Missy Cochran Oregon Photographer

I put some new pics on this older post. Check it out: Ian and Kelsey

This is just a quick post to give Lorna a quick peek at what I got for her family.  I love the trike one since it’s just a little too big, ha ha.  Good times!

I have so much to say about WPPI that I just don’t know where to begin.  Since this is the case, I will do what most people would do and that is to start at the beginning.  Mel and I had so much fun driving and being silly and reading to each other.  The drive took longer than we thought it would and it started getting pretty late.  We were driving from Reno to Vegas and there was a police officer in front of me.  He was fiddling with his spot lights and Mel (my sister) wondered what he was looking for.  Right as she thought that very thought, she looked to the side of the road and saw a car in the ditch.  She only saw a small portion of the car, though, because it was in a ditch.  She figured that was what the officer was looking for and insisted that I flash my lights to get his attention.  We flashed and flashed and flashed some more and finally the cop pulls over onto the side of the road and gets out to start walking toward us.  I leaned my head out the window and yelled, “Are you looking for a car in a ditch?”  And he says, “Yep, and it would be a lot easier to find it if you weren’t riding my tail and flashing your lights!!!”  I say, “well, we saw it about 50 yards back up the road.” and he said, “Well, what color was it?”  He said this very gruffly like he was very suspicious that we were up to no good.  I looked at Mel since she is the one who saw it and she said, “red” and he said, “Well, that is the color of the vehicle I am looking for.  You may pass me.”  That version is a little bit abridged for the sake of my fingers, but it was our first adventure.

Our second adventure was that we saw Jose Villa at the trade show!!!  Talk about fanfare!  It was all Mel and I could do not to run up to him screaming and pulling our hair out Beatles fan style.  Turns out that there are a bunch of photography celebrities at the convention, but not only is Jose Villa our favorite, but he also spoke to a small group at the Fuji booth for about half hour.  It was a total coincidence that we got to see him speak since there are about 10,000 photographers at the conference and the trade show is huge and we didn’t know he would even be there for that blip of time.  His words were so inspiring and I love that he follows his artistic sensibilities more than he follows a proper business sense.

We learned a ton researching the products shown there which was the whole point of going and we found out that we love White House Custom Colors lay flat books.  They were awesome and I will be ordering a sample soon!

In the evenings we hung out with Mel’s friends who live there and who we were staying with to save some moolah.  It was so fun to see the dancing water at the Bellagio.  The city was beautiful with the crisp cool air and blue sky.  The huge hotels on the strip laid the foreground of snow covered mountains in the distance.  Minus all the corruption of gambling and scantily clad posters everywhere downtown, it was an amazing place!

On the way home we had another crazy adventure.  It was the afternoon and we were going north on I-5 coming home when a man driving southbound fell asleep at the wheel and drove through the median and foggered (referencing the old atari game) through a bunch of northbound traffic (us) and over the highway through a fence and into the fruit tree of an apple orchard.  How do I know he fell asleep, you may wonder.  Well, when he hit the tree, we pulled over and Mel ran over to the car while I called 911.  He was dazed, but had no serious injuries and another woman who jumped out of her car to help turned out to be a trauma nurse.  It was so surreal to see this all happen right before my very eyes and also to know that the reality is that we could have been seriously injured if the man hadn’t been blessed enough to miss all the traffic.  It was a miracle!!

Here are some more pictures from my kids session last week.  I am playing with some new actions in photoshop.  They aren’t that different, but if you want to, let me know what you think.

I might be in a little over my head. This is how it all happened to become crazy. Since it is winter, the very slowest time of the year for my photography, I have been setting up a lot of practice sessions. That is where I call a friend or another photographer and ask if I can take some pictures of them. I get a lot of ideas rolling around in my brain and I like to try out new ideas without the pressure of having to please anyone else. Anyway, I have two such sessions today and very cleverly spaced them out so there would be plenty of time for both.

“Que the monkey wrench!”

Yesterday afternoon I get a phone call. The man sounds slightly paniced an wants to find out if I can do a photo session with his daughter, two dogs, and himself. It’s for his wife and it’s for Valantine’s day. Every part of me that actually respects my own time told me to tell him “no” and then I remembered that the whole reason I am working hard during the off winter season is to encourage people to pay me to do what I love and what I am good at, photography! Then I mentally slapped myself and said to myself, “Self! This is a real client! I know you aren’t used to getting them in the winter, but this is what it’s all about!” So I sqeezed him in.

