Museum of Natural Sciences Event

with Angela Proffitt speaking to Triangle NACE Members about how to Transform their Communications Mindset

As a member of the Triangle NACE group, I have had the honor and privilege of attending and photographing some of the most phenomenal events. The event at the Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh did not disappoint and was right on par with how NACE events truly inspire their members. The speaker, Angela Proffitt from Nashville, TN, talked about the art of transforming your communication style with those in your company, along with clients and potential clients.

To do this, each person was given a piece of paper with 4 colors on it, and each colored column had certain words that you were supposed to rate in order of “most resonated” to “least resonated".” At the end you would add up all of your points, and at that time you would learn what color you are, along with what color you were least. Instead of giving you the entire nights speech, lets dive into what each color means.

Does a certain color resonate with you? My color is…ORANGE! Wow, not surprising!

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ORANGE

These people act on a moment’s notice and consider life as a game, here and now. They need fun, variety, stimulation and excitement and are natural trouble-shooters, performers and competitors. At work, they are bored and restless with jobs that are routine and structured. If someone on your team is an ORANGE personality, talk to them about how an event or task is going to be fun, exciting and meaningful; you want to talk to them about the experience. ORANGE personalities are not that interested in the money side of things, so make sure you talk to them about the experience.

This personality typically does not like to fill out forms and they are not fans of consistency. Some things that they enjoy are travel, shopping, eating as an experience, and frequent breaks during their work day. They do not like to be bogged down by a 9-5 job, and would much prefer to have an exciting day with a planned schedule.

See below for a list of words that resonate with ORANGE personalities.

• Witty

• Charming

• Spontaneous

• Impulsive

• Generous

• Impactful

• Optimistic

• Eager

• Bold

• Physical

• Immediate

• Fraternal

GOLD

These people follow the rules and respect authority. They have a strong sense of what is right and wrong in life. They need to be useful and to belong. Their values include family, home-life, and tradition. They are natural preservers, good citizens and are helpful. At work, they provide stability and can maintain organization. They can handle all of the details and are considered the backbone to many organizations.

If someone on your team is a GOLD personality, it is best not to spring up ideas or thoughts on them immediately. You should give them bullet points on assignments. GOLD’s like to do things in advance, so if something is last minute, they will internally take that as offense.

See below for a list of words that resonate with GOLD personalities.

• Loyal

• Dependable

• Prepared

• Thorough

• Sensible

• Punctual

• Faithful

• Stable

• Organized

• Caring

• Concerned

• Concrete

BLUE

BLUE personalities need to feel unique and authentic. They look for meaning and significance in their life. They like to contribute, to encourage, and to care. They value integrity and unity in relationships and are natural romantics, poets and nurturers. At work, they have a strong desire to influence others so they lead more significant lives. They often work in the arts, communications, education, and the helping professions. They are true motivators.

If you have a BLUE personality on your team, you need to make sure to tell them how the process effects people and how it makes people/clients feel. If you are in the wedding industry, these people are the best types of people to take care of the couple on their wedding day. BLUE’s always fill out forms, and always make sure to write in the “additional form” if included on an intake form.

See below for a list of words that resonate with BLUE personalities.

• Enthusiastic

• Sympathetic

• Personal

• Warm

• Communicative

• Compassionate

• Idealistic

• Spiritual

• Sincere

• Peaceful

• Flexible

• Imaginative

GREEN

GREEN personalities seek knowledge and understanding. They live life by their own standards. They also need explanations and answers. They value intelligence, insight, fairness and justice and are natural non-conformists, and are visionaries and problem solvers. At work, they are conceptual and independent thinkers. Work is play. They are drawn to constant challenges in careers and like to develop models, explore ideas, and build systems to satisfy their need to be innovative. Once they have perfected the idea, they prefer to move on, leaving the project to be maintained and supported by others.

If you have a GREEN personality on your team, you want to make sure to tell them WHY you do things the way that you do in your company. When they write in intake forms, they write in question format. Some things that make GREEN’s happy are working alone, plans, having control, free time. They look at ORANGE’s as if they are stupid. What stresses them out are people who do not respect their space (think about sharing a desk), and talking about the past.

