worker who labored on a rotating shift, and the kids and I rarely got to spend time with him. I’m not gonna lie, we struggled…Lord did we struggle,  but in late 2006 I  finally had the courage to take the leap by starting my own photography business. My first studio originated in an old storage building on our property-(oh how I cringe about it now but it was a starting point!)  and things have been slowly yet steadily progressing since then, but this blog isn’t about all of that.

A few years went by and my little business was actually a  smooth sailing success, but as a mom I was sinking. I was overwhelmed, I was overworked, I was burnt out, and my home life was a disaster. My husband and I fought a lot, especially when I came home from a long day of sessions and he’d say “oh gosh, whatever…all you do is click a button”. (yes, insert the world’s biggest angry photographer emoji right here!) Don’t get too mad at my husband Lonnie, he didn’t know any better, and bless it, he was so tired all the time. One thing I could tell you at that time, was that he had absolutely NO interest in photography. In his own words, he was a “grunt laborer” and that was just how his life was.

I don’t remember where I heard about Imaging USA the first time.  All I remember was that it was coming to Atlanta (which is only an hour drive from my town),in January 2013 and that I was really excited to learn new things.  Driving in Atlanta is simply not something I can do sanely, so I begged Lonnie to come with me. “Think of it as a mini getaway for us” I said.  He finally agreed.

I remember being so amazed at how many photographers were at this convention- and how everything was so HUGE to me that year. (Imaging USA 2013):

Here we are at the Social Box booth in the expo that year- poor Lonnie still had no idea what was about to happen to him at this point.

I wanted to take EVERY class, but I tried to be choosy as to what I thought would help me most.  Photography in a small town gets really cut throat- no one shares their secrets, and here I was in a vast pool of open knowledge!  

One day I had chosen a maternity/newborn class by Julia Kelleher I think. Lonnie immediately said “oh no, I am NOT sitting through that with you.” hahaha. He said he would just go sit in whatever class was next door instead and meet up with me afterwards.

Lonnie ended up in a class called “The power of light” by the one and only Jerry Ghionis.  I will never truly know the power of what actually happened in that class…and believe you me, I have kicked myself over and over for not being there. All I can say is that when Lonnie came out of those doors, he was a different man. His first words to me (excitedly) were  “oh my God Karen, I’m a photographer….I can do this…I get it.”

(of course the one time he gets a selfie with his idol I take a blurry cell pic!)

Now you can imagine that I had the most enormous, super exaggerated, see the your own brain kind of eye roll-  I was beside myself with laughter and disbelief.

And guess what happened after that? Well, within 3 months Lonnie left his factory job and became the full time lead photographer for Strawberry Hill Photography.  Where I lacked in technical know-how, Lonnie excelled. Crazy, I know, but it’s true! He’s an amazing photographer and it has truly been a whirlwind. He said Ghionis played a slideshow that used the song “Secrets” by One Republic and we play it a lot on the way to big sessions-  we say it’s Lonnie’s “theme song” haha!

We talk shop everyday about our idols, Ghionis, Dan Rowe, Ben Shirk, Gary Box, Fuzzy Duenkel, Dan Frievalt, and agonize over how we can do better, take better photos, how to save up for even better gear in future.

 

We have both been full time photographers for four years now. We share the load and tag team every obstacle. If you had told me in December of 2012 that Lonnie would be a photographer, I’d have laughed myself into hysteria. If you had told me then that he would be doing it full time, and that our sole income would be from photography, I’d have just screamed “LIES!” and walked away.

 

It has been an incredible ride- and I know without a shadow of a doubt, that Imaging USA changed our lives. Had everything not fallen into place the way it did, I just don’t want to even think about what state our life would be in right now. My husband and I are together 95% of the time, and I love it. We are able to take time off for our girls activities when we need to, and life is good for us. Lonnie never knew he was a photographer-I guess we just needed Imaging USA and Jerry Ghionis to shine the light for him.

Imaging 2017- San Antonio- we made a few selfies in our awesome Hotel:

I always hope that the speakers at Imaging know how much they influence other’s lives!

Be kind and take epic photos ya’ll!

Karen & Lonnie

 

ok I’ll be honest. Sometimes ideas for photos just don’t work out. We have these amazing images in our head and for one reason or another- try as you might- it just won’t work. And that really sucks. It makes you feel like a putz, and like you have no idea how you got this job.
But then there are those times when you surprise yourself. Things go perfect and it seems almost effortless. For example- this image of Senior Makayla:

We can’t take ALL the credit though, Makayla was SOOOOO easy to photograph.

#1: DUHH! She’s gorgeous!

#2: No matter what weird ideas we came up with she didn’t bat an eye, and

#3: She was the most easygoing person ever.

Now, while #1 and #2 are pretty awesome – #3 is what really makes a difference. I hear coaches of sports teams constantly talking about attitude and how it makes a difference, and it really does!

Here are a few more of my favorites from Makayla’s session:

 

That’s right. We put her in a parachute in the middle of Berry College, then we smoked up her poor little eyes with stinky colored smoke while she was getting eaten up by mosquitoes, and then in the end we soaked her down with a hose. Hahaha. It was so much fun.

Oh, and also, let me not forget that when we first started at the water wheel it was raining. No biggie- Makayla just smiled and posed!

She even brought along her little pup Otis for a few pictures. So now lets add that it was raining, and there was a young German shepherd in tow as well.(special thanks to Trey for handling that like a champ!)

Rain, excessive heat and humidity, mosquitoes, stinky smoke, climbing ladders, doused with a water hose, puppy control, photographers asking her to do stuff that sounded stupid. She never flinched.

Makayla set the bar pretty high for every senior that comes after her. Makayla simply went with the flow- totally chill.  She never said “i can’t” she never looked at us with the stank eye, and she never seemed to be bothered by any of the million little things that could have been negative. One of my favorite senior sessions so far!