This part is awesome, I love his request! He wants a quick group photo with the above mentioned people and then he needs it printed today. Here is what we firgured out. He comes over, we spends ten minutes getting a nice group shot, come to my office, I download the images, He picks his favorite, I get the selected image print ready and burn it to a disc, he goes to get it printed at a one hour photo place. All this while his wife is at the gym because he doesn’t want her to find out until he gives it to her. Is that sweet or what?

Because I don’t like the thought of having a 1-hour photo of my work displayed in anyones home, I intend to send a nice print to him in the usual 2-4 week print delivery time to replace the one-hour photo.

And now for WPPI!! I am so exited to say that Mel (my sister) and I are going on a road trip to Vegas! WPPI stands for Wedding & Portrait Photographers International. They host the largest photography convention in the US and they have the largest trade show for photographer vendors too. Mel and I leave on Monday and we will be back on Thursday. I plan to take lots of pictures and give a full report (a fun report) when I get back.

A little later………….

Okay, here are some images from the second session.  Happy Valentine’s Day!!!

That title should be sung to the tune of the parent trap movie (the  60s version).  Anyone know it? Okay, I am just throwing this out there for everyone. Many of you know that I am a member of the wedding photography forum at the b school. We get together once a month to talk shop and hang out. It is so very casual and I love it! By the way, anyone is welcome to join in on that. If you want me to put you on the mailing list of where and when we are meeting, let me know!

Here is my thought. Since the above mentioned group is made mostly of wedding photographers, how many of you out there would feel benefited doing one for portrait photographers? Basically what I am asking is this, If I were to try to plan a portrait photographers get together that is very laid back, would you want to come?

Here is my other thought. Are there enough casual photographers (having no professional aspirations, just wanting to get better at taking snapshots or pictures of their children)that read this blog and would feel benefited by either a mini workshop or even a questions answer get-together with a panel of photographers willing to help them and answer their questions, or just me answering questions, ha ha.

What do you think?

Missy Cochran is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oregon area
my website ~ blog home

Okay, so I wanted to make the header of my blog like a slideshow with these images as each slide or even try to get them to randomly generate whenever my blog page is refreshed but I can’t get it to work how I want it to. If I have to stick to one image, which one should I use? Any pereferences?

Photos by Dianne Bentz

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home

She took pics of me and I took pics of her, same time and same locations. Super fun!

I love this one because Dianne’s butt looks super tiny in it. No photoshop necessary, ha ha

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home

Yay, I had a photo session done with me in it! My friend and photographer Dianne Bentz got together with me on Saturday and we took pics of each other. I will post the images I got of her soon.

It’s a really weird things about photographers, we love taking pictures but very often feel uncomfortable in front of the camera. If you are camera shy, I totally understand the feeling! I am really trying to get over it and come out of my shell a little bit for your sake! I want you, my blog readers, to know who I am. No need to hide behind the camera all the time, right? Of course right!

Of course I used all my favorite editing programs to make myself a little thinner and a little prettier, ha ha!

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home

I don’t usually go back into old sessions and rework the images, but I am making some exceptions and wanted to post some of the reworked images. Again, some of you may have already seen some of these, but there should be some new ones too.

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home

Hello to you all this fine evening. Mel has been helping me revamp the website today and it has been a tedious process. I realized that one of my favorite senior sessions wasn’t on the website yet, so in addition to putting them up, I am sharing them again. There might be a few here that I didn’t post before, but I wanted them on the new blog too, they are just that cool.

My biggest inspiration for high school senior sessions (for the girls anyway) is the Free People catalogue. Such cool lifestyle stuff! I love finding a cool place around Hillsboro or Portland that is rustic and has personality. I have even gone to Hood River and left Oregon for Washington to get some really fun photographs.

On another note, I just changed my portrait prices…again. I am the happiest I have ever been with them, though! So, the session and travel for the first half hour and 5×7 proofs of 60-80 images is 580 and then there is a list of a bunch of add-ons you can do. The proofs are really great quality, though, so you could use them on your wall. Also, the online ordering hasn’t been fabulous for a lot of people, so you can actually use the proofs to order because the file name is on the back of them. If you wanted to get proofs and that’s it, that is totally cool too.

Some of you may be thinking, “Why would Missy print proofs in this digital age?” I will tell you, it’s because the way I photograph in any situation has a very lifestyle feel. The story never feels complete when people order a few image for the wall and I worry that all the other cool pics will feel left out. One of the biggest complaints that I get from clients is that there are too many good ones to choose from. They are just to hard to narrow down and make an order. Wouldn’t it be nice if you got all of them from the get go? Then any other items you order would be icing on the cake.

Missy Cochran ~ is a lifestyle and wedding photographer in the Portland Oreogn area
my website ~ blog home