Olive's Modeling Debut

More pictures to share today! With Penny's birth, we had a birth story photographer. See a sampling here. This time around, we went with a newborn shoot for Olive. Professional photographers are pricey but oh my goodness, I never regret spending the money. Not sure if hubs would say the same. But can you put a price on moments and memories? Can you? Exactly. When Penny's and Olive's wedding slide shows roll around, we will be set. Anyway, here are a few images from the shoot. More can be seen in a blog post about Olive at Jamilla Yipp Photography.

People ask me all the time how I choose a photographer. Since we move a lot, I am constantly starting my search over, so I have it down to a science. Here's what I do.
1. Ask around for recommendations. If there's a local moms group or town facebook group or any kind of resource where you can ask for referrals, I ask and post and do online searches–whatever I can to gather as many names as possible.
2. Make a spreadsheet with the following categories: photographer; session fee; price for image rights; impression. I go through the photographers' websites filling in the columns. I will only work with photographers who will allow me to buy the CD of high resolution images. I am not interested in purchasing prints from the photographer at 8 times what it costs me on Snapfish. I don't care how high the quality is. Instead, I want the image rights to print on my own and have forever. The Impression column is where I make notes about the photographer's style and whether I like their images.
3. Weed out any that don't fit with the style I'm going for (i.e. looking at the impression column) and any that won't sell me the image rights.
4. I'm left with a list of photographers whose pictures I love and who will sell me the images on disk. From there, I choose the least expensive altogether (session fee + image rights).