I am a big believer in furthering your education. I believe there is always something you can learn. There’s always ways to improve and grow. You’ll never know everything. There’s always room to know more.

During the “slow” season, I love taking that time to learn more about my craft. I love working on things that aren’t my strong suit and pushing my creative boundaries. It’s so important as a creative and small business owner to never become stagnant. When you do, you lose momentum. It’s so important to stay challenged.

This weekend, I feel like I did a good job stretching my knowledge of photography. Back in December, my sweet friend Karen told me about this lighting workshop in Newport News with Luke and Ashley Beasley! Being a natural light photographer, off-camera flash is not my strong suit. I know enough to shoot reception pictures and darker lighting situations, but it’s not my forte. I knew I had to sign up for it. I’m SO glad I did. I learned so many new things that I can apply when photographing my weddings.

I don’t know about y’all, but for me, off-camera flash can be super intimidating. I know enough to provide my brides and grooms with quality photos, but they’re not my favorite. I’m so excited to say that I feel much more confident with what I learned. I can’t wait for the 2015 wedding season and to apply these new tips.

I’m not terrified of playing around with off-camera flash and can’t wait to incorporate it into some of my portraits too. For me, OCF was not my favorite because I wasn’t a fan of how the pictures looked with the flash. To me, they were too harsh and not my style. What I learned was that there are ways to tweak the lighting to make it look more natural and un-obtrusive. So cool! Now, I can be in a totally dark room with no window light, but still take an image that looks like I’m shooting it right by a window. Yay! I can’t tell you how excited I am about this! 🙂

If you, are like me, and OCF is scary, I encourage you to check out the workshop HERE! It’s a wise investment and I’m so glad I did it. I was also so happy to see so many sweet faces. Everyone was so kind and generous. Everyone was willing to help each other and share their equipment so everyone could play around with it. It was really refreshing to see a room full of photographers treat each other with such compassion. I’m so proud of the community of photographers I get to learn with. I also met 4 other Ashleys on Saturday. I felt like I was on Recess. Get it? 🙂

Thanks Karen for grabbing this pic! I’m so bummed we didn’t get a pic together! That needs to change next time! 🙂