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Editing Senior Guy Shoot Part 1

Lesson 26 from: Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business

Matthew The Body Kemmetmueller

Editing Senior Guy Shoot Part 1

Lesson 26 from: Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business

Matthew The Body Kemmetmueller

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Lesson Info

26. Editing Senior Guy Shoot Part 1

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Lesson Info

Editing Senior Guy Shoot Part 1

So you got to see that was a couple of different lighting setups, couple of different looks, we did the sports collage. I mean, we're flying on this stuff, right? I just realized that I was typing my password in and I have the thing that shows the keystrokes on and I was like, I don't know that's going out on creative live, I don't know if I should share my password with the world or not. I was about to have to change a lot of accounts slightly worried. All right, so I told you guys about the pro form it's, a website that my buddy uses that's. Actually, I did download this action on to the computer right before we started. They didn't have it installed on this new laptop. Kirk is the guy that makes these actions these are all available for free on the pro form it's, a forum it's, a place to hang out for photographers and it's a lot of places where, especially when I was just starting out my career, this was like a place where I got a lot of inspiration from and if I had questions about...

steps that I was taking in my business, it was always a good place for me to go and, like, kick around ideas. And I can't say enough good things about that man like he has been so good to me and helped me out throughout the years and how kind of steer the direction my business he is why I'm so obsessed with workflow, any feedback online we have any questions coming in you know I have a question here from photos b d how would a female photographer relate differently toe a male senior when you were calling him dude or man would that be? Do you think that would be a bit awkward for a female fighter? I guess it depends on whether she speaks brauer ah again it's establishing that connection and that was an easy way for me to relate to him like he was he was feeling it he was into it it worked and so it's important that you guys figured that out and now that may not be the way that you could talk even if you're a guy that may not be the thing it's not gender, it just might be your thing. I'm gonna reboot my computer real quick also I have a question because you say like this would have been your initial package, correct? Yes now if I'm not mistaken, you said they would take thirty minutes or so dad, did you say up to thirty minutes because that was way faster than thirty minutes so I mean way sell it as up to forty five we sell it is up to forty five minutes and it's always one of those things where if you have session fees this is the important thing about it's all it all comes back to meeting your client's expectations so if you are if you tell someone that they got in our long shoot just got to take an hour otherwise they feel cheated okay they feel like they didn't get a good session so what if you got it in half a knauer but you tell them your sessions going to be an hour you're stuck at an hour you've got to do an hour find something teo shoot mohr do whatever you've got to take up that our otherwise it's just a bad experience okay, so what we do is we say that session is booked for up to forty five minutes but it typically doesn't take that long and so make sure that we go over that when we're talking like during the session we say like it's forty five minute session we don't think it's going to take that whole time um all right, but yeah, it comes back to your interaction it really does and if you convey the expectations that it may not take that long then it generally won't you know what I'm like, you're still meeting their expectations you're still giving them a good experience and then they can feel like they're getting cheated by them time, you know, so all right, so I'm gonna hop up, take a couple of questions, um, see if you guys have anything as we get the computer up and running on this. So going through that though, explaining the to the different light sources that we have basically the strip lights give you that hard, edgy light and that's not right for most portrait it's going to give you a weird look and it's not going to be kind of what your clients are expecting, but if you're doing something like, especially even with with boudoir photography, if you have a bigger girl coming in and you use a harder light and you can create those shadows and control where they go it's a wayto thin someone down without liquefying its a wayto thin someone down just through the pose in the lighting. So it's really, really important use the same eddie type shot our lighting for a female athlete that comes into this really? Absolutely, because at that point we are going like the athlete looked the athlete expression it's very much like we go like we want to go game day like I don't like my sports photography like the stuff of the collage and stuff I don't like junior, the hockey stick I don't do that because it doesn't convey the message that I want to in the message that we're doing is like we are aggressively like we're doing this is game day were good this is it you know what I mean? So the sports collages if you do it right it's an easy way to bump up your your sales it's like in the sports stuff will be popular like you could sell it, but it won't take away from your wall portrait it won't take away from the other stuff. This is an ad on purchase. Okay, so what's the next session so we did three, three, three, three, four were into five on him and I'm just gonna copy that enter we're gonna go in here and we're going to rename our job folder we're gonna go in here and we're gonna rename this folder to ross again. The reason why we do that is now everybody knows that this folder has been downloaded and has been worked on. So if you get to my studio, you're going to know that it's okay for you to touch this this memory card because when you press play on