Running a small business is no easy task. It's messy and thrilling and terrifying all at the same time. But no matter what, it's definitely a journey worth taking. As a mom of two littles, I know the daily struggles, and I'm here to walk this journey with you. If you're ready to feel empowered, encouraged and on fire for the things you truly love, and you're in the right place. I'm Rebecca Rice, a pizza loving hot chocolate drinking family photographer and educator. And this is the business Journey podcast.
Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of the business Journey podcast. I'm your host, Rebecca. And today we're talking all about how to use a posing workflow. I'm very excited for this episode, because I've kind of been hinting at this idea of opposing workflow for the past two weeks. And so today, I'm excited to be able to really dive into what opposing workflow is, why we should use it and how I use it in my business. So hopefully, you can use it with your sessions too. Now, before we jump into the nitty gritty of opposing workflow, I wanted to let you know in case you haven't seen it, my brand new family posing course is live you guys, I've been working on this course for months. And really, it's been in the works in my head for at least a year and a half, I have just had so many people begging for resources about family posing. And you know, I had a small resource out but it just wasn't all encompassing. And so I'm so excited to be able to finally share this full family posing course, it's live, and it's on sale right now. So if you want to jump in, this is the lowest the price is ever going to be because this is the very first time wherever opening the doors, so go check it out, we're linking in the show notes for you. But if you want to, like have a URL to type in, it's Rebecca rice photo.com/family-posing-course. So in this course, I mean, I walk through so many things, super practical examples of how you should be posing, what things you should be looking for. And, you know, I walk you through not only posing families with young kids, families with older kids, or adult children, we talked about posing teenagers, I even have a section where we go about posing maternity sessions, lifestyle, newborn senior sessions, so we like get into it, I wanted this to be like a one stop course, for family posing. And so I'm really, really excited for you guys to get your hands on it. We've just had incredible feedback so far. And so many students have already jumped in. And so you can join them, definitely check it out. Again, it's on sale right now, the doors are not only open, but we've got it discounted for you. Because we just wanted to make it as affordable as we could, especially since this is the very first time we're offering it. So go check it out, run, don't walk. And we're really, really excited to be able to finally share it with you. So on the theme of posing, we're closing out kind of our posing series here, we've done several episodes over the last few weeks about posing. And so to kind of close it out, I wanted to walk through how to use a posing workflow. So you may say, Rebecca, what in the world is opposing workflow? Basically, in its simplest terms, it's an order of doing things. It's deciding ahead of time, what groupings you're going to do and when. Right and not only that, but how you're going to pose each grouping, to keep the session flowing seamlessly so that you're using your time efficiently. And that you're not having to move people around as often it's just being really smart with the way that you pose. So for example, if you're doing you know, a pose of just the kids, how are you posing them? Do you have them all bunched in smiling first? Do you start with candids? You know, what order do you do things? So I'm going to tell you my order in just a little bit. But I think it's important to address why I believe opposing workflow is necessary and why every single person should be using opposing workflow. I think the for first and foremost, it helps to remove those awkward moments that you don't know what to do next. Right. I feel like we've all been there where we're, you know, in the middle of our session, and we finish a pose and then we freeze, because we're like, what am I going to do next and your brains like going a million miles an hour thinking, Oh, my gosh, what do I do? What do I do? I'm like, nothing comes to mind. Right? We just freeze and freak out. And so there's this long, awkward pause and you know, we're like, ah, let's, uh, Let's do this and like your clients can feel it. And so by having a posing workflow in place, it really helps remove those awkward moments because you always know what comes next, all you do is run the play, you do the workflow. Another reason I really love posing workflows, which I mentioned a little bit was that it helps you use your time efficiently. Because I know for me, I shoot a lot of mini sessions. And so I'm shooting in 10 minute time slots, a lot of my students do 15 minute time slots, which even that is not a lot of time when you think about it. And so you can't do many sessions. Well, I shouldn't say can't that's a strong word, you probably could. But you'd need a lot of experience, it's a whole lot easier to do many sessions well with opposing workflow, because