Makayla, we truly hope you enjoyed your senior experience with SHP, and we are SO honored that you chose us!!

Oh, and I can’t end without including a shout out to her awesome family!! Ninja Nana, you were SO helpful, and you fluff a parachute like nobody’s business. Mom Kelly, you are SUCH fun to be around and I love the fact that you think  Lonnie and I are cute- I’m sure there’s a therapist for you some where that can deal with that haha! Dad Mike,  we hope you found a special spot for that ginormous parachute image canvas you walked outta here with! You are all awesome and you’ve raised an equally awesome daughter! Thanks again!

-Karen & Lonnie

On this day, way on back in the late 70’s, I was born. At that time my parents had no idea what I would do with my life, neither did I.
On this day, way on back in the late 80’s, I was awkwardly coming of age and still had no idea what I would do with my life. Of course I was too young to know that answer anyway- I knew I loved the arts, but drawing, painting, playing instruments, singing, etc were not in my little box of talents.
On this day, way on back in the mid 90’s, I had been given my first “real” camera ( a 35mm canon rebel) by my dad. Within the few years following, I finally KNEW what I wanted to do with my life.
Sure, I wanted to “take cool photos”…but more than anything I knew I wanted my very own studio. For me, that was the sign of a serious professional, and I knew that if I wanted to do photography that I had to have it.
A few months ago I cleaned out an old chest at the house and ran across a lot of my old notebooks. I flipped through and immediately my eyes fixated on a page where I was doodling about my future studio name. Flip Side Foto, haha. Here’s the proof:

So yeah, I was pretty dead set on this even back in the 90’s.  I was pretty odd back then, or wanted to be.

Anyway- time rocked on – I went through the stages of life rather bumpily (if that’s a word). I worked dead end jobs for many years. Eventually after I had my first child I got my first DIGITAL camera. It was 3 megapixels and cost me $350 – (my entire Christmas bonus from my Walmart photo lab job). By the way, I worked at the Walmart photo lab for about 7 years. Whew.

So, Here I was. a new mom, with a new camera, and a job that wasn’t aligned with my life goals. About a year later I went through a divorce, and started over completely. Rock bottom became the foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Although I resigned to never marry again, there was this guy named Lonnie. And he was super cute. He had nice legs, and he was the kindest most thoughtful guy I had ever met. We had a lot of fun together.

He was total marriage material anyway, but the fact that he loved my daughter as his own was my sure sign. Shortly after we married we bought my first “real” camera. My daughter was my model every day. Poor thing. She’s 13 now and wont let me near her with a camera anymore.

So once I had the “real’ camera I immediately wanted to have my studio. I’m not too patient, so with a little elbow grease we made an old workshop on our property into my very first studio. I ain’t even gonna lie, ya’ll. It was a dump. It was infested with ladybugs and just in general was pretty po-dunk. I might have had 15 or 20 sessions here, and most of them were free or $25 lol.

Here is a photo of my parents. I was practicing my lighting and they were the closest victims:

The studio- It fit my skill level at the time, but it was short lived – we moved to a new house in a new town shortly after when I had my second daughter.

After the move I found a local studio photographer in town that let me “borrow/share” his space. He was a really talented photographer and a nice guy that I really learned a lot from. The only problem was that it wasn’t MY studio- I couldn’t put my name on the door or do just whatever I wanted with the place. I stayed there for about 2 years –

The studio owner ended up selling the building and closing up shop, so it was time to move on.  I was still pretty unskilled in a lot of areas, and my confidence in my work kept me from really making a go of things, so I lingered in the shadows of business signs that didn’t bear my name.

Studio #3 came when I was offered a space at large factory-turned- office spaces type deal. It was pretty much a little conference room inside a big ol’ scary (haunted) old mill. Yeah. Good times.

I guess I stayed there for about 2 years or so. It was here that I had my first round of Santa sessions. It was also here that I became a believer in ghosts. Win/lose- it happens. I got the call one day from a good friend with a tip that there was a space opening up in town that i might be interested in, and because I was scared to be in my own space at the time, I jumped on it sight unseen. It was basically a couple of bedrooms in the upstairs of an old house that the city had acquired. There was a really cool staircase, and this place may or may not be haunted also. Just sayin’… Stuff happened. Although this place was cool and had lots of perks- I still couldn’t have a sign, and because the downstairs would occasionally be rented out for a party, it just couldn’t be totally mine to do as I wished.

So…studio number 4 was really good to me. I did a lot of growing here- and so did my kids. Also during my stay there, Lonnie came on board as lead photographer. Our business really exploded during the 4 1/2 years we were at this place.  Leaving this studio is leaving a lot of memories behind. Our business grew so big that there just simply wasn’t enough space anymore. What a wonderful burden.

I’ve been searching for a new space actively for about a year now, and with a lot of help from my friend Amy, I finally found it. Today, on my birthday of all days, I got the present I have wanted for nearly 2 decades…..keys to my very own studio. Studio #5.

No, not my studio inside of another business front, MY STUDIO. (well, OUR studio i can’t forget Lonnie here lol). I can decorate and set up scenes however I want. I can lock the door and know it’ll be just as I left it when I return, and I can finally have a great big sign on the front that says

STRAWBERRY HILL PHOTOGRAPHY

It honestly kind of feels unreal still. There is a whole lot of work ahead of us to get things ready for business, but I don’t dread it. I’ve had 10 years to dream, now it’s time to hustle!

So if you see us in public, excuse the snobby attitude we may have- we are feeling a bit upscale lately- what with our OWN studio and all Tsk Tsk!

Grand Opening coming soon! ( Happy Birthday to me!)