See below for a list of words that resonate with GREEN personalities.

• Analytical

• Global

• Conceptual

• Cool

• Calm

• Collected

• Inventive

• Logical

• Perfectionist

• Abstract

• Hypothetical

• Investigative

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Special thanks to all of the vendors who made this night possible!

Venue: North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
Catering: Rocky Top Catering
Planner: Becca Lee Taylor with C&D Events
Rentals: CE Rental
Florals: Fresh Affairs
Entertainment: Bunn DJ Co.
Audio Visual: SPIN Inc.
Photobooth: Photo Party NC

How to Organize Your Digital Photos

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This blog post is for all of you who are on the struggle bus when it comes to organizing your digital photographs. Do you ever have someone ask you for an image or a gallery and you have to wrack your brain to figure out where in the world it is located at? Or, how did you even name the folder? Is the folder named “Vacation Dayz” and yet you cant remember the year you went on one? Or, is the folder named “Blue Eyes Blue Skies”? If this example sounds like you—then make sure you take some notes. Let’s get your hard drive squared away so that if you, your company, and/or employees need something—they know exactly where to look.

Let’s say that you have a new hard drive and you are down right determined to make this bad girl an organized dream come true. The first thing that you want to do is make a folder with the year on it. In this case, the year would be “2020.” Please make sure that this is the first thing that you do. In the future, when you are in the new year, you will then make a new folder with the year “2021.” This keeps things in each fiscal year. Simple enough, right?

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For photographers, the next step would be to make certain folders within your 2020 folder. My hard drive has folders named “Engagement,” “Weddings,” “Family,” and “Boudoir,” along with other types of sessions that I do. Now, let’s say you just shot an engagement session and you want to transfer your RAW images to your hard drive. Within your 2020 folder, you will find your “Engagement” folder to click on. Within that folder you will make another folder that states the DATE and NAMES of the people you photographed. For instance, mine would say something like “02102020 Jessie and Sam.” After you make this folder, click inside it and make one other folder named “RAW”— this is where you will place your RAW images from the shoot, and then you can upload into your Lightroom module.

Why do it this way? Let’s say that it is 2025 and someone has reached out to see if you still had images from someones engagement session from 2020. All you would need to do to find it is ask the person when the session took place, and the names of the couple. It will be in timestamped order, so super easy to find.

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For business owners (especially in the wedding industry), your first step will be to make your current year as a folder. If you are starting out in the year 2020, your first folder in your hard drive will be “2020.” Now, within your 2020 folder you will have folders that should correlate with the type of work that you do. For instance, if you are a florist you would have folders that are named “Weddings,””Bridal Sessions,” “Styled Shoots” and “Events.” These types of folders will hold all of your photos from the event (either from your mobile device and/or the photographer that photographed the event).

Let’s say that you set up a wedding at a local Country Club, and your team took cell phone images of their set up. You would theoretically want to keep these images in case a bride comes in later and asks for a certain set up that you did at said Country Club. And, what if you dont receive professional images from said event? You would have these mobile images to go back to. So, lets find the best way to store them. In this case, you would go into your 2020 folder, then click on your “Weddings” folder and within that folder you will make another folder. This new folder will have the DATE, NAME OF VENUE, and NAME OF COUPLE. An example of this will be “10152020BrierCreekCC_JessieandSamDundermifflin”. Now, inside the newest folder you want to make a new folder named “Mobile,” and once inside your MOBILE folder, you will upload any photos that were taken at said event.

What if the professional photographer sent you images from this event? EASY! Go to your 2020 folder, click on the folder that the event correlates to (Weddings, etc.), then find the DATED folder of event and click on it. Inside you would have already started a folder named “MOBILE,'“ but now you want to make a new folder. This folder will be named the title of the professional photographer. If you were storing images by my company, then this folder would be named “Fancy This.” This way, there is no confusion when you share the images later. ANYONE can look at this folder and know who the photographer is to give credit to. If you are receiving HIGH-RES and LOW-RES images…then, you should make 2 separate folders within this folder. Yes, always make a new folder. These new folders should be named “Hi-Res” and “Low-Res.” Upload your corresponding images into these folders.