you're able to really, really keep things moving. Even for full sessions. You want to use your time efficiently, especially if you're fighting against the light, right? You want to make sure that you time things, right, of course, you're trying to get that really beautiful light, and you don't want to waste all your time trying to figure out poses, right. And so this posing workflow helps you keep things moving, stay efficient with your time. Another thing that I love about it, and I think this is the like underestimated part about opposing workflow is that it's repeatable. With a posing workflow, you'll never have to think of poses again, of course, you could always add poses to your posing workflow, as you like, come across them, or you really like certain things, but it's repeatable. And so for me, I do the same groupings, and the same set of poses with every single family that I serve. Now, some people are like, well, it doesn't make it boring, like doing the same poses, every family. I mean, honestly, no, because every family has a different dynamic, right? Every family has a different makeup. You know, they have different a different number of kids, different ages of kids, all the kids have different personalities. So every session is super different. And I'm able to really like play off of those personalities and you know, reorganize as needed for the groupings and stuff like that. So it is absolutely okay to take the same core poses, and use them for every session. People sometimes ask me, Well, what about return families like don't they get tired of doing the exact same poses. And I will say with return families, I changed it up a little bit. But not much, I really do keep the core poses the same for every single session. And honestly, kids change so much. And so it doesn't matter if you have the exact same pose from one year to another because the kids have changed so much. And sometimes families appreciate that, you know, you do similar poses, because they're able to compare like one year to the next year. So that's always fun. I know I like to do that with my kids. But if I have like a similar pose from one year to the next, or you know, three years in between man kids change so much, of course your year, but three years. That's insane. And so it's really fun to be able to like put two side by side. I remember I had this family that is so sweet. I serve that they're probably my favorite family have ever served. And I work with them every single year. For like multiple mini sessions. They book several mini sessions every year. And one that they always book is like pajama mini sessions, right? We do indoor studio Christmas minis I do red truck Christmas minis. And every year their kids are doing the same set of pajamas. So we've done this together like probably four years at this point. And they had bought this set of pajamas in like multiple sizes, but also like bought them a little big so that the kids could grow into them. And it's been so fun every single year to see them in the same set of pajamas. And it's this little boy and little girl that are about the same age as my kids. They're like 20 months apart. So they're the same, like distance apart from my kids, but they're one year older. And so every year, it's like a preview of what my kids are going to look like in a year. And it's so fun. But every time they come to that pajama session, we always take one photo, that's exactly the same, like we make sure that you know the kids are on the same side like everything because it's so fun to be able to put them up side by side and see like how much they've changed over the years. And so since they've been working with me for four years, we have four separate photos where they're in the exact same pajamas, the exact same pose, and you can just see how much they've changed. It's also fun because you can see how my photography has improved over the years. So that's like reassuring to me, but they don't care that they're getting the same kind of poses, because the kids change so much. So don't worry about you know, repeating poses or things like that. Like I said, every year you can throw in like one or two new poses or swap something out just so it's not exactly the same but The families wanting the same core groupings anyway. And so don't worry about being opposed repeater. Okay? So now you have the why, let's talk about how to actually use opposing workflow, I want to walk you through my opposing workflow, feel free to write it down, you can use it in your own business, you can tweak it, whatever. But this is the core workflow that I use with every single family. So when we get to a session, I always start with the whole family together. There's some reasoning behind that, number one, it helps just get everybody comfortable, especially if there's younger kids involved. Just by doing the whole family together, they get to see like, Oh, this is okay, this is how we do it if they've never done a photo session before, but they can watch how their older siblings or their parents are, you know, reacting to getting their photo taken. And so we start with that whole family together, it also kind of helps just get everybody kind of chilled out. Because I feel like people could be nervous heading into a photo session, when they like, have