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Lessons
Intro
1Workshop Intro
03:18Foundations
2Gear
12:14 3Gear - My Camera Bags
08:00 4Mastering Camera Settings
07:41 5Blue Hour, A How-To
10:45 6Photos That Move Us
07:19Visual Storytelling 101
07:51 8Endurance In A World Of Sprinting
06:27 9Keeping Your Ideas Fresh
08:31 10Building Your Story Arc
06:44 11Shooting More: Action Plan
02:01 12Conveying Emotions
07:52In the Field
13The Assignment: Himalaya Pre-Pro
12:08 14In the Field: The Himalaya Defender Shoot
20:29 15The Assignment: Canon Pre-Pro
10:25 16In the Field: Canon USA Shoot
15:06Editing
17Keywords & Organizing Images
06:42 18Commercial Grading
04:47 19Masking & Radial Filters
12:33 20Perspective Correction
05:39 21HDR (Hand-Held)
03:37 22Black & White Edits
07:00 23Before & Afters
01:33 24Moody Grading
13:15 25IG Export Settings
04:00 26Web Export Settings
02:44 27Clone Stamping & Patch Tools
05:51 28Grading in Lightroom
06:45 29Hand-Held Panoramas
03:41 30Radial Filters Pt 2
02:38 31Delivering Files to Clients
12:33 32Archiving & Organizing Images
10:15 33My Favorite Software
03:44Business
34Let's Talk Business
01:03 35Building A Desirable Portfolio
11:17 36How to Contact Clients
12:00 37Prospecting: Finding Brands That Fit You
04:16 38Getting Clients To See Our Value
10:16 39Paid to Travel the World
14:48 40The Art of Making Moodboards & Treatments
08:09 41Keys To A Fulfilling Career
07:40 42Three Things You Need To Know Before Pitching
06:19 43Finding Your Value Proposition
08:02 44Media Kit: A Walk Through
08:06 45How I Built My Audience
07:46 46Social Media Landscape
07:32 47Module Recap
03:08Bonus - Everything To Know About Filters
48Do You Need Lens Filters?
09:36 49Filters in The Field
12:40Bonus - Find Your Path
50Find Your Path
07:44Bonus - How To Print Your Work
51Why Print or Sell Photos
23:21 52Preparing Photos for Print
06:44 53Reviewing Major U.S Printers
06:57Lesson Info
Archiving & Organizing Images
This episode is all about organizing your photos and then backing them up in a safe way. It's something that took me a while to do. It's not something that's you know, infinitely entertaining but it's something you have to do as a photographer. So consider this as a step by step graduation into the life of having a RAID like this one. Why I moved to a RAID system, you might be wondering. So I'm not gonna dwell on the problem. And I'm gonna assume that you're pretty frustrated with having to deal with, you know, a ton of hard drives and that, you know, your entire life's work is spread between your house and your friend's house and your office in different hard drives. So I used to roll like this for a while but at some point it was just getting a little crazy, a little outta hand. Essentially you want a RAID with at least four hard drive bays, because two won't be enough. And it's not gonna be as secure, anyways. This one is a Pegasus R4. It's got four bays and it's awesome. Essentiall...
