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File Storage Q&A

Lesson 11 from: Build a High Volume Senior Photography Business

Matthew The Body Kemmetmueller

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Lesson Info

11. File Storage Q&A

Lessons

Lesson Info

File Storage Q&A

I was shooting an engagement session one time, and I'm going through the with the couple were going around this park, we're doing pictures, and it was a lot of fun, and they're like, oh, so what do you got going on the rest of the weekend? So we're going to go tow home depot and whatever, and they said, what do you have in all my days full of seniors? And I'm shooting seniors all day, and they said, really, like, there's a market for that? Oh, my gosh, you guys, but I feel like right now is crunch time for senior photos. I'm doing so many seniors right now, it's insane, and what what what do they do with the pictures? And then is a well, you know, like parents want to hang them up, and so they do the seniors that it isn't, but the parents of the seniors want to hang up these photos it isn't, and that's what I realized that the confusion was they were thinking senior citizens, and we're talking about high school, senior photography. What happens if it's a huge thing in the u s and it va...

ries a little bit by region, but in the midwest, especially high school, senior portrait's are a big deal. You go in and you do a portrait session you hire a professional photographer and you do a session showing up it's to celebrate your accomplishments of graduating high school so the yearbook photos that go into most of our schools with the exception of one you are allowed to turn in any photo you want from any photographer and so the market for that is that obviously some other big major massive photography companies that I won't name do a lot of yearbook photos but the quality and the personalization isn't there because they're shooting thousands of kids in a day I mean I respect the business model I get it but you aren't going to do a full session so by having the senior year students are rewarded with the opportunity to turn in a photo that better shows their personality something of a little bit higher quality hopefully and shows off more of them so high school seniors are like seventeen and we generally shoot it where I am the summer before your senior year but now down south a lot of those guys are actually shooting on the winter of the high school senior year because it's too hot to do the photography in the summer so it does kind of very by region when you do them that's fantastic thank you for that introduction like you said, I know we've got our wonderful audience around the world are watching and but you probably should have done that when we started today, but I've got to go get it covered. Now now we know you won't take about ten minutes to ask questions from earlier last segment. Yeah, absolutely fantastic! So first one from rod do you keep all your jobs in external hard drives for backups? So when it comes to file storage, we're going to go through this now, actually, but we have three folders in a finnish client folder like so the master folder will have three sub folders it's, a pix, a retouched and an edit folder. Ok, picks are straight out of the camera process j pegs that have not been touched in photo shop it's just a color corrected plane file, then we're going to go through and we removed bags under the eyes, will enhance will enhance colors, will do a whole general image, boost smooth skin. Maybe we liquefy we do all that stuff on those images and we'll save that into another folder so you'll have fifteen images in the pics. Then you'll have fifteen enhanced images in the retouch then we copy that folder and about thirty percent of those files will go in and will do mohr editing two that'll be black and white, funky color textures, things like that, I find that if you do more than thirty percent parents don't like it they get kind of annoyed because they might not enjoy as much editing as you do so we do about thirty percent now there is some duplication in that in that scenario where I said we had fifteen uh j pegs in the pics fifteen j pegs in the retention of fifteen in this edited folder ten of the retouched images are going to be identical to ten of the edits but the reason why we have the two folders is because to turn to retouch an image and turning black and white I already have to retouch it and then I'm done and then I would turn it into black and white what I do is I break it up in the two steps and then that way if my client comes in and sees an image in black and white or season image in with a texture season image with a funky color and they say I want to see that image normal I can show them a fully retouched image right that and it doesn't increase our work folks that's already a step in the process so there is a little bit of duplication but j pegs I mean hard drives are cheap it's not that much space and then the entire session with raws those go on external drives we don't put that on our server that would go on an external drive and we would keep that for one year after one year and in reality it could be like after a month if you don't speak up, I'm not going back to the ross I don't have it after a year I don't think I need to keep all that stuff, but I would always have those three sets of j pegs and the other thing about having the one that isn't touched in photo shop is like if I remove a beauty mark if the the eye enhancements they don't like if they think the skin is too smooth and they want to back it off that gives me the option to go back and start over from there okay, well, you just great you just answered the question I was going to ask, which was how long do you archive your sessions? So that's cool lot of questions came up about the cards people not quite understanding so wynne's art photography I was saying, are you saying that you rename the memory card for each client after downloading to the computer thing? I don't quite get that and then photo girl wanted to know do not form at your cards with every every use or yes, you should for meant your card before every session you absolutely should do that, but this is just a visual cue so that you know that it's done and then um if you go into my so so I go in obviously these are not going to be amazing portrait ce one good card that is a one gig card you guys probably never seen one, huh? I knew a whole session on that bad boy do a whole session and we show you guys tomorrow so if we go in and form at the card and I'm just gonna go oh, you look so like fake it s o bad way got it got it okay, so now let's just pretend that these amazing portrait's air from a section that I've done okay that says I'm gonna make so much money off of this so now what I'm going to do is go in and grab my card reader the memory card and and when we open up this memory card you guys are going to see that there's a default dc I am folder ok this holds the one hundred us five d folder which holds the j ross that I just photographed what I would do is go into this folder right now and click this and we're just going to change this to be named raws now by changing that to ross and I dragged that off of my computer and we safely eject this card so this card's good now if I put this card back in my camera and I press play it's going to say no image it's not going to read anything but those files are still there the camera just can't see them now if I go in to hit format my card we're going to see there's information on that card the files are all still there, so if I needed to go back if I didn't download them, if something happened I can always go back to this card everything is still there the camera just can't see it so it's a visual cue it's a way that you know that that's actually been done you know that that card's been worked on so it's a really, really important because like that feeling and I've had that feeling where you're like, I think I did this I'm not sure back with my work flow is not great they visit so knowing that absolutely knowing that it's done is a huge thing so you have a lot less memory on one good card if you don't reform out your card matthew and then yeah, you would format so now if I format my card, which is what I would do for a session because I want my full my full one gig of memory, I don't want to miss any of it. So now if I format my card, then those images are gone that's when it's going to race them off of that card, but until then those files everything we took is still safe so even lost anything

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Lightroom Start to Finish Guide
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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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