Author: alannahrossphotography

A little over a year ago I decided to take my photography to the next level. I started taking portrait photos. I started my own business. What started as an afternoon out with a friend to take photos of her daughter has evolved into me offering everything from family photos to weddings to boudoir. I am absolutely in love with my new found abilities and what I can create; how I can make people feel amazing about themselves.

Here are a few photos from that first session.

Reflecting back on some of the questions I have been asked over the last year, I have decided to create a story out of the 5 W’s of a photo session.

Who?

To find the answer to this question… I am going to send you over to my Facebook page!

Don’t have a Facebook account? That’s ok! I’ll explain it a little bit here. In short, absolutely anyone can book a session! It doesn’t matter if it is for a special occasion or not, I encourage you to book a session with a photographer near you. Even if it is only once in a while… maybe once a year, or every two. There is so many positives for you! A good photographer shows you how beautiful you are, no matter how worried you are about wearing the wrong thing, or not knowing how to pose. That is our job!

What?

It’s a photo session, of course!

But in all seriousness, we can do photos for any occasion! Check out this Instagram post where I explain it a little more…

I have so many different kinds of photo sessions under my belt now! In my latest news, I am super excited to be starting boudoir! Adding this to my ever growing list of available session types; minis, weddings, engagements, family, stylized portraits, milk bath (both pregnancy and baby) and graduation (and a few others).

When?

Anytime you want! … Almost anyway …

I will do my best to work around your schedule. I outline this a little bit and talk about my day job in my Twitter post here:

Where?

Let’s venture over to YouTube for this one! It’s one of the most impactful decisions that you can make when working out the details of your photo session. The whole vibe and feel of the session will change depending on where we do the photos. A trail in the woods is going to be a darker scene than the middle of a field will be. Such as a session with blooming flowers will look much different than an open field or shaded trail will.

It’s all a matter of what you are looking for from your session. That is something we will discuss if you are unsure what kind of feel you are looking for.

Why?

This last question can be answered right here.

Why should you book a photo session?

Because you are gorgeous and so is your family.
Because you are worth it.
Because you will have these memories and photos with you always.
Because you will enjoy yourself as much as you may be nervous for it.

A session can always be used to commemorate a special occasion, celebrate a holiday, showcase a season, or be part of an event.

BUT

You don’t HAVE to have a reason for it. Maybe you just want to spoil yourself. Maybe you absolutely love a specific holiday (I’m a Halloween fanatic!) and want to do a stylized session. Or maybe your birthday is coming up and you want to celebrate you with a 42nd birthday cake smash!

Connect with me with your idea! Chances are, I’ll be all in!

So are you ready to chat about an idea you have been pondering?

Take that leap!

You are worth it!

Storytelling… Digital storytelling… Is there actually a difference?

Well the answer is a little more complicated than yes or no.

Yes, there is a big difference in medium used to create and express the story. Digital stories have movement, images, action, videos and text. Generally, traditional storytelling is either verbal or written, with few images unless we are discussing a children’s book.

So what are these 5 key points?

Check out this infographic, which in theory, tells you a story about what you should have included in your digital story:

Did any of that make sense? Did it relate back to traditional storytelling for you? That’s good! It should have! Many of the important parts of digital storytelling come from traditional storytelling, such as the importance of a beginning, middle and end to your story. Planning, conflict, they are all important in any type of storytelling. But this is where we divert off course…

Digital storytelling… the difference

If I was sharing this infographic on a website or social media post, you would see the pencil moving across the notebook as well as the cat stretching to reach the butterfly. Why? Because movement is important to catch your audience’s attention.

As the Infographic Design Team mentions in their article 10 Trends and Principles of Visual Storytelling That Every Designer Must Follow, digital storytelling is all about visual storytelling. Posts on Twitter and Facebook with images or videos have more likes and shares than plain text posts. Attention spans are dwindling, and story telling needs to change with them!

To conclude…

Make sure your stories are compelling online by making them visual.

And when you can, end your blog post with a GIF of a kitten. Because what is the internet good for, if not for kitten GIFs.

Keeping up with live tweeting is a challenge for me. My ADD brain has trouble keeping focused and remembering to include all the proper hashtags and all that fun stuff, while also keeping up with what is happening in front of me.