never done photos before. It's been a really long time. And they are wondering, maybe they've never worked with you before. So they're wondering how, how have your experiences? Are you going to guide them in posing? Are you going to tell them what to do? Like, what does it look like? So I always start with the whole family together. From there, I moved to just mom and the kids. So I have dad step behind me. And I let mom stay there. And in this workflow, I'm trying to move people as little as possible. Because especially with families, as they have, you know, three, four or five kids or more, the more movement, the longer it takes me, it just it takes a long time to move people. And so I try to keep people where they are. So when we have the whole family together, I tell everybody to stay where you are pull data out, and he comes behind me so that you know, the little kids can look at him. And they're gonna look at him either way. So if they're looking at him, and he's off to the side, they're not looking at my camera. So I pull him behind me. So that it looks like the kids are looking at me. And you know, we'll pull everybody a little bit closer, but they're not moving moving. Right? Whatever kid was on the right is staying on the right, whatever kid was on the left is staying on the left, we keep them where they're at, so that we're not having all these moving pieces. From there, we switch to just dad and the kids. So I will have all the kids stay where they're at, again, not moving, we'll have mom come behind me and Dad steps where mom was. Now to switch it up a little bit. Once we have dad placed, I'll usually take like one or two kids. And I'll trade them places, right. So we'll just to switch it up a little bit. So it's not exactly copy and paste from mom's photos. One kid on the right one can on left, I'll trade them so that they're on opposite sides, but being very intentional. And if they have several kids, I will point out this kid and this kid trade places everybody else stay that way. It's super clear. There's not this like wandering around of where am I supposed to go? I'm not really sure I am very clear, you stay here you go here. And kids are generally you know, they follow directions pretty well. And so it helps things move quickly, even if we have a couple of moving pieces. So after we do just dad and the kids, I tell the kids again to stay there, we pull data out. So mom and dad are now both behind me. And we do all the kids together. And at this point, I keep them exactly where they're at, we will you know squish them in a little. I want as little movement as possible. And now that mom and dad are not right there next to them to kind of corral and make sure that everybody's staying where they need to be. It's even more important to be intentional with my words and to go quickly. And so we'll do all the kids together I do you know a few variations. And then I will do every kid individually. This is one of those things that is like one of the must have shots in my book where if especially in like mini sessions, my goal is mini sessions is to put as many must have shots in the gallery as I can because my minis only come with five images. And of course, I want them to buy more. I'd love for them to buy the full gallery. And so it let's say a family has four kids, I'm going to get individual shots of every single kid I do a full body and then I do a close up of every kid because those are must have shots. So if they have four kids, they can't just get the individual of one kid right that if they're going to get individuals now that's taking up four of their photos, which encourages them to then buy more for full sessions is not as big a deal because I don't upsell my full sessions. They get the full gallery included, but it does help add some diversity to their gallery so that you know we have you know, family shots but we also have the individuals and if there's only you know, three kids, I may do individuals and then groupings of each of the kids so you know kid a with Kid B kid a with kids C and then you know, so on so that they can each have just two groupings. But with those individual shots, I usually start oldest to youngest, unless the youngest is doing super well, because I know that their attention span is the smallest. So if they're already being cooperative, I'll go youngest to oldest. If they're not being cooperative already, then I go oldest to youngest, and give the youngest time to watch and see how the older kids are doing. So that they when it comes time to their turn, they're, you know, more ready to stand and smile, and they've seen it done. So once we get individuals of every kid, we then do the whole family together. Again, sometimes I'll do you know, some similar shots. So what we did the beginning, but I like to change it up the goal of doing the whole family again, especially if you had any kids that didn't cooperate in the whole family together the first time, this gives us a chance now that everybody's warmed up. And you know, they they know who I am, they've opened up some more, usually the smiles are better, the cooperation is better. And so we'll do the whole family, again, also gives me a chance to do some of those, like more specialty groupings. So for example, one of the ones I like to do, I call it