Among The Top Myrtle Beach Family Photographers - Michele Coleman Photography

Beach Location: We try to schedule our beach sessions to take place at Myrtle Beach State Park or Huntington Beach State Park. These parks are gorgeous beach locations for your session. Myrtle Beach State Park offers many looks including beach, pier, boardwalks and palm trees, as well as lush green landscapes with old oak trees. Huntington Beach State Park in Murrells Inlet has a beautiful beach, lush dunes, and Atalaya Castle! Another benefit to having your session at a park location is there will be no big hotels and resorts in the background. If your family cannot meet us at one of these locations, we can discuss doing the session at your location but there are certain areas of the Grand Strand where we are not allowed to do photography on the beach.

Beach Session Times: In order to create images like you see in my portfolio, your beach session must take place right at sunrise or within an hour of sunset. To check times during your preferred dates, click here for a handy tool. Benefits to a Sunrise Session: The sun comes up over the ocean and it's stunning. Kids are always more fresh and focused in the morning, less windy, less people on the beach. Sometimes at sunset/evening time, kids are already tired and bored with the beach after a day of fun in the sun. Additionally, if you get up early and do your session you still have the entire day to soak up your vacation time.

Booking Process: We require that you sign an online booking agreement and pay a retainer to hold you session time. This is all done via email and through our booking software online.

Rain Policy: Non-beach/local sessions- your deposit is applied to a rescheduled date and time. Beach/vacationers- We will keep a backup rain date and time. This might be a sunrise time if that is all I have available. If all attempts have been made to reschedule and it still rains, vendor will refund deposit. If client refuses any date and time offered to attempt reschedule then the deposit is not refundable.

Printing Your Digital Images: We will provide you with a print release form that has a list of top quality consumer print labs to choose from, all of which are online with the exception of one lab here in Myrtle Beach. We have tested the quality of these labs and know that you will get the best possible prints to represent your investment. You will also have the option to order prints and products from us inside of your private online gallery of final images. Your online gallery will be available for 3 weeks for you to download and order. After your gallery expires there is a $20 fee to re-post it online. 

Edited vs. Retouched Images: We shoot our work in digital raw and then hand edit all images for contrast, color, clarity, etc. before processing them into jpeg files suitable for printing and sharing. These are small tweaks to the images to make them look even better than they did in the camera. We do not, however, retouch or photoshop all images. Retouch/photoshop work on your images is not included in the package prices. These services can be ordered once you review your final images at a charge of $7-$10 per file depending on what you'd like done. We will retouch/photoshop a few of our favorite images before we share them on social media for your sneak peek, at no charge. Retouching includes fixing stray hair, removing acne, whitening teeth, head swaps, removing distractions from backgrounds, thinning of body, changing colors of clothing, etc.