Featured Interview: Fife Photography

A Bit of Background

Give us a little peek in behind the camera?

Amber Fife: I’m a right and left-brain mix. I got a double major in Mathematics and Visual Arts, and I am in love with my two boys and husband.
Dustin Fife: Graduate student in statistics by day, photographer by nights (and weekends)!

Where did you grow up?

AF: Upstate NY.
DF: Washington State.

What influenced you into getting into photography?

AF: I got to take two film classes through my art major, and I found the darkroom to be magical. There’s nothing like taking a blank paper and creating an image yourself. My favorite thing was going on photo walks– you really learn to see everything around you in a whole new way. It wasn’t until I was on a humanitarian trip in Africa that our photographer let me borrow his digital body that I fell in love with digital. And there’s such an honesty in expression taking images of children in Africa. I was hooked with the images I created.
DF: I met this beautiful woman named Amber who just happened to have a need of a photo caddy. Even when the camera was hiding safely in its bags, there always seemed to be this strange connection between it and me, much like John Locke and the island of the Lost. I couldn’t long resist it’s incessant beckoning before I finally powered’r on and began shooting in fully automatic settings (and I haven’t stopped since!…..well, not the automatic part, but the shooting part :) It helped I could learn on nice equipment and from a live-in tutor.

How did you get started in photography?

AF: My base came with shooting film ten years ago in photo classes as part of my art major. We shot slide film, and would have to keep a notebook of our exposures, then write them on the slides. If you forgot to write one, the whole list got messed up! While in Africa I was introduced to the power of professional digital equipment and fell in love. Literally. Already being a double major, it didn’t work to shoot for a Photography BFA, so I took the only other class I could: photojournalism. I spent all my spare time up there in the newsroom, and loved attending all kinds of events for the paper. It’s the best job ever for a single person. You get to go and see and do so much, and you get to tell that story to everyone through your images. I covered all kinds of things, from plane crashes to sports press conferences to musical performances. I loved every minute of it. You learn fast and you learn well to work quickly with your camera in all kinds of lighting situations and work with all kinds of people. And they often supply equipment for you to shoot their assignments. I recommend it to anyone starting out. I soon became became Photo Editor at the University, and enjoyed coordinating as well as continuing shooting. Upon graduation we got married and became an official business. Dustin got us a business license and website. He’s the brains of this operation. We did amazingly well for 2 years until we relocated for Dustin to get his PhD, and rebuilt the business again here in Oklahoma. Business is booming. We now teach photography classes, and mainly shoot weddings and high school seniors.
DF: Amber was shooting some candids for a magazine and invited me to shoot for the opportunity to get published (she was actually joking, but I missed the sarcastic tone on her voice). I then found the cutest toddler I could quickly find, and chased her around, hoping her cuteness would compensate for my lack of skills,  unfortunately it didn’t. Nothing got published, but 6 months later I was back at it with a few more tricks and lenses up my sleeves (and a lot more time to find cute toddlers) and finally got published!

Did you go to school for photography?

AF: Yes, but only skimming the surface. If I could do life all over again, I’d probably work a Photography BFA in to a double major instead of just a BA in Visual Arts. In the photo classes I learned about technical basics and elements of design, and about successful images. But there is something to say about truly understanding light in a dimension you can only get through serious study. I love my art foundation: I have understood elements of design and composition and light for so long they are part of me. Intensive study would only deepen that understanding. I am happy where I am now, and continue to learn and grow. You have to be learning and growing as a photographer. There is no way to survive today without it. There are many great resources out there, but most importantly you have to get out and shoot. Go and do it. Acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them. You must first learn to be technically great so that you don’t have to think about it. That’s when the magical images are created.
DF: Ironically I spend most of my photographing time teaching others to become photographers, when I myself have no formal education in photography. (But I also teach a mean statistics course!). Most of what I’ve learned and taught is from doing. The advantages of an education is that you don’t have to have nearly the amount of “uh oh…..I should really have done…”-moments. However, NOTHING can compensate for experience. A degree in photography without thousands of shooting hours under your belt is like wearing pants that are 6 sizes too big.

The Photographers Process

What does your usual work-flow consist of?

AF: We like to meet with clients in our office before the shoot or wedding to plan out the session, though that’s not always feasible. We do a lot of online booking with brides who haven’t met us yet. We can interact through email and phone, and they are in love with our images. Often by the time a bride comes in to meet with us they’ve already read our whole website and are ready to book. With seniors we chose spots or types of spots with them beforehand to match them and their style. After the session we have them back in to view and order images and products.
DF: That about covers it…..but Amber forgot to mention the awesomeness of our new intern. Thanks Katie for doing our post-production!

What type of equipment are must haves for you at any shoot?

AF: Canon all the way. Canon 5D (or our new 5DMk2 that just arrived!!!), Canon 24-70 2.8L. Calibration target. I can do almost anything with that combo. Occasionally I’ll pull out the Canon 70-200 2.8L. I always have our backup 40D and extra lenses on all shoots.
DF: My lenses of choice are the 70-200 (for compression reasons….LOVE lens compression) and the 85mm 1.8 (hey…..who needs the L?) for the fall-off.

