2022 Updates » Relocating to Mexico + Learning New Techniques!

Hello friends! It’s been too long, and I hope all is well with you. Today is the day I break my social media absence, and start getting back into the swing of things. I’ve never been very consistent at posting or blogging, but thank y’all for being patient with me.

During the fall of 2019, I spent a lot of time and energy analyzing my business and preparing for the future. I spent months looking back over what was (at that time) a decade of business; particularly, I was trying to figure out what it was that made 2019 my most successful year, and how I could make 2020 even better for myself and for my clients. I looked very closely at the numbers: How often was I getting bookings from locals vs. tourists? How were they finding me? What percentage of my clients are couples (proposals, engagements, weddings) and what percentage are individuals, business owners, friend-groups, families, or multi-generational extended families? What is the ideal number of images to deliver per session length? Based on the answers to these questions and many more, I fine-tuned my wedding packages and portrait sessions options. I changed the look of the products I delivered (flash drives, and photo boxes) from wood to metal, because I felt my clients wanted some sparkle. And I also looked carefully at ways to streamline my own workflow behind the scenes, which included upgrading to a complete client management system with a simple one-click digital contract, and a whole new gallery delivery format, which allowed clients to download or purchase prints directly from the gallery. Heck, I even streamlined my social media posts, shrinking my time spent sharing photos by 75%, by scheduling my posts a month in advance, to be shared at regular intervals, instead of just posting whenever I remembered. All of this was well-received!

I was ready to take 2020 by storm, and we all know how that ended up, haha. I know 2020 was a particularly strange time for all of us, so I don’t think it was necessarily worse for my industry than others. But the wedding industry was very difficult to navigate, for myself, my colleagues, all of our clients, and all the business we regularly work with, including venues, officiants, florists, musicians, on and on. The city of New Orleans changed the rules of the game constantly, often with only a few days’ notice, and always slightly differently from recommendations on a national or global level. All these people and business (made up of people) were scrambling to pull off beautiful, memorable events for our amazing wedding clients, but nobody knew what would or wouldn’t be allowed next week.

Long story short, we did it. With an incredible amount of camaraderie among the local wedding industry, we made it through all the ups and downs of 2020 and 2021, and here we are in 2022. Which brings me to my exciting news: Today, my husband and I find ourselves living in beautiful Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! We decided to pull up stakes, sell our beloved urban homestead, and immigrate across the border. While the Puerto Vallarta area will be our home base, our plan is to see as much of Mexico as we can! We will be applying for house-sits, which will allow us to trade home- and garden-maintenance and pet care, in exchange for the opportunity to stay in houses all over the beautiful countryside. We’ll eventually start a new homestead either here in Mexico, or in Japan. Exciting times!

It will likely be another few months (at least) before my business will be able to legally accept clients in Mexico, so I’m using this down time to my advantage. If you followed along during the early years of my business, you know I love to learn and teach myself new photography techniques: I’m currently working on refining my ability to use various prisms, which refract the light in cool ways, and allow you to reflect other parts of the scene around you onto the frame. And I’m learning how to use my new tilt-shift lens! I’ve wanted one of these dreamy lenses almost as long as I’ve been a photographer, and finally made the splurge to purchase one of my own. It’s a manual-focus lens with lots of knobs and dials, which changes the angle of the lens in relation to the camera body, allowing you to create unexpected slivers of focus. I’m super excited about both of these, and hope to incorporate them more into my landscape and portrait work.

I’ll be sure to keep you updated with progress on moving my business to Mexico, and what part of the country we’re currently exploring! And I’ll be filling your feeds with all kinds of beautiful sessions from the past few years in New Orleans that I haven’t shared yet (literally, hundreds). But for now, please enjoy some photos from my recent test shoot:

This is a prisming technique I’ve been practicing for a number of years, so I’ve gotten confident enough with it to use during portrait sessions and the occasional wedding. The effect is achieved by holding a triangular glass prism against the lens, and using it to refract different parts of the scene onto the lens. It happened to be perfect for this viewpoint, because the portion of the sky reflected onto the bottom of the frame, is conveniently covering up a less pretty part of the view. So this can be useful in portraiture to hide things that aren’t photogenic in your surroundings.

This is an example of the same prisming technique, but in my opinion, a little too chaotic for portraiture use. The prism is actually reflecting bits of the background from both the left and the right onto the frame. Sort of a mind-bender.

Dialing it back a little bit, it’s easy to see how even though a large part of the frame contains the reflection, this could be a fun way to incorporate architecture or surroundings into a portrait session. This could be particularly useful for travel portraits, or clients who want to incorporate landmarks into their session.

Moving over to the tilt-shift lens. I was happy to see that it takes nice images, even without the tilt or shift effects. This is a straight, regular shot, with nothing fancy. Compare this to the next image, and you’ll see what the tilt-shift does.

This is an exaggerated use of the tilt-shift, to demonstrate the unusual sliver of focus. You probably recognize this technique from the kinds of streetscape photos that make cities look like toys. The dials on the lens allow me to tilt the lens up or down, or shift it left or right, or a combination of two. So there’s a lot of subtlety to learn. Remember, this is also a manual-focus lens, so I have a lot of practicing before I can even attempt to use it at an actual client’s portrait session. Thankfully, I have a very patient husband, and lots of street dogs around, who will be my test subjects.

Another tilt-shift attempt, as the sun is setting over the ocean.

And here we have a different prism, that creates more of a radial effect. I was practicing using the effect softly.

This is the effect when used more dramatically. This could be really fun to play with during the end of a wedding reception, long after the sun has gone down, and everyone is trying to get as much dancing in as they can before last call 🙂

You can find more of our travel and house-sitting adventures, here:
Dani & Evan Benton | Benton Homestead | www.bentonhomestead.com
Currently traveling Mexico » Soon, rebuilding our homestead in Japan »
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2022 Updates » Relocating to Mexico + Learning New Techniques!

© copyright 2009-2023 Dani Benton Photography | Japan | All Rights Reserved | Previously Dani Mouser | Previously Located in Oregon, Louisiana, Mexico