y RAIDs make everything easier, right? To have tons of storage. Here, this one is 16 terabytes which becomes 12 terabytes usable. And then I have a 40 terabyte that's on the other side of the room for video stuff which takes a lot more room, right? So the advantage is that your archive is accessible in a few seconds, right? I wanna see a photo of 2014, easy, it's on the RAID. I don't have to go find a hard drive in the basement. I want 2019, it's on the RAID too. Everything is on the RAID. The biggest thing is that RAIDs give you peace of mind, right? You don't have to worry about losing all your stuff. To get a bit more technical I recommend using a RAID 5 setup. Essentially it means that one of your drives can fail you know, out of the four or the six or the eight that you have. But you'll still keep all your data. It also makes image access much quicker, right? The downside of RAID 5 is that you lose a portion of total storage. That's why this one is 16, essentially. There's four times four terabyte drives there, so 16. But the RAID five takes a few terabytes off it to give you that redundancy. So it becomes 12 usable. But it's massively worth it. And it's the best way to run a RAID. One thing that I've learned is that you want to keep a spare drive for when one of these fails, right? They'll fail about it once every year, every two years. And instead of waiting for a shipment to come so you can keep using your RAID I have one ready to go in the gear room and I can just hot swap it in and we're good to go, right? You don't wanna use your RAID when one of your drives is dead, right? Like when the little light will flash orange means a drive is dead. Don't use it. Cause if God forbid another one breaks then you're out of luck, it's all gone. Like I said earlier, this is a Pegasus3 R4 RAID. It's made by Promise Technology. This is not sponsored in any way. It's just the best thing I found. It just thunderbolts, means it's really fast. And for video I have a QNAP NAS NAS means network attached storage. It's a boring term to mean that you can access your stuff from the internet. In terms of drives I'm running these from Seagate. Western Digital is another brand that you can trust. Essentially, you wanna make sure the SATA, S-A-T-A, they are, the bigger the drive, the slower it spins. So these are a pretty sweet spot. It's 5,900 RPMs, meaning it's a bit faster. And the transfer speed of, the claim transfer speed of the drives is about six gigabytes per second. I know that spending, you know, spending money on storage isn't the most exciting thing to do as a photographer. Like, because there's so many other things that you can do with your money, you know that can benefit your career in other ways. But if you're just an ounce serious about your career you just really need to get a RAID. It sucks, but it'll keep your archive easily accessible and safe for the years to come. (camera shutter clicking) Now, let's talk about online backups. Online backups are the second step into getting a pro workflow, right? This is a quick dive in to the existing backup systems that are out there. Like I said, the first step towards making a pro workflow is to have a RAID with all your catalogs in there. And, now this is supposed to not fail, right? But if I keep my RAID at the studio and the building catches on fire one day well the archives gone, right? That's a single point of failure. And I wouldn't wanna do that. That's why it's pretty crucial that you use an online backup service to take your entire RAID to the cloud. It's just extra peace of mind. So in my previous workshop I recommended the Backblaze Personal. I still think it's a fantastic backup solution. It costs about 60 bucks per year. And there's a few things I wanna tell you about it though, right? That might not make it ideal for you. For example, let's say that you have 10 terabytes on it just for the sake of easy math. And let's say that the RAID exploded, right? It would be bit of a process to restore it. Because Backblaze Personal, they struggle to and I had a good chat with them the other day on their chat to make sure that I could give you the best information. So the limitation they have is that you can only restore 500 gigabyte zip files every single time. So the max backup they can give you at once is 500 gigs. So if you have a 10 terabyte, you know, thing to restore it'll take you 20 zip files. And these zip files take a bit of time to generate on their end. The lady there told me that it would take you between three and five days to get everything back. Assuming you have a fast internet connection. Which is, to me it's pretty much okay. You can also restore your files with the hard drive they ship you. And that's, the issue with that is that it's limited to seven and a half terabytes per shipment. They also have a three to five business day delay per terabyte. So you want a terabyte it's three to five days. So you would have to wait about 35 to 50 days to get your 10 terabytes back. Cause they'd have to do two shipments. I wouldn't even wanna deal with like the mail backup where they ship your drive. I would just do the internet and, you know just do the 20 times 500 gig zip files. I think three to five days to get my archive back is pretty okay. Especially cause the odds that this building will catch on fire are pretty slim. Let's say you don't wanna deal with three to five day delays, right? Backblaze has another product that's called B2. And for 10 terabytes it'll cost you about $720 a year. So that B2 service that they run will cost you about $720 a year. And we use it for the video RAID, just because it can do backups on its own. But you could use B if you don't wanna deal with those wait times. And B2 can give you 10 terabyte zip files at once. Meaning you could get the archive back just in one go. That's the limitation, 10 terabytes max. So if you have 13 terabytes you'd have to do one 10 and one you'll be done in a day. So you save a bit of time. And by the way, this is not in any way sponsored by Backblaze. I don't get any kickbacks or anything like that from them. It's just, I've tried CrashPlan and Backblaze And there's another one I read about but it didn't seem to be I think it's called, don't remember how it's called. So I've used these two services and ended up deciding that Backblaze was the best. So going back to Backblaze personal because Backblaze personal, the one that's $60 a year what it does is that it mirrors your RAID, right? So if you delete a file from it it'll get deleted from the cloud. B2, however, the