In the age of smart phones with "Portrait" mode, and easy access to nice looking photos, you may wonder why you should hire a professional photographer to capture important milestones in your life. Let me list a few reasons why hiring a professional is worth the investment.


1. Quality & Editing

Sure, your smart phone can take good pictures and has that fancy "Portrait" mode that gives that blurry background and really makes the subject POP. However, the resolution and quality is simply not the same. The difference between what a smart phone can capture and what professional camera gear can capture is huge. Professional camera gear can capture an image with much higher resolution - which is what you want when it comes to having your memories printed to hang on your walls. An image a smart phone can take may look just fine on Social Media and some smaller sized prints, but the quality will be lost when blowing the image out to a larger size.

When hiring a professional photographer, they'll take their knowledge of photo editing and retouching and apply it to your photos - this is much more in depth than putting a filter on the photo. A professional photographer can turn a good image into a great one, by drawing out the best features of a photo. As a photographer, I've spent countless hours learning how to use Lightroom and Photoshop so that I can take a good image and make it a beautiful image. Images that I am proud to have worked on. The editing/retouching and quality that comes with hiring a professional photography is simply unmatched when compared to that of a smart phone.


2. Posing Expertise

How to pose for your photos is often a scary thought. How many times has someone pulled out a camera to take a picture (whether at a family event or maybe a work party) and no one knows what to do other than smush together? What do you do with your hands? Do you stand straight in front of the camera or turn a little bit? Being camera shy is universal. A professional photographer can help with that.

As strange as some directions given by photographers may seem, we know what it looks like on the other side of the camera. Many of us have spent countless hours learning new poses or prompts (as I like to use), to utilize during sessions. As I mentioned above, I like to use posing prompts. This helps relax those being photographed, while drawing out real emotion and genuine smiles.


3. Experience

Professional Photographers have experience using their equipment, posing, and what they know are important moments to get from a session. Anyone can buy professional gear, but a professional photographer learns the best way to utilize that gear through their experience. While you may have a friend or a family member who owns a nice camera, they may not know how to properly use it, they may not have experience in editing and retouching, and they may not have a knowledge of posing. Or maybe they do, but this is an important milestone in your life that they want to be apart of. As a professional photographer, I don't always want to photograph the big moments in my family's life, sometimes I just want to be present in the moment with them. This is where hiring a professional photographer can really be beneficial. They'll know the moments you want to capture (or they'll have asked you beforehand), and they'll make sure that they will get those shots while your friends and family can enjoy the moment (whether it's a wedding or a first birthday party/cake smash or a birth).


Overall, capturing those important moments in your life should be worth the investment of hiring a professional photographer. Smart phones are great for some every day pictures, but for those special milestones in your life, you'll want something more. These are moments you won't get back, you want beautiful, quality, keepsake photos that will last a lifetime.