What are your favorite types of equipment that you have owned or worked with?

AF: The Canon 24-70 2.8L covers me very well. I prefer shooting wider, and this is perfect. From the beginning shooting for the newspaper, I knew that someday I wanted to own a fisheye. Now  I do. Life is sweet. There are just a few key places you score to have a fisheye–capturing the ceremony room especially.
DF: Did I mention the 70-200 and 85?

Name 3 types of equipment you can’t live without besides your camera and why?

AF: My iMac. Things just look a whole lot better on iMac screens than Macbooks. With that said, gotta have the Macbook for on the go work.  Backup drives. We have four. Don’t risk losing your images. Our newest addition is a Western Digital passport that is one-tenth of the space and same capacity as one of our older drives. Crazy. Music. Photo work tastes sweeter with good music.
DF: My new Nikon flash….yep, I said Nikon. I’m a die hard Canon lens and body user, but when I comes to flashes, Nikon wins. Hands down! I love that I don’t have to come up with some strange mnemonic device to remember which way to turn the flash dial to power it up vs down (clockwise vs counterclockwise? I can never remember). With Nikon, there’s a plus and a minus. Even I can figure that out. I also LOVE that when it goes into standby mode, I can remotely wake it up via Pocketwizards. With Canon, I have to jog all the way across to room, manually power it off, then power it back on…..way to go on that one Nikon!

Are you strictly digital or have you used film in your work?

AF: I truly prefer the immediacy of digital. And amazing sharpness. There are some amazing film shooters, but digital is for me. I play around with my old film camera for fun every now and then, but the whole develop/scan process is too labor intense for me.
DF: All digital….I tried film recently and could not stop myself from looking at the back of my camera to see how well I composed the image…habits can be hard to break!

What are the main components you try to achieve when composing a shot?

AF: It’s different with each session, but I like variety- tight, medium and wide. Of course well-exposed and good composition.
DF: I think that’s the wrong question to ask about a shot, because every shot will emphasize something different. What I do instead is ask myself, “What story is this photo telling?” My secret to good photography is finding a story with every image.

What are your top 5 sources of inspiration?

AF: Jonathan Canlas–simplistic design of images, timelessness and pure quality, Michelle Moore–Yummy and vibrant Senior images, Captured by Carrie and Baby as Art– Stunning newborn images that catch my breath every time. Those two ladies work magic. Jasmine Star–stellar woman, strikingly honest and real, inspirational.
DF: One, my photo students. There’s nothing like having a bunch of bright-eyed padowans anxiously watching your blog for your newest shoot to see if they can nail you on some principal you failed to follow…maybe it’s not inspiration, but it certainly helps prevent lazy shooting! But even beyond that, so many of them have such raw talent for photography, it’s amazing seeing what they come up with. I think beyond that it’s really hard to pinpoint. I have so many fragments of images floating in my mind that I often piece together in my own creations…it makes it hard to identify where it came from.

If you could photograph anywhere in the world, where would it be?

AF: I’d love to try some neat cliff/ocean combo with a bride and groom. That would be sweet. And I’d like to go back to the Great Wall of China now that I know how to shoot.
DF: Can we assume that me and my equipment are at least temporarily immortal? I think it’d be sweet to shoot a bride and groom in space (without astronaut gear). I don’t know how effective reflectors will be…..but I’m sure my new Nikon flash can handle it! Now THAT would be a nice addition to my portfolio!

What has been your favorite location to shoot at so far?

AF: Honestly, within walking distance from our studio are so many amazing spots. We’ve got brick and graffiti in back alleys, and designed windows, geometric shapes, and colorful buildings. We’re downtown Norman, an adorable town. My next favorite was City Hall in San Fransisco. It was stunningly beautiful inside.
DF: We once shot at the VERY top of a mountain in park city. We had to climb the face of the mountain with a snow cat….there’s nothing freakier than falling backwards on a 45 degree incline in the dead of the winter. We made it to the top safely and coldly and had a great shoot!

Do you shoot solo, or do you have an assistant?

AF: I can do either, but we normally bring an assistant. Dustin does tricky light setups that require extra sets of hands. I’m more of a natural lighting girl, but it’s always nice to have someone there to help hold reflectors and gray cards. Since have so many people interested in assisting, they love the opportunity. We ALWAYS have an assistant for weddings. Back in the day we’d do all weddings together, and assist for each other. Now with 2 kiddos that really doesn’t work out.
DF: Always have an assistant. We have at least 100 photo students who are anxious and willing to help out.

Post-Process and Away From the Lens

How have you gone about marketing yourself as a photographer and a business?

