Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What should I (or my family) wear to my shoot with you?

You should wear something comfortable, that you won’t mind walking in (comfortable shoes). Avoid graphic t-shirts — small patterns are all right, but a big Nike logo won’t do you any favors. You want the attention in the photo on your lovely face, not what you’re wearing. Wearing a color that compliments your eyes is always a great place to start. And neutrals always look fantastic — whites, greys, navys and blacks. You can see a mood board of great outfits over here.

Q. What is the best thing I can do to prepare my home or business for your shoot?

If I’m shooting in your house or at your place of business, you should tidy up the areas in front of the windows. Natural light creates the best images, and I’ll likely want to shoot in these spaces. If we’re doing a family shoot, I will always want to photograph you all snuggling in mom and dad’s bed, so keep that in mind.

Q. Can you tell me about your process? When you say a package includes 25 photos, does that mean you only shoot 25 photos?

I shoot TONS and tons and tons and tons of photos. The more photos I take, the better shot I have of coming away with stellar images! But! If I mention I have taken 400 images of you, usually that’s only 70 or so different shots because I take each photo 3-4 times to ensure you are not blinking, yawning or something else in the moment. Make sense? After the shoot, I spend hours going through all of the images and choosing the best ones to send to you. After selecting these images, I then start the retouching process.

Q. How do I know you are really choosing the best images?

Before starting Shuttersmack, I worked for more than 15 years as an art director and designer for a variety of newspapers and magazines. In this role, it was my job to look at a photographer’s images from a shoot and choose which photos would make it into publication. I have tons of training and many years of experience doing just this, and you’re hiring me for this exact experience. I have found that if I involve clients in photo selection it slows down the process tremendously as clients want many other opinions, and I don’t choose to operate my business in a way that leaves my workflow in the hands of others in this way.

Q. Do I get all the images to keep after the session?

I will email your gallery with your final, color corrected images. Depending on the package you purchase, you may download them in a high resolution (for printing) or low resolution format (for web use). You will have the ability to order prints for all the images in a variety of sizes from my vendor, regardless of downloads.

Q. What if we have bad weather?

As we all know, the weather in Minnesota changes constantly. I shoot outdoors if it’s above 10 degrees and under 97 degrees. If the temperatures fall outside of that range, I will reach out the day before or the day of with options for shooting inside or rescheduling. That said, I will not reschedule a session for any weather that falls within that zone unless it is pouring rain or anything dangerous. If we are booked for a Christmas card session in the middle of November, it could be 40 degrees or it could be 15 — we will roll with it! I’ll shoot fast and I will ask that everyone dresses in weather-appropriate clothing. My outfit mood board is filled with winter clothing as well as summer and fall.

Q. What kind of camera do you use?

I primarily shoot with a Nikon Z9.

Q. How much retouching will you do to my photos?

I always try to make people look their best. This means l do minimal retouching to reduce lines, stray hairs, blemishes etc. I will also remove food from your teeth or pet hair from your clothes (within reason). What I won’t do is change your physical features. Please don’t ask me to “elongate your neck” or “make your eyes big like on Instagram.” I think the beauty industry has done enough to mess with our self-esteem, and I don’t want to partake in furthering misconceptions about beauty. Every single one of you is LOVELY. Let’s celebrate that. I also will not make large alterations to backgrounds etc.

Q. What is your workflow? How do you edit your images?

All takes are different, but I usually do my work in Lightroom and Photoshop. I love the details and control that Photoshop gives me with each image.

Q. When did you get into photography?

I took a class on photojournalism in high school and the passion began there. I started with basketball games for the high school paper and then took a fine art photo class as well. In college. I realized I couldn’t afford dark room time, film etc etc and moved toward graphic design instead. In 2008, my husband got me a Nikon D80 for Christmas, and I fell in love all over again. I started posting my photos online and started getting more and more jobs and the rest is history.

Q. Who has been your favorite band to shoot?

There are certain artists that are so charismatic on stage that they are always a blast to photograph. Some of my favorites have included Macklemore, Metric, Slayer and Santigold.

Q. Why so many dog photos?

Because dogs are the best creatures on the planet, of course.