Hello! My name is Jessica and I’ve been a full-time photographer for four years now, but have always had a love for photography. I specialize in weddings and family portraiture. I reside in Upstate New York with my amazing husband of 20 years and my two girls, ages 17 and 9. I love that I can show my daughters that you can have a family and still follow your dreams while taking care of them! I am forever grateful for the flexibility that owning my own business gives me to spend quality time with my family.
My style is natural and classic with minimal editing. I like to focus on the client and the emotion of the moment, which draws me naturally to lifestyle and wedding photography. At the same time I’m meticulous in my shooting and post processing and always strive to deliver the absolute best to my clients.
Here is a look inside one of my sessions:
As for the story behind this first image, the baby you see Mom nursing had started fussing and needed to nurse. We hadn’t planned this ahead of time, so I asked Mom if she’d like some nursing portraits and she said yes! While I was making some nursing portraits with Mom, Big Brother decided he wanted some milk too, so Dad went and got him a bottle of milk and he was so sweet with his Mom and Little Brother while they nursed. This moment needed no direction from me, it is completely natural and I just love everything about it!
Settings: f/1.8 1/100sec ISO 640
I put this triptych together to illustrate how I processed the entire session, with the exception of a few tweaks here and there. I feel consistency is key when delivering a session to my clients, so I will edit the first image in a set in Lightroom CC and then synchronize the settings to the rest of the photos in that set. Because this session was done entirely in the same room, my light was consistent and once I synched all of the images, each image needed very little additional editing.
I used Totally Rad’s Fuji pro 800Z Noritsu preset as my color edit (from their FREE set!), removed the grain completely, and applied slight tweaks for exposure and contrast as well as cropping/straightening, as needed.
For the black and white edits I applied Action Spree’s “Classic” action from their Black and White Set 1, with no tweaks. I love the depth and feeling this action gave my color images!
In this set we see my image SOOC, the color edit, and then the black and white edit. I edited everything in color, in Lightroom CC, exported the images to a folder on my computer, did any additional retouching in Photoshop CC to the images that I felt needed it, and then set an automatic script where Photoshop opened each image in the session, applied the black and white action I chose, and saved the black and white edits to a separate folder on my desktop. Because I retouched the color images BEFORE doing my black and white edit, I wasn’t retouching the same image twice!
Settings: f/2.5 1/160sec ISO 800
All I did here was put that flokati rug on the floor and instructed the parents to have the kids lay down next to each other on it. Then I stood on the bed and let the moments happen on their own!
This is the same exact processing as explained above. In Photoshop, I edited out that bookshelf and the cat toy with some additional cropping/cloning/healing. Very light touch ups on their skin.
Settings f/2.8 1/125 sec ISO 640
The story in this image is, after the baby was finished nursing, the family cuddled together on the bed to watch Toy Story. I just told them where to snuggle in and hang out! This session was a true representation of a lazy Sunday with an adorable family! What a privilege to get to be a part of that!
As for editing on this image, the SOOC image is a bit crooked so I straightened it and did some spot removal in Lightroom and then followed the same recipe for this black and white edit that I did with the rest of the session
Find more of my work on the Web: Facebook / Instagram