the back, your camera it's going to show, you know images even though they're still there, but because we've renamed them it's going to look like they aren't there all right, go go memory card that's the one thing that's thinks about the one gig cards that we use is there such old technology that they generally right really really slow s o the newer guards khun scream on it but it would lead to more overshooting so all right, so we've downloaded we've changed the file name we've rejected our card now we're going to start working on these images just goingto launch the light room catalog but double clicking and I'm gonna go right to my library window and I'm going to import my rahs like this all right? Now remember we have we're adding the files to the catalogue and we're going to run a default import on says it's going across now on this session we did shoot a couple more than one and that was legitimately like he was blinking and a couple and I wanted to redo those ones because he smiling so let's go through and pick these files these six right here one, two, three, four five six those are good. All right, so we know that it's gonna be one of these too and that is the loser and we know that it's gonna be way that we can get rid of that one way that we could get rid of that one, you know that one I was looking at you day ah so now we know are doing pick pick pick pick pick pick what's going look at these two real quick we only need one of those get rid of that one okay it's good call so go down in our catalog and we're gonna filter by flag and we got I didn't flag all those hold on, flag it, play it, play it get rid of that one love it love it oops love it love it love it love it all right so now let's filter our flags k eighteen I'm good with that because we're doing six in the sports clash and we want twelve right? All right p s does that not just look awesome because he actually has abs in that shadow like right down the middle that's straight out the camera susan pick your job. Um okay he's in college we're gonna go to the development code we're going to stay in this mode actually, we go back to this, we're going to select all of our flay photos were going to rename them we're going to rename them three, three, three, three, five go all right, now we're going to go in to the raw folder here and we're going to add a sub pulled it and that's gonna be our picks and we're going to include the selective files they're going now we're going to go into our devout develop module make sure we're good on stuff right? So because we don't want to see all of the rejected ones we want to make sure that we are on this folder that's going to knock out all the ones we didn't pick we're gonna hit keyboard shortcut d to go back to the development all right, so these images slide up just a little bit now I wanted you guys to see as well when I was working on this stuff that I was pulling making sure scholar was nice making sure that the time I was hanging correctly that was really, really important to the shoot to make sure that we nailed that for him because otherwise you know his mom's not here to watch him so we gotta make sure we get it all all right, so these are pretty good so I just selected all those settings just to make sure I got it cool, cool, cool, cool. He kind of looked like a realtor in that one shot, so I'm not gonna lie. Um let's go with ease and let's pace those settings pretty good. Now in this image I'm probably getting the one that I selected I'm probably gonna have to go in and brighten up his face is that in pulling that reflector like quite close enough so that's okay, because we can fix that in post but that was that was my fault do we like the smiling photo we won't keep it I know you were the smiling photo okay get rid of that he's not going to like it it's just for his mom huh and so before I get questions uh from the chat room but now he's renamed the files and that one's going to be weird I would go in and rename the renamed files and move that one out to the other folder so it's not in there fix my crop next crop and this lighting is like super simple things are hard it's just two lights mess around with it until you see that you're getting that shadow where you want it to right down the middle it gives you like creepy catch lights but it's still kind of cool and there's one more I have to go back and straighten the keyboard shortcut to straighten is are and then we hold down the option of the command key to pull up the ruler thing you just dragged across gives you straight line okay let's go back to this let's go back to this file and renamed this now they are never ever ever going to see this files name it whatever I want that photo was a loser and now I'm just gonna go back to my grid view of that loser file and I just drag it back and if they ask me do you know you're moving your files? Yes, move it all right, so now we got our finnish files back in this pic fuller so let's select all of them and let's rename these one more time so that we have good named files we're not going to name these loser three, three, three, three, five go file export with pre set standard export go e feel like I need someone up here with like like a spritzer bottle and I you're killing again. Uh, so all right, so that's it for our basic adjustments in light room. Now remember I was telling you guys the way we use light room for our workflow is simply tow clean like get good color, good density and view our images and figure out which ones were gonna work on that's all light room is used for okay, so now light rooms opened up our files. We're good to go you gotta open photoshopped creative cloud who here isn't on creative cloud you aren't they just had a big sale on it. I don't know if it's still going, but it was like ridiculous because you could get light through five and photo shop for ten bucks ten bucks a month get still up and so I like and I have because of how many sitios we, how many computers I have, I'm actually running like I've multiple subscriptions because we have to all right, let's, go action. Now remember these files in particular he's going to the little ones that he's never going to be big because it's jake ual ity bitty on my sports collage, so we're