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And, as a bonus—feel free to upload a Word Doc that has all of the vendors that were part of the event, into each folder. It can even be a screenshot. This way, when sharing later (or if you are doing a #throwbackthursday post) you will have all of the necessary information.

See? Everything in one place. Super organized, and you can talk anyone through this over the phone if need be (looking at you, business owners). The best thing about this is that you know exactly where everything is.

I am so excited to share with you an interview between myself and one of the co-owners of Makeup For Your Day! Makeup For Your Day is a hair and makeup company catering to couples in the state of North Carolina and beyond. I have been anxiously waiting to share this, as it holds some great information that soon to be newlyweds could use when picking out their beauty services for their wedding day.

From a photographers standpoint, I have worked with so many great beauty companies. I have also worked with some not-so-professional ones. That’s okay, because every person has to start somewhere. And yes, people have bad days. It’s when you work with professionals that make the biggest difference for us.

For instance, if the hair and makeup team runs late, a photographer loses precious time for those getting ready photos. If they are running late, then that would also put my clients in an anxious state…which in return makes for some interesting images. The whole point of getting ready is to put the clients in an easy state of mind. It’s their wedding day, and when you have people who are still learning the ropes, I find it a bit chaotic for my clients.

Photographers, I am anxious to hear your thoughts after you read this. Am I alone or do you agree?

N: How long has Makeup For Your Day been in business? How did it come to be in this wild and wonderful wedding industry? Tell me more about the client you serve.

J: Makeup for Your Day has been in business 12 years this April!  We started our company as an artistic outlet to our full-time corporate jobs in banking and property management respectively. After referrals started going through the roof from planners and photographers who were thrilled with our business model of showing up on time, dressing and working in a professional capacity and getting our client done on or before scheduled time we got more serious and began recruiting and developing staff to take on more accounts.  Our typical client ranges from young professional to established career veteran. Usually, it’s a woman that wants to feel lovely on her big day by looking like herself...only perfectly polished for the cameras.

N: What separates Makeup For Your Day than the other companies? 

J: A few things separate Makeup for Your Day from other companies. Namely, we have a large, experienced team to draw on for bridal parties both large and small. In addition, we live in an age where a lot of our clients are flying in from out of state to get married back in the Triangle where they may have gone to school, or to the coast or mountains where they may have vacationed growing up. The benefit of hiring Makeup for Your Day is that we have teams across the state in Raleigh, Charlotte and Wilmington that can accommodate any location and we even have teams in Atlanta, GA and Nashville, TN to pull from, as well.  Our clients can rest assured that they’ll get a consistent, luxury experience no matter which team they work with! Other distinctive qualities that we take pride in are personalized beauty schedules for our brides that expertly map out their “pre-wedding planner timeline” to ensure their day gets off to the best start and that everyone is completely pampered in time for the photographer, planner or coordinator to take over the reigns as expected. We also have a boutique studio location in Raleigh that is convenient for our brides that are flying in to RDU (less than 4 minutes from the airport!) and our Triangle and surrounding area brides to come in for all pre-wedding appointments and festivities such as their trial run, bridal portraits, engagement photos, boudoir session, etc.

N: For myself and my clients, I want the best for them, especially when it comes to wedding day. I have noticed in the past that if clients choose hair and makeup artists who are not well versed, or have not been in the industry long enough, etc., actually cause the timeline to shrink. This will, in return, give the couple anxiety, etc. Why is it important for a couple to have a decent hair and makeup artist? What are some things that they should look out for when booking this service?

