I knew from the moment I arrived at Chelsey & Josh’s Wedding and saw all the a-mazing details that Chelsey had hand made that it was blog & print worthy. With so many options for publication, it’s tough to decide where it should go. I’ll be honest and say that I did submit their wedding to some of the “bigger” publications and they denied it. I let go of submitting it for a while until I found the right “home” for this wedding. Last evening, I found Two Bright Lights. I uploaded their wedding and went through their process of submitting. I loved this because I could upload to one place and submit to 20 blogs all at once!

I woke up this morning and approached my desk to find that their wedding had already been featured on a wedding inspiration blog! How exciting & super quick too!

If you are a photographer hoping to submit your wedding, two huge things I learned are that you need to make sure you capture tons of details on the wedding day. Chelsey made that easy for me with her incredible style choices!! Also, get a long written description from the bride. The blog I am featured on today mentioned to me that with 100 submissions she got this week, she chose mine because I had a long written story from the bride and assembled the detail shots in a creative way.

Today, Chelsey & Josh’s wedding was featured on Project Bride

This week’s AAW is being posted on a Thursday and not a Wednesday. Just pretend its Wednesday. This week a question came in from a blog reader where she asked about posing ideas & getting clients to relax. I had a lot of fun making this video and I hope that you can learn something great from it!

Also, as mentioned in the video regarding Zach & Jody’s Workshops. Click Here for more info!

Ask away Wednesday :: Posing ideas? from stephen knuth on Vimeo.

I love Thirst Relief. I love what they stand for and how they change lives. I love what $5 from my own pocket does for their organization. I also love photography. I think we all know that. I also love helping people and helping them understand how they can improve in areas of their business.

Each year at WPPI, many wonderful photographers participate in a mentor auction where photographers bid on an hour long session with the mentor of their choice. They are doing it again, this time its special. Thirst Relief has invited 5 of the SHOWIT Freedom Tour speakers to participate in a special edition auction.

The auction starts tonight at 8pm and runs until Sunday night at 8pm. The auction has an amazing list of mentors including Bob & Dawn Davis, Gabriel Ryan, Promise Tangeman, Zach & Jody Gray and myself. I’m so humbled to be listed with these photographers.

We’re all offering 90 minute sessions with the highest bidders. All the proceeds go to Thirst Relief International to help bring water to countries in need. They help save children! The topic that the highest bidder gets to talk with me about is social media in your business and also how to improve your workflow. If the highest bidder is in San Diego or Orange County, we will meet up in person. If they are outside of my area then we can do a skype chat!

CLICK HERE TO START BIDDING

P.S.- Please help spread the word by sending this link to others!

I started this week on a plane. A plane from San Diego to San Francisco which led to an automobile. That automobile led to another automobile and that trip led me to a few other cars, trucks… lots of driving. Follow me here, I know its hard figure this all out but it will make sense. I promise! So all those ways of transportation put me on a bus for a few days and now I am going home on a train from Los Angeles to San Diego.

The first leg of the 2010 SHOWIT Freedom Tour has been completed which went from San Francisco to Orange County and as I write this, they are on their way to Arizona! If you want more information on the tour, click here.

I was on the west coast part of the tour promoting a fast workflow solution for applying actions to your images called “Action Runner”. San Francisco was an awesome trip and just yesterday I was in Orange County sharing with an inspiring group of photographers who were hungry to learn information from Gabriel Ryan, Rudy Arpia, Jessica Claire & myself. Other than wonderful lessons given from our team, the night included some great “SHOWIT Live” 1-on-1 workshops on how the attendees can optimize their websites.

It was such a wonderful time being a part of the showit tour and I truly enjoyed every moment of it! Thank You, SHOWIT! I love you guys and I already miss everyone!

Special Thanks to Rudy Arpia for snapping these great images from the event!

I’m sitting in a Starbucks. The time is 5:30pm. I have traveled from San Diego to San Francisco and now a road trip to Santa Barbara before we head down south near my hometown of Orange County. This is intense. I’m tired but really excited to see what comes next at the same time!

A few weeks ago, Showit contacted me asking if I wanted to speak on their tour. At the same time, Actionrunner & Thirst Relief who are the tour sponsor contacted me in the same day asking me to speak for them too! So I’m part of the tour on the west coast representing both Showit & Actionrunner. It has been special for me to take part with them because it was only two years ago when I attended the “Free to Succeed Tour” in San Diego right before I started my business and since then I have been building my brand and on the same type of tour today, I’m speaking on it. It’s been emotional in that respect and I’m extremely humbled to be on this journey with them!