only going to worry about big stuff, so I'm just using the healing brush. I'm holding the option key to select the skin that I want, where we're picking from, okay, we're not gonna worry about the bags under his eyes on this. We already ran our power and action, which is mapped to the key on my walk um, tablet now we've set his skin tone in portraiture. We're probably never gonna have to do that again. Now I'm hitting control shift af which lets me fade portraiture and I faded it to eighty percent because I don't want him to look for me clothes, clothes done alright, next one run the actions and like the real deal with this stuff is just making sure that your images look good, that you're working on like I was mentioned earlier like this is not like photo shop should not be your your image correction tool, it should just be to enhance you shouldn't be fixing things that you should have fixed in the session should just be they'll should already be good keyboard, shortcut portraiture, ronit fade it when you start fading your fortune here portraiture what's important is you want to make sure that you always have a consistent look in your editing so if you're fading it to eighty percent you can't run it twice full on the next image it's going to give your image is a weird vibe so make sure that whatever you said it teo you stick to that setting just got to make a little mental note on it yeah so and this is more indicative of like when I was saying guys have were skin than girls this kind what I'm talking about it's not necessarily like massive craters or anything but you just have to do a little bit more work on him because he's got he's got not awful skin it's far from bad but there's a few more things that are going on here than what we had with the girl you know I always like to check let's go with good one there we go remember black on the image is the part of the image that portraiture is not affecting someone we go on we select that skin tone we want most of his we want the maximum amount of his skin selected in that save it move on and I just realized I think I just realized that I missed a step in my work flow but I'm going to show you guys how to fix that at the end of this retouch so if you're sitting at home and saying ah ha I got on you didn't I oh all right so running the actions again going and they automatically run and flatten and we want to go back teo cleanup his forehead a little bit cool got it good all right and a lot of ah really little stuff is going to be taking care of my portraiture so we don't worry about every speck just the major stuff go in here coco call don save move that's a cool image I should give that one like printed I should leave that one for my studio get a big arctic tour campus of that have him buy it from me later you should put that in his dorm room good work I wonder if that work was like a college pickup line if you like we should get him a campus of this so that he could use it to impress girls that's from one of my modeling gigs it didn't go major press there was there were creative differences between the magazine company and the artist but so as you're doing it matthew what s so you're just still killing brush to clean up skin that you have going here yep and not the spot healing brush which is important it's just the regular healing brush which allows me to tell it where I want the skin that I'm using I'm able to tell it where it comes from because that save you all right now we're into his rick regular session stuff so the editing on this is gonna be pretty comparable but you'll see it's going here so that's what those crosshairs heart are when I'm picking the skin that's what I'm saying photoshopped I want you to use skin from here to fill over that stuff so it's important like here just because of the nature of there's a shift in its color because of the lighting you know what I mean skins a different shade and so you need to make sure that your pick that you're moving that picker two good skin around the subject because it's really going to give you the best options can make him look the best he's got crazy eyes huh? I ran our actions sixty percent because I don't want to make it super smooth you don't want to make it like gone because then it looks weird you just want smooth it out it's brighten his eyes are a little bit well that was a big difference on that one huh and I'm gonna sharpen them attention so I just hit keyboard shortcut k which is what we set up for a sharpened tool I'm running portraiture pick boom done you guys will notice that like I told you with the original lighting concept that we did it's really like it's simple it's simple of the figure out a way that you like toe let your clients and don't make it like some crazy complex thing figure out what it is you like the style of lighting that you enjoy the stuff that you're going to market figure out what the easiest way is to create that make it duplicate able make it easy to do like the one thing that is important is that whatever you put in your marketing whatever you show he got to be able to do that for any client any day they gotta be able to come in and get the same images so this one's a little bit dark on this side I should have adjusted the reflector on this but it happens so let's make sure that we just brighten that side up a little bit with our actions that's good that's good sharp in that's good that's good we're gonna pull up our action dashboard and we're going to run digital phil flash and the other thing that I realized that I will also put on the facebook group um tonight or tomorrow night is if you guys want a list of the actions that we use I will hook you up and I'll put all of like I'll give you my top twenty actions that you can use um that will help you figure out your workflow for some reason my shortcut wasn't working I just want to feel that in a little bit with a little bit too dark flatten portraiture run it way to be already run for trauma. I think we did that way. No, we did not. Now, as you're going through, do you have sort of a mental checklist of I need to check this, then you do this, then you need to do this or are you just looking at the picture from top to bottom? Absolutely. I have a checklist. Every image I