Tara and Dario Mastroianni's Maternity Shoot
From the beginning, engagement shoots have been our favorite, but maternity shoots are quickly giving them a run for their money at the top spot. The thing we love about engagement shoots are that they just seem to flow. Engaged couples are genuinely happy. Happy to be in love, happy to be together getting their pictures taken, and almost have a glow about them that makes photographing them a breeze. A soon to be Mom has that same glow about her. Genuinely happy to be carrying her unborn child, looking forward to her due date, and excited to be showing her big round belly off in front of the camera.
It's hard to believe that as we enter into 2013, it hasn't been a full year yet, and actually only 8 months since officially starting Cass Imaging. Last week Sandi and I signed up for a three month course called "A Photography Business Makeover", and the first course was this past Friday. It's geared towards helping photography businesses restart for the new year, mostly for those needing a change to help get off of a plateau that they might be hitting. We haven't slowed down, and if anything we are still having trouble keeping up, but we wanted to use this course as a way to pick up some new ideas and different ways of doing things. It was pretty cool to see the struggles that other businesses have hit, after years of being in business, and how they got through them. It was also cool to see that the struggles we are hitting, that are due to trying to keep up with the amount of business coming in, were the struggles that companies didn't hit until years into being in business.
One of the more important parts of the course that we focused on was about branding. The idea of creating a brand for the business, and focusing on what the soul of Cass Imaging is about. We started out with the idea that we would be able to photograph anything and everything, from cars and pets to family portraits and weddings. Sounded like the way to go at first, but we quickly learned that instead of helping us, it was hurting us. We learned that people will go to the photographer that focuses primarily in the type of photography that they are looking for, whether it be for their wedding, for their newly born baby, or for their new sports car they just bought. We needed to find the area we wanted to focus on and base Cass Imaging around that. While we book more weddings, it's awesome to see that are style of photography is being seen through all of our portrait work, and that brides don't need to see a ton of wedding photos to make their decision. The more weddings we do the more we will be able to showcase our brand and whats all about.
Our goal right now is to focus on our portrait work, whether it be an engagement shoot, a baby shoot, or a maternity like this one, our ultimate goal is to create a brand for Cass Imaging that is fun, editorial, and real. Right now we need to focus on staying true to that brand, and this shoot is a great example of that.
This shoot was especially fun because I knew the big bellied soon to be mommy. Tara and I were high school buddies when we attended Camden Catholic, and hadn't seen each other too much after we graduated. One of the awesome things about social media is that even though we haven't seen each other that much we had been able to stay in contact over the years via Facebook, which is how she knew about Cass Imaging to begin with. Her husband Dario is a great guy and along with Tara make awesome parents to the little girl or boy that is welcomed to the world in 7 weeks. This was the first maternity shoot we've done where Mom and Dad were waiting to find out the sex which I have a lot of respect for since I don't think I'll be able to wait, as impatient as I am.
Meet Tara, Dario, and Charlie.