the ayo picture where we put mom and dad in the background and the kids in the foreground. And so I put the focus on the kids so that mom and dad are blurry. And I have the kids cover their eyes say Ill while Mom and Dad kiss in the background. So that's one of those, like, if we have time kind of shots, I love doing it. But I don't want to do it right at the beginning, because it takes time to set up. So I don't want to eat into our time we leave it until the end, just in case we have time. And if you're like curious what that like looks like I do walk through in depth how I set this up in my posing course. So you can go check it out. Not only that, but I show like all the variations that I do with each grouping. So when I do just mom and the kids, what kind of shots do I get? How do I pose them? What specific variations Am I getting? What words am I saying to you? And what posing prompts Am I using to get them where I need them? Those are all things I cover in the course, for the sake of time, we just don't have time to be able to jump into all that here. If you're curious about all of that, what specifically it looks like if you're a visual person, I walk through all that with photo examples. I mean, we get super, super specific in posing course. But again, so back to whole family together. Once we get you know my specialty shots, we get the grouping, I get the whole group together again, the last thing that I do is I ask if there are any other shots that the family wants to get. I reassure them that I got everything on my list, this is their chance in case they have like a very specific shot that they want. So reassuring them is really, really important. Because if you just say, Are there any other shots you want? They're racking their brains thinking, what do we miss? When you come around and reassure them and say, I got everything I need on my list. But is there anything else you would like to get? Then it puts the ball in their core of saying, Hmm, I know we got everything. But is there any like specific shot that we want? And most of the time the family says no, I think we got everything. Occasionally I'll have a family say, oh, you know, there's this one picture that we have of like, sister on brothers back doing piggy back and we and we redo it all the time, it would be really fun to redo that shot. Or one time I had a mom bring cow cowboy hats for her and her daughter and they wanted like a matching Mommy and Me photo with the cowboy hats. And so I was like perfect. That is the time to get those like random extra photos if they want them not necessary. Most of the time. Like I said, families are like, No, I think we're good. Cuz I reassure them that I got everything we need. But it gives the opportunity in case they had something specific that they were wanting, and they didn't see happen. It helps like level out that those expectations. So that's what my posing workflow start, it looks like from start to finish. And I run that workflow with every single session. We do the same groupings. Every time, I have the same set of like core poses that we do, again, which I walk through in the posing course for you to see what are the core poses, what are the variations for each pose so that you can get you know, five different photos from one core pose with you know, the family staying in one place. So it helps really bulk up the gallery to get those variations and I walk you through all that in the posing course. Again, in case you wanted the link it's linked in the show notes but it's Rebecca rice photo.com/family-posing-course I hope this episode was helpful for you and it's one of those that my goal is to get your wheels turning, thinking through creating a process for yourself, what is your posing workflow, what could be your posing workflow, because just having a system in place helps make all this a whole lot easier, a lot more efficient. It just removes the awkward in betweens. So I hope you were able to take notes and if you need to come back and re Listen, do that. That's why it's here. This is a resource here for you to be able to come back to and refer back to, I'm wanting to be able to like lay all that out. And hopefully you'll be able to apply it at your next session. So that's all I got for you. With that we're going to go ahead and close out for today. Don't forget, I'll say one more time. Don't forget to check out the brand new posing course. It just went live. And so you can be one of the first students to get your hands on it. And really just level up your family posing game, so I'm excited for you to check it out. If you guys have any questions at all, always feel free to shoot me a DM I'm really active on my Instagram and in my DMs. And so if you ever have questions, I love chatting with you guys. And so every week I have people say okay, Rebecca, I'm finally taking you up on it. You told me to DM you. So I'm DMing you. And I love chatting with those people. So this is your permission if you need it. This is your opportunity. If you have any questions, reach out to me and I would love to help you. You can find me at Rebecca rice photography on Instagram. And I'd love to just be friends over there. So we'll go ahead and close out. I hope you guys have an awesome rest of your week. And we'll see you back next week. Bye guys.
