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 Jamie Rubeis, Click Pro and a wonderful lifestyle family photographer, joining us to share just a few of her favorite things.

I would be crazy to say these people weren’t at the top of my favorites list. My boys are who inspired me to first get started in photography when they were babies. Some of my absolutely favorite images, are the images I document of our lives.

I have been married for 14 years to my husband Chris. I have a beautiful 21 year old daughter by marriage and together we created our three absolutely crazy but amazing boys Antonio, Christopher, and Lorenzo. (My husband is obviously Italian!)

While my daughter is off living the dream in college, I am left in an all boy household but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We have two cats, Caesar and Bella, who we adore. Well, at least I adore Bella. Everyone else could do without her.

We also have a Shepard named Marley who we got as a puppy when my middle son was just a baby. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer a few months back so our days with him are numbered but we cherish every single moment we have with him.

Baseball is our home away from home. With two boys playing club baseball year round, we are either on the field or in the cages almost every day of the week.

As the only female in the house, I have had to learn to love the game. Now I look forward to every tournament and practice. It’s so rewarding watching my boys play and also seeing their own love of baseball grow.

I LOVE camping! We go every summer and we go completely off grid. No phones, no tv’s, no modern conveniences. Just us spending time together fishing, hiking, making smores by the campfire, sharing a lot of love and laughs.

Plus, being outdoors is my absolute happy place. Give me all the wilderness!

I really live in the wrong state. If could pick up and move anywhere, it would absolutely be to Colorado. My heart belongs there.

We go every year to visit my mom and every year I never want to leave. Colorado has all the wilderness to fill my soul. Not to mention it is every photographers dream state!

Light is everything! But backlight is just delicious! Every single client session I strive to get those perfectly backlit images. The ones that make your heart go thump thump.

Use of light can really impact an image in a big way and I love to backlight in all types of ways. Whether I am filtering it through the trees or shooting straight into the sun, I love all the different effects in can create.

Where would I be without my Sigma 35 Art and Sigma 85 Art lenses! These two babies never leave my camera!

They are my absolute favorite lenses to shoot with. One allows me to get up close and intimate with my clients and the other allows me get beautiful DOF when I pull back.

I don’t know what it is about these lenses that is so different from my Nikon ones but the look and feel of the images I take with them just makes me so happy!

Another item that I absolutely could not and would not ever leave home without is the ExpoDisc.

Before getting this, I would spend so much time correcting white balance. This little thing gives me amazing images right out of camera. Color is almost always perfect SOOC. I have only left it at home once in the past few years and I will never do it again!

Obviously I am going to be a little partial to Lightroom since I teach Lightroom Fundamentals.

However, these two programs together are life changing for me. I am all about spending the least amount of time as I can behind my computer editing and more time either shooting or spending it with my family.

Using both of these programs has sped up my workflow tremendously! I can sync all of my major edits in Lightroom and then do batch skin retouching in Imagenomic’s Portraiture. I hardly ever need to take an image into Photoshop anymore unless I need to do a little cloning or head swap.

Lightroom and Portraiture are my lifeline in my business!

Last but certainly not least, Urban Decay’s eyeshadow palettes. I am actually REALLY into makeup. You would never know since I live in my yoga pants the majority of my life.

However, I probably own way too much for someone who is not a professional in anyway. I am super picky with my makeup choices. Urban Decay had me at hello, or something like that. I will never stray from them.

Every color is perfection and I love how the color translates onto my eyes the same as it looks on the palette. Plus, all the different combinations you can make are endless, especially when you are like me and own several different palettes!

Read all of Our Favorite Things series here.