J: Great point and one of the biggest talking points for us with our brides! The makeup artist and hair stylist completely set the tone for the day first thing so if they are late, working too slow or worse, can’t manage the bridal party to keep them on task of “cheeks in the seats” when they’re supposed to be...the whole train become derailed.  Hiring a professional makeup artist and hair stylist (read “professional” again and again) that is talented in their art for color and styling is only half the battle. A client truly has to find someone with an understanding of business and customer service in order to not have any worries going in to their day. I stress this because a lot of people can do beautiful makeup on themselves and their friends and some can even style hair that looks gorgeous for a few hours or for a night out but how do they work under pressure?  Can they conform to a strict timeline? Do they show up early and with everything they could possibly need? Do they communicate well with not only the client but her guests and other vendors? Do they understand what mediums the photographers and videographers are shooting in so they can adjust the makeup accordingly? Most importantly, do they have a contract and is it THOROUGH? I could go on and on! The biggest advice is do your due diligence and research the artist or stylist you want to hire. Read reviews and dig for more than just the superficial “look” that they gave the other client. Find out how professional they really are from the way they dress, their timeliness to their discussions with people in their chairs. That will help you decide if you’re working with someone that takes your day seriously and approaches it from a business transaction standpoint or just a hobby that earns them a quick buck on a Saturday.  

N: How often do you receive images from wedding photographers who have photographed weddings that you or your team have done hair and makeup services on? Which images are you looking for in regards to showcasing your work?

J: I’m chuckling at this question because I can answer it two ways. The first thing that came to mind was, “rarely”. Even though our handiwork is featured on every shot of the bride and bridal party, MOB, MOG, extended family, etc. we are so often overlooked for receiving credit on such images and even more so included in albums that get shared by photographers. It’s sad, really!  The reason why I say I can answer it two ways is because the second thing that comes to mind is that I actually get images of our clients pretty regularly now because I go after them. It’s like a second job sometimes to track down all of our clients’ photographers info and reach out and follow up (and follow up again...sometimes with the planner instead) but it’s worth it once we get access.  Other times it takes some serious internet stalking to find the photos and reach out but it’s all taught me to be super thankful for blogs with a search feature! :) We’re typically looking for a series of images that tell the story of their day. In general I like to have bridal portraits from the day both profile and face forward with eyes up and gazing down - to appreciate the awesome lashes and eyeshadow work -  as well as an aisle shot (for the hair), ceremony shot, the kiss, after they’re pronounced married, first dance either with spouse or we always love a good bride/daddy shot or groom/mama shot, and finally the exit.

N: Why is it important to know the style of your clients photographer? For instance, I shoot film on a wedding day. Does this have any inkling to what you do as the stylist to mesh well with that? If so, what is the process of determining how to correctly apply makeup, etc.?

J: It is IMPERATIVE to know the style of your client’s photographer and the medium in which they are shooting!  For a makeup artist, we need to know if the client will be photographed in film or digital and if film which type of film. The type matters because, as you know being a film photographer, certain film is more saturated than others and that’s important when applying color to the face.  The makeup artist only has one shot to get it right with film because it isn’t like digital where you can edit to the hills for more or less saturation. With film, a client generally doesn’t want as much post editing done because that defeats the purpose of using film in the first place and negates the authentic feel of the overall image. Therefore, if a makeup artist puts too much blush or a lip that saturates to fuchsia or worse, a chunky highlight that renders like glitter in the sunlight on film the photographer is going to be in for a heap of issues to try to tone all that down without losing skin tone in the process.  It’s a mess! And that’s just one example. So, I’d highly recommend that photographers also start referring clients to professional artists that really invest in their craft that take classes and educate themselves with multiple mediums so they can better inform their clients where to go and save themselves an editing headache in the process.

N: What advice would you give newcomers that are coming in to this wedding industry? 

J: Newcomers to the wedding industry: welcome! Find your niche and go after it. We are blessed to be in a big wedding area and there’s more than enough business to go around. Don’t undercut others and do a disservice to yourselves right out of the gate...charge what you’re worth!  Network with others and really LISTEN to experience so you can take the good with the bad and make something awesome for yourself.

All images were taken by Fancy This Photography of Makeup For Your Days work.