A Weekend in the Life: Holiday Family Photoshoots

Hi everyone! We wanted to share with you "a day in the life" at Holt Creative but decided that one day wasn't enough... So, we present our first ever "a weekend in the life" blog post!

On Friday, we had the pleasure of working with the founder of Facebook's "Andover Mums", and we took photographs of her two sons in their lovely home. Fun fact: we arrived at the shoot location a good ten minutes early and mentally prepared to ring the doorbell having our firm handshakes ready. We made it halfway up the driveway before realizing we had the wrong house number and that the real one was across the street! Anyways, the rest of the shoot seemed to go really well, and we hope the boys weren't too mad at us for making them pose in the cold outdoors.

The evening after the shoot, we excitedly discussed the idea of entering the 48 Hour Film Project in 2017. Essentially, it's a convention in the spring where film-making teams spend 48 consecutive hours over the weekend planning, writing, directing, filming, editing a 7 minute production. Sounds fun, right!? Haha, we're really looking forward to making it work next year!

(more info here: http://www.48hourfilm.com/home )

Then, the next morning, we started the day with a wonderful family photo shoot at the Stevens Coolidge place, aka our go-to location for shoots. Although the flowers are no longer there, the place provides a variety of backgrounds like elegant gates, brick walls, and stone steps. The family we met was super friendly and fun to photograph. They even had an adorable and super funny bulldog who kept falling off the bench (see image below).

Those who have been with Holt Creative to this photo site is familiar with us joking, "Don't go too near the fence, it's electric!" A few minutes after we mentioned this to the parents of the family, the bulldog began to CHARGE at the fence. The few moments before impact was absolutely terrifying, and we all feared for the life of the dog. He hit the fence head-on, rebounded, and stood still on the ground for a few seconds before getting up and happily sprinting back to his family. Thank GOODNESS the fence was turned off for the winter.

While waiting for our second shoot of the day, we decided to stop by Panera for a small food break. We ordered sandwiches, mac and cheese, and bread bowl soups to go. Unfortunately, a good amount of this soup ended up on Anna's pants, along with Tastebud's frosting, and excess bulldog slobber.

Then, as we continued to casually eat our lunches in the middle of the Stevens Coolidge parking lot, a group of adult friends laughed at us as they drove out of the lot :( (all in good humor though!). Our next client arrived, and we took her senior photographs. It was quite windy, so we utilized Kevin to block the wind with the jacket.

Okay now for the homestretch: EDITING.

We started off the night by making a sticky note schedule planning our minutes for the evening (it is said that successful people plan not just their hours, but their MINUTES).

Ex. 7:10-7:45pm import images and organize in album

7:45-8:10pm respond to e-mails

8:10-8:40pm open and edit first 10 photos in Affinity , etc.

We are reluctant to admit that despite this seemingly flawless plan, we finished two hours behind schedule. In hindsight, this was not surprising- our first distraction involved a very long break where we watched Kurt's one takes (in AWE) and quality food preparation videos on Vimeo. Later, we once again got sidetracked by the "Drag Toilet Paper" app, a strangely addicting game where you roll toilet paper off the roll as fast as you can (current Holt Creative record: 6.52 seconds).

Well, that's all we have for you this weekend! We hope you enjoyed this "In-the-life" post. It was super fun to document! (Let us know if you are interested in seeing these blog updates in VLOG form in the future...)