Tuesday morning I woke up at 6am for my 8 am flight to San Fran. Arrived in San Fran, did a little final prep for my presentation. Later that night everything started to get together and people started to arrive. It was the first stop in the 2010 SHOWIT Freedom Tour!

By the way, HUGE thanks to Henry Sun for snapping such great images of the entire evening!

First part of the evening I joined Showits rad support stud Andrew with the live help desk to help photographers make their sites rock out!

Right before me were great presentations from David Jay, Jessica Claire & Jasmine Star and a wonderful concert from Molly Jens0n!

Okay so at this point, DJ walked up to me and asked if I was ready to speak. Uhhhhhh… (long pause) Yes! I couldn’t believe it and I was so excited that my body was a little shaky. But the group of attendees were so awesome and they made me feel really chill. Thank You guys!

Overall. San Francisco was incredible. My presentation was great, the photographers attending were so awesome!! Thank You!

Today, I’m leaving for a road trip with SHOWIT and a few other great photographers for the first leg of the 2010 Freedom Tour! I’m SO excited!! Later today I will be speaking in San Francisco and on Thursday, Orange County!

The last time I was in San Francisco was when I was a child so I don’t remember that well. I will not have any time to explore the city, but regardless, I know it will be an incredible experience!! A few tickets are still available to pick yours here!

I’ll return home on Friday

Yesterday, a couple of San Diego Photographers and myself got together for a shoot. We met at an industrial park area for an hour of shooting followed by dinner at Soupplantation! I love the community we all have as photographers. So, during the shoot we had a 1 light setup with an Alienbee Ringflash and I was demonstrating to our group how you don’t only need a studio light for indoor studio shooting. Whenever you get the chance, bring a studio light to a shoot outdoors and make some awesome images come together!

One thing I learned from my good friend Zach Gray about outdoor shooting is that if you bring along 1 studio light to your outdoor shoot and expose correctly, you will have consistent lighting so when you enter your workflow, the editing will extremely quick and you could practically pull these images from camera directly and they would look great.

Here is the before (without the light). Natural light shot. See how it looks flat, only one source of light on the image.

1/320 f/3.5 ISO 100

Then I added a light to this same location. Now see the difference with what 1 single light will do to your location. It looks completely different and a WAY cooler shot!! NO photoshop was added to this image. I opened ACR and did a few tweaks to the image to give it the look it has but everything was done in camera with 1 ringflash. See how defined this looks?

1/200 f/14 ISO 100

If you follow my blog & facebook profile, you should know that I love SHOWIT and I’m always mentioning the powerful features that are available for your business. It provides the freedom of creating a unique website, client websites and now the ability of a mobile website for your smartphone!

Another reason of why I love showit is that they are constantly giving back to their users. One huge way that they are giving back this year is by going on the road for a few weeks to hangout with all their users! They’re taking a group of awesome photographers on a bus and going to nine cities where they’ll have photographers presenting great information, live Q&A, showit genius bar to get all your questions answered, and a live concert benefitting Thirst Relief!

I’m going to be representing both Showit and Actionrunner in San Francisco and Orange County. I’ll be sharing my workflow and how it can create more freedom to your business! It’s going to be an incredible time and I can’t wait to see you there!

Tickets are only $50! To get your seat, click here!

A few weeks ago, I got an email from an aspiring photographer in San Diego. His name is Dan Fields and he is an amazing guy. He has a strong heart for the lord and he loves his family. Dan has been shooting quite a lot lately but he was searching for a few answers to his questions of the need to grow his business to the next level. We connected and planned a 7 hour day 1-on-1 workshop which was held in San Diego. We met at Java Jones which is one of my favorite coffee shops of all time. This is where we discussed a ton of awesome information to help Dan reach the next level (which he has), do a headshot session of him and shoot an awesome downtown bridal shoot with Keary & Justin. It was such a wonderful day!!

Stephen Knuth workshop testimonial from stephen knuth on Vimeo.

If your are interested in doing a 7 hour day 1-on-1 workshop with me, click here for more information

This week on Ask away Wednesday, I am asked about the quality of my Sigma lenses and how I feel about making an investment with equipment for your business. I LOVE my Sigma lenses and hopefully this video will help you make the same decision I made recently if you feel that you’re in the same boat.

Ask away Wednesday :: Sigma Lenses from stephen knuth on Vimeo.