Photo Tips for Beginners

We like to shop around here but what we really enjoy doing is sharing our most loved items with our favorite people – YOU!

Today we have Jen Bilodeau, Click Pro and a wonderful family photographer, joining us to share just a few of her favorite things.

We all have that place where we feel as though we are in equilibrium with our environment. For me, that is the mountains. Well, it doesn’t even have to be mountains – woods, trails, hilltops…..they all soothe my soul in such a beautiful way.

I love to hike with my family, all of us out there together taking in the fresh air. It’s so restorative for me to step away from it all and simply be in the mountains.

I have a special affection for black and white photos. For a while I was almost exclusively a black and white photographer, and although I do a pretty even mix of color and black and white now, nothing sings to my heart quite like an emotive black and white image.

I just love the way black and white imagery strips everything away but the raw emotion of the moment.

I absolutely love my Chatbooks subscription service.

Every time I post 60 photos to my personal Instagram account they send an adorable hard-cover book to my door. I have it set up to also print the date and my original caption, so the whole story of my post comes with the book.

The best part is that I don’t have to do anything! So whether it’s one of my daily 365 photos or it’s a random selfie with my kids, these cute little books ensure that the images get off my computer and into our lives.

Skiing is without a doubt my favorite sport. I raced Slalom and Giant Slalom through college, so it’s been a bit part of my life for a long time.

My husband and I love to escape for some serious ski adventure when we can, but in this phase of our lives we are just as happy cruising down our local ski mountain with the kids. The best part about skiing is that it’s one of the few sports you can do together as a whole family, and I cherish our time together out there on the mountain.

My grandmother will be 95 in two weeks. She is one of my best friends and one of the most influential people in my life.

My grandmother truly sees the beauty in everything. She has shaped my outlook on life so significantly and has taught me what is means to truly be comfortable in your own skin.

This beautiful woman is the perfect balance of self love – not too little that she has given up but not too much that she is afraid of Father Time, for she truly embraces all that each passing year brings. Whether its new great-grandchildren or new wrinkles, she is grateful for what accompanies each new day. She has a perfect love for who she is and what she’s experienced in this life (which is an absolutely incredible and inspiring story that could be a movie of its own…..).

I love this picture because it captures her so well – my grandmother embraces all that aging brings but knows at 95 years young she still deserves a nice coat of lipstick before heading out.

My Sigma 35mm ART lens is on my camera 95% of the time. I photograph everything with this lens! Portraits, detail shots, landscape – this lens does it all.

To keep up with my 365 project, my Nikon D750 lives on my counter with my Sigma 35mm ART attached to it. One of the things I love about this lens is the way I can get in really close to my subject, becoming part of the moment with them.

This lens it tack-sharp and when it’s wide open (I’m usually at f/1.4-2.8), it creates a really gorgeous softness around the area of focus. This allows me to beautifully isolate one element of a scene, such as a small child’s hands on his mother’s back.

If I had to pick only one lens to use for the rest of my journey it would undoubtedly be the Sigma 35mm ART.

I keep a small vegetable garden in my backyard that consists of three raised beds filled will peas, beans, cucumber, tomato and a few other vegetables.

My favorite thing to do on a summer evening is to work in my garden as the setting sun is shimmering through the trees. My kids usually join me, enjoying the fruits of our labor right from the garden.

I also love to head to my garden very early in the morning before the rest of the house wakes. I often bring my macro lens with me, and this is a very meditative time for me. There’s just something so soothing about digging my hands in the dirt and growing the food I put on the table for dinner.

There is nothing I enjoy photographing quite as much as the bond between mothers and their children.

The love between mothers and children is so universal yet so unique all at the same time. No matter how many mothers and children I photograph, no too sessions are the same, and yet each time I am photographing love in its most pure state.

Motherhood sessions inspire me on such a profound level me and bring out the best in me as a photographer.

As much as I love the mountains, I also crave the ocean.

I lived in Colorado for 4 years after graduating college, and while Colorado is home to some of the most incredible beauty I’ve ever seen, I knew that eventually I would have to return to the East Coast where I could spend one day walking along the shores of the beautiful Maine beaches, and the next taking in the beauty of the White Mountains.

Even after the horrible winter we just had, I’m a New England girl through and through.

There’s nothing I like more than being home with my family. Whether it’s sitting around our breakfast nook, hangout out in the tv room by a fire or sitting on the deck on a summer evening, I just love to be home with my people.

There’s nobody I’d rather be with than my husband, my son, and my two daughters. They are my best friends in this world. They are my happy. And yes, home is wherever I’m with them… but I sure do love being together with them in this house that we have made a home.

Read all of Our Favorite Things series here.