Squirrel!

Just kidding!

Joking aside, I completely forgot to attach my class hashtag to half of my tweets, and feel like I missed a lot of the game that I was tweeting about because I wasn’t fast enough at typing on my phone. Insert applause here for all the people who can do this well. At this point in the post, I guess you are probably wondering what the thread even is that I am talking about! Well here it is:

Live event happening now!
It begins… the Dad-Son pool competition has commenced! Who will win? Only time will tell…

— ARoss (@alannahr81) July 26, 2022

I have been doing a lot of reading about digital story telling strategies and live-tweeting principals. Using some of these strategies helped me bring everything together into a story that though may not be as exciting as some Twitter threads, I feel was engaging and held some intrigue and emotion. There was a beginning, middle, and conclusion, as well as a wrap up for the little side note about the cat!

If you have made it this far into the blog post and haven’t gone to read the thread yet, here is a little synopsis for you. My husband and I are on vacation at my in-laws house in Nova Scotia. Both my husband and his dad are avid pool players, so my live-tweet thread is commentating on a game that they had this evening. It went so fast that it was hard for me to keep up! But they are still playing as I am here typing this post. His dad is currently up 5 games on him, haha!

Side note…

If you have any suggestions to help my husband’s game get better, feel free to leave them here. (Also don’t tell him about this or I’ll be the one in the dog house).

When poised with the question, “What is your favourite story?” I find it so very hard to choose. One story does stand out recently as a favourite of mine though. The love story of Feyre and Rhysand; A Court of Thorns and Roses. It’s one of those “Teen Fantasy” that should actually be marketted to adults kind of stories. Your typical good girl ends up in a big mess, falls for the bad guy and they don’t realize it but they were destined to be together, kind of cheesy love stories. Just through in a lot of violence, bloodshed, wars, and fantasy storytelling, and you’ve got the perfect story for me!

Now this sounds kind of harsh, but I can’t do the plain love story. I get bored when good girl meets bad boy, falls in love and they live happily ever after. I want some characters to die off. I want the bad guy to win. Especially when he is described and visualized as well as Rhys is, if you know what I mean. “Meet your next book boyfriend” as I have seen him described.

Why this story?

What does this story have that made me fall so in love with it? Sarah J. Maas is a fantastic visual writer. I feel like I am in the story with the characters. My husband thought I was crazy as I cried with them and completely lost myself in the story as I was reading the book. It adheres to so many of the 22 Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar. The characters are thrown into situations that seem to have nothing to do with their strengths. Feyre is a mortal human who finds herself in the Fae realm where she is vulnerable to everything. Absolutely every kind of creature in the realm is dangerous to her, and most want to eat her.

Without spoiling the story for you, (because that is just the worst!) she ends up adapting and fitting right in. She escapes the toxic relationship she is initially in, and finds her heart mate, but it is not all fun and games and sweet nothings. He is the mortal enemy of most Fae in the realm; the bad guy. The characters which continued to develop over the series, and the twisting plot lines, sucked me right into the story.

#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.

This whole series is a story of the stakes being stacked against Feyre. They are stacked even further against her and Rhys making it as a couple. It takes so long for them to find each other and then build up their relationship and trust to a level that allows them to be together, that it seems the whole world starts falling apart around them.

From the beginning when Feyre is introduced as the oldest child of a family of 3 sisters, whose mother had died years ago, living in poverty, to her being brought to the Fae lands because she had killed a faerie without provocation (even though he appeared as a wolf to her), she is the underdog. She is then basically held captive by Tamelin, and nearly marries him, while knowing that something wasn’t right. This is one of the first times that Rhys swoops in to save her, while readers are still led to believe that he is the bad guy in the plot line.

Is there ever a happily ever after?

Even when we start to think that the wars and things are settling down, there is still turmoil for Feyre. Near the end of the series it is turmoil with her sisters, and I really enjoyed that the books switched gears and moved to Nesta being the main character instead of Feyre.

All in all, I highly recommend the Court of Thorns and Roses series to any avid fantasy-love story readers. Fastastic story to keep pulling you in over and over again. There is also such a following that there are playlists on Spotify that fans have created to go along with the moods/themes of the books and relationships within those books. Such a great series!