want to go in and I want to get the bags under the eyes. I hate bags under the eyes I can't stand it so I get rid of it on all my photos. Not totally, but I reduce it. I want it bright in the photo I wanted right in the eyes I want to get rid of blemishes and I want to like those are just things that I do just by default and so it's important like like that's what standard retouching is in our studio and the other thing that's important about establishing what standard retouching is is you need to convey that those expectations to your clients we're gonna talk a little bit about this tomorrow, but like I have, I'm pretty good at photo shop. I'm not the world's best, but I'm pretty good and I'm really fast and that's important that's like that's part of what I do right, but what I don't do is like I don't do head swaps that just takes too long to go in and do a head swap if I had had someone insists upon it or something like crazy like I had high school game this one we didn't charge for it was a good customer service moment but we had not a game we shot a hockey team and a kid couldn't make it to the shoot because he was at funeral so I went back and I shot his picture and I and I had him added into the background her into the image in charge of schooling thing I just thought it was important toe have him be that I thought that was a pretty crappy reason to not be in your photo and so what I didn't want to dio are I don't want to do the work though like I don't know how to do that when I shot this I'd accidentally rolled my wheel to two hundred for the shutter speed so that's why I was a little dark on the bottom so we just crap that out um full disclosure open book so in situations like that when it's not like the standard retouching glass glare braces, removal things like that that's all stuff that I could do it I can't do it really fast and so a lot of times what I dio is it's actually cheaper for me to just send it to a company like and I'll send it out to retouch up or something and they'll do it and it's affordable and it allows me to focus on stuff that um I can do that's profitable for my business instead of like don't just think that because when we were talking about embracing roles that also you have to you have to understand how to delegate your time for it and if you're embracing your role as a business owner that might mean that it's a better deal for you to outsource some of your stuff so I'm gonna go over that tomorrow too so get rid of those bags under the eyes again we do everything at the same level with each like once I pick a level with this kid that's where I'm at so it's sixty percent on his bags under the eyes that's where we set right in the eyes sharpen them sharpened um you see that I got my history and that's all the stuff we've done go with this flatten portraiture run smooth skin fade it eighty percent close it save it run next image same thing with shutter speed there so we're gonna crop that out left a little bit of room to work with ugo in j now I messed up there because I clicked another buttons I had to go back to get it here we're good get rid of that going here now all of these images though are just solid it's solid portrait's good face shots it's good expressions it's good skin tone it's it's who you know it's outfits that the kid likes to wear and this is not meant to be a session like this is not meant to be you know, some spirit walk journey vision of this kid's life we're just getting awesome pictures and a fast amount of times that I can sell some to this mom that she's going to love and a lot of the times to your personal projects and things that you guys are really really passionate about the things that you love toe work on it's great and you love it so much you put your whole heart in your soul into these projects and because it's important to you doesn't mean that there's value in it to a customer so do it for you but know that you're doing it for you and focus on your work running portraiture on it go in brightness eyes up what's up oh I did um you know what? No I didn't it's in the history status twice because originally when I set this action up it was set to run portraiture on someone else's skin so that's why when portraiture opens every time I run that action it gives me that nothing selected so even though it's run it never has hit his skin tones it's. Just it's. Not working, so it says it ran it twice. It didn't, but I didn't fade it. So let's, go in and hate it here.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Lightroom Start to Finish Guide
Order Catalog
Step by Step LR5 and PS Workflow
Keynote 1
Keynote 2
Jen's Design
Lightroom Templates for Ordering
Keynote 3
Syllabus and Keystroke Shortcuts
Order Catalog PSDs

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

I decided to listen in on the free course of Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business w/ Matthew Kemmentmueller...I thought it would be good to have the skill sets even if I chose to do another photography forum other than seniors. And I was laughing thru the whole thing...he is one funny guy!! So, I decided to buy it...not only is this course full of great tips/advice/ and "did you know facts" but it's really informative and again, he is down right funny. I'm learning lots. Thanks for having him on Creative Live...this one is a keeper.

Diane Yvon
 

I absolutely loved this course. I am primarily a maternity and newborn shooter and to my surprise what I learned here applies to my current work as well as developing my senior work. I thoroughly enjoyed Matthews delivery of each topic as it was clear, precise, fun and non intimidating. I will watch this over and over and the course downloads were amazing! 100% satisfied with this course

fcaisp
 

Matthew's class is excellent! I watched it live, but decided to buy it since it's so foundational. I think his information and materials are excellent, whether someone wants to be "high volume" or not. I love how he continually drove the point home about how so many photographers overwork themselves and gave excellent ways to resolve this issue. CL does such a great job of covering the gamut in education of all types. Thanks!

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