Awesome Graphic Artist Opportunity

Thanks to our amazing clients & all of their referrals... things are going great for Shirk Photography! Our schedule is filling up faster than we ever imagined... seniors, families, babies, weddings... the list goes on! Ben is currently spending 80 hours/week creating portrait art & Sara is working hard to keep the business running smooth. It's definitely a good thing that photography is our passion!

We've decided that we're going to need some assistance if we want to continue to accept new clients! We're looking for a graphic artist. Probably starting off as part-time, but at the rate things are going, there's a good chance that it will turn out to be a full time position. There will be lots of designing... promotional materials, website, packaging, collages, albums, dvd slideshows...

We know there are very few job openings out there for graphic artists so this is an AWESOME opportunity for someone that wants to use their creativity & design skills to their fullest potential! The artist must have a taste & design style that matches ours. They must be detail oriented & be willing to have their work critiqued by a perfectionist (need her name be mentioned?). They must take pride in their work and share our goal to exceed client expectations and that everything will look amazing when it leaves our studio.

We're very excited to get some additional help so that Ben can continue doing what he loves - creating portrait art! If you know of anyone that would be interested please have them send a resume and some samples of their work to info@shirkphotography.com.

Precious Little Emily

As you have probably noticed I haven't blogged for quite a while. Things continue to be very busy here but I recently took a little time out for some very special portraits. Jill contacted me a few weeks ago and invited me up to the University of Iowa NICU to capture some unique portraits of her daughter Emily who was born 13 weeks premature.

It was a moving experience to see Emily hooked up to the many monitors and tubes. She is absolutely beautiful and perfectly proportioned. I am happy to say that Emily seems to be doing very well. I am glad that Jill took the time to contact me and and I am very thankful for the opportunity to capture such precious moments. I look forward to capturing more images of Emily as she grows.

Jill found my name on the ACPCG website which is a volunteer organization of child photographers that are willing to donate their time to critically ill or extremely premature newborns. If you are a parent or if you know a parent that is in need of my services please contact me.

Prom

Wilton asked me come in to take some prom portraits. The girls really went all out on their dresses this year. I would love to get more senior girls to bring their prom dresses in with their senior portraits so we can do some fun stuff with them. We can go for a nice look or we can do some crazy/fun images with the prom dress in the back of an old truck, on some railroad tracks, standing in a waterfall.

Audi's, Rolex's & Diamonds

I was contacted by Boom Magazine to do some product and modeling shots for them. I ended up designing the ad for them also (since I designed it for them I made room to fit my own ad also). It was a fun assignment and the model was great to work with. Getting away from my day-to-day portraits and taking images of Audi's, Rolex's and diamonds was cool too. The magazine staff loved how the photography and design turned out and they had me come up again Friday to do another model/product shoot for another of their magazines.

little model

Wow! Avery was amazing! Normally 18 month & two year portraits can be really tough. At that age their attention spans are usually about the shortest they get and they are ready to be done in about 10 minutes tops. I would never have thought that Avery would make it through all the outfits that she brought but she did and was having fun the entire time. Avery's mom always brings really fun outfits to dress her in and she didn't dissapoint this time either. I love it when kids have unique things, clothes don't always have to be something you dress them up in to go to school. Fun is good as you can see by Avery's portraits.

Cayla's Senior Vid

Check out Cayla's senior portrait session. I had a blast taking her portraits. After returning from Florida with a bunch of new ideas and techniques I was ready to put them to use. Cayla was the perfect opportunity, she could easily have been one of the models that I photographed there.

Light Pro - Model Shoot

Our Florida trip was amazing. We left on a Sunday morning, and the night before I had a wedding and was up till about midnight. There was also a bad snowstorm that night so we got up extra early (2:30am) to make sure we got to the airport in time so we didn't get much sleep. Spent most of the day lugging around 5 suitcases a bunch of carry-ons, two kids, a stroller and car seats. The transition from 6 inches of heavy snow to sun and palm trees was almost surreal.

Sunday night I got a little more sleep, but still not enough. If you're a photographer and come down to Light Pro don't expect to get much sleep. Most nights models and photographers were shooting well into the night, I had a few 4:00 am mornings before I called it quits. There was so much to do that it was hard to stop... amazing models everywhere, world class photographers and tons of fountains, pools, waterfalls, palm trees, beaches and everything else you could possibly ask for. Sunrise shooting started around 6:30 but I didn't make it to too many of those.

At the end of the week they have a banquet and a print competition. For me entering something into the competition is kind of difficult. I didn't want to take time out from shooting and networking to sit at a computer and process images. Both last year and this year I waited untill the last possible minute to even look at the images I had captured there. Another thing that makes it difficult for me is that on my studio computer I have spent alot of extra time and money making sure that the images on the screen will print out exactly how I want them to - on the laptop that I brought I haven't done that. I had around 10 minutes left before the deadline to pick out an image and correctly tone and process it. I chose an image that was somewhat unique and simply turned it to black and white to save myself time, burnt it to a disk and turned it in. Turns out that my choice was fairly good, I ended up wining 3rd place and getting a bunch of cool prizes.