difference is that it will keep the file until you delete it. So it's more of a, it's more of a storage system. So if you have slow internet, I don't recommend using an online backup system though, right? Because it will take you 30 years to back up 12 terabytes. Like with regular ADSL. So I wouldn't wanna think about that. And let's say you finish backing it up. You'd have to download everything again. And that too would take another 15 years. So not a viable solution. So if you don't have the luxury of having fast internet, which is okay and most of Europe doesn't have fast internet especially in rural areas. I know from experience. You can run a different system. It has redundancy built in too. And it's a mix of a RAID, okay? But we're forgetting about online. We're just using a RAID and we're using, at your studio or wherever you work, you'd have a RAID, okay? And then at your house, or if you work in your house you'd have, at a friend's house we'd have two times eight terabyte drives. G Drives, the brand G drives makes them, I recommend them. So you'd keep all your stuff in the RAID at your house or office. And then you'd take every time, you know every other week that you'd put stuff in your RAID you'd bring that drive from your house or from your friend's house dump the footage or the photos in it and then take it back to that person's place, right? The same day. Meaning that if this place burns down your friend's house is not gonna burn down at the same time which means your stuff is safe, right? So that's another way you can back up things without using internet services. It just requires a bit more work because you have to, you know deal with taking the drive from that place and here and back and a little bit of that, but it's still way worth it. Just considering that your stuff is safe. As a photographer your archive is the most valuable thing you can have, right? Your years of work your entire livelihood and income are based in this little box of drives, right? So you have to treat your files and your photos with the most, you know, utmost respect. It's one of these things that you may never have to use it. Maybe in ten years you're never gonna have a drive failure, right? But the day that something happens you're gonna be so thankful that you just acted and got a RAID and got some online backup systems or just another single point of redundancy to be safe. It's what sets the pros apart from, you know the amateurs who go around with all their drives and lose half of them. So I know it's not the funnest expense but spend a few thousand bucks on that RAID. Or if you can save up for that and get at least an online backup system going. (camera shutter clicking)
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Jon
Not What I Was Expecting Let me just start by saying that the workshop was very good. There were lots of things that I learned and many insights I took away. Perhaps the greatest bit of wisdom imparted to me was not anything Alex said but how he approached every subject he talked about. I felt that he was talking to me as a friend, very personal and open book. This was both a blessing and a curse as the course tends to meander around and is not as structured as others I've taken. Alex's passion for the highest quality, and craftsmanship in every aspect of his business, is very evident. From the premiums he charges, to the attention to detail in client deliveries. This is where my review is going to give some hopefully constructive criticisms. For someone so focused on a premium experience I was a surprised to find the course a bit sloppily assembled, and the videography and editing lackluster. This is coming from a videographer and someone with a lot of experience in online training. A few short examples to illustrate my point include: repeating segments of the edit (in some instances the exact same segment), poor framing. Colors changing between cuts, and my biggest pet peeve, not leaving photo examples on for long enough to see them. These are all small things, but they add up, and along with the topics meandering, left me a bit disappointed. I'm curious who you would say this class is aimed towards. Amateurs, mid-level, or experts? The assumption of who you are addressing changes throughout the course. I feel like with a bit of work from an instructional designer, and some editing cleanup, you could help hone this course to be one of the best out there. I feel like I need to do a more in depth review than will fit here, to actually explain this well. Let me know if that would be helpful to you. One other note: When I signed up for a workshop on Adventure Photography, I honestly thought it would be more field focused. The field examples were all shoots for products, and not shoots documenting an adventure. I guess I had just hoped to learn that side of the storytelling process more. Getting into the nitty gritty of being wet, cold, and dirty, and still shooting bangers. The section on filters (going out and building the snow cave) was more what I thought this course was going to be. Anyhow, with all that said, I still found it valuable and worthwhile. To summarize, the course feels a bit unpolished and in some ways unfinished though there is still great value. I've taken Jimmy Chin's Masterclass on adventure photography and it felt very structured and highly polished. I purchased "Adventure Pro" on the "finish in a month" discount. I would have felt ripped off if I had paid full price with the course in its current state. Thanks for reading and I hope my criticisms come as helpful. As I've already mentioned I'd be happy to further elaborate.
Topher Hammond
One of the best photography investments I'm only 1/4 of the way through Alex's course and I feel like I already have a loose plan on how I can move forward in my own career as a photographer. I felt like my work was lacking a specific feeling. The way that Alex articulated ideas on how to convey emotion in your imagery and building that overarching story arc for your own life narrative were super helpful to focus on how to make my work better. Super looking forward to the rest of this course. Thanks Alex and team!
Sergi Mas de xaxars Rosell
Great Workshop I learned quite a lot with this workshop. Because I'm in the industry for 5 years now, there were a few things I already knew. On the other hand, Alex showed me different and more effective ways to improve my business. I like the way he gives the lessons, always in a personal and close way. This is the knowledge I wish I had when I started. Totally worth it!