AF: You have to get out and get shooting. People can’t like your work if you number one, don’t have work to show them and two, don’t have anyone to show it to. Be a technically solid shooter to begin with and people will be drawn to your images. Our best marketing besides having great images is being honest and genuine. Our brides love working with us just as much as they love their images from their weddings. We relocated almost 2 years ago, and business is just booming now; we’re having to raise our prices again. It wasn’t immediate of course, but we continued to do good work, and we were patient. There are all kinds of things you can do to market: we are involved with social media: Facebook, blogging, Twitter. We link these so you don’t have to update each one every time. Streamline the process. We have a presence online that keeps us in the thoughts of our clients and their friends. We have done mailers and online wedding vendors. Our secret weapon is our website– it’s the greatest draw and people find us most through organic searches on Google. Dustin designed our site himself and does his magic with it– that’s his realm. But it all comes back to your work and you: If your work isn’t stellar, that’s where you have to improve first.
DF: Ditto

What is, and/or has been, your greatest challenge as a photographer?

AF: The Comparison Bug. No matter how good you get, there will always be someone better (and someone worse). The times where I start to get overwhelmed or anxious about comparing my work or our business, I have to close my Google reader and go pick up my camera. I can look at other people’s images and appreciate them, but in the end it’s my vision and what I create that should be most important to me. When I am at harmony with myself and my talent, that’s when the magic happens.
DF: Getting burned out. I LOVE Zach Arias’ recent video about getting burned out about photography, not because it offered solutions (in fact it didn’t) but because I can relate.

When you are not behind the camera, what do you do in your free time?

AF: Dance to Christmas music in my PJs with my toddler, crawl on the floor to my baby, and snuggle with my sweetheart. I am a couponing queen, and i love folding warm towels.
DF: School…..and more school….

Do you run any photography workshops?

AF: We teach a number of classes here in Norman, OK. You can find our lessons site here: lessons.fifephotography.com. When I say “we” i mean “Dustin.” I am much too scatterbrained to be coherent for an hour. I do often teach our private lessons, though. These classes start from the basics. The coolest class we just opened up is our strobe class. Those students create some killer images. I foresee in the next year or two we’ll be offering full fledged workshops for more seasoned shooters.
DF: That covers it!

Mac or PC?

AF: Mac. No question.
DF: Ubuntu….gotta love GIMP! And for those of you who actually know what Ubuntu and GIMP are, kudos to you! (I actually don’t use either, but I thought I’d say it anyway).

What’s your usual post-process work-flow like?

AF: We work exclusively in RAW; even on our personal images. RAWs are processed in Lightroom. It took us years to switch to LR, and we’ll never go back. If you’re a student, it’s only $99. Can’t beat that. Our style is to shoot timeless images, and tend to stay away from trends like over-saturation, muddy-washed-out-vintage, and ultra-contrast. Our images are more true to life, with our own spice added. We develop our own presets from images we process ourselves, and save those to use in the future. And it makes life fun when you come up with fun names like “Acid Sunset.” Export to jpegs, blog and facebook. Burn LR catalogs, raws and high-res jpegs to DVDs and store them in our archives, as well as dumped on our terabyte drive. We basically keep our post-processing within Lightroom, rather than Photoshop. Almost everything can be done in LR, and it makes life simpler that way. Of course, preparing images for print and album designs are done exclusively in Photoshop. We have a fabulous intern who now processes our images and designs albums with our actions so we can focus what we’re good at doing. I am good at marketing and meeting with clients and brides and Dustin is our genius web man. He does all kinds of nerdy stats stuff that makes our website and photography classes do amazing things. His masters thesis uses data from our classes, and has some amazing analysis that we get to use. It’s pretty cool he can mix our business into his PhD. And of course we both shoot. We used to try to do everything ourselves, but we are now at a point where we are getting too busy to enjoy life, and we can be more successful focusing on the elements we do well and enjoy.
DF: Yup

Outside the Box

Finish the sentence – “If I were not a photographer, I would be…”

AF: Musical Dance Theater performer, If I could live life over again.
DF: Broke!

What would be the one piece of advice you would give to photographers just starting out?

AF: Don’t worry about starting a business in the beginning. Learn how to shoot well first. Wait until you really know what you’re doing before you call yourself a photographer. Don’t tell people, just show them with the work you create.
DF: Marry a photographer…..that’s what I did.

What are you currently working on?

AF: Getting back into my sketchbooks. I haven’t drawn routinely since we started our photog business. And digitally designing our own family albums. I find that very rewarding.
DF: This survey.

What are your goals 5 years from now?

AF: Dustin will be a full-fledged professor, and we will probably have relocated again for that. I’ll build up the business again, but more slowly since there won’t be a rush to earn money this time. People will get married wherever we go, and we’re really comfortable doing that wherever we are.
DF: Find some cool way to combine my two professions….a statistographer. I’ll take pictures of probability density plots and compute the mean and variance of shutter speeds.

Fife Photography can be found at : http://www.fifephotography.com or on Twitter: @fifephotography

All images are copyright Fife Photography and may not be used without thier permission.