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Month 3, Week 1 - "Office Hours" Checkin

All right, guys. Um, we're for our weekly office. Hours call. Per usual. I am skyping you from a completely different location than I was last time. This is actually my super glamorous home office here in Brooklyn. It's actually really pretty. I suppose you guys a picture later, but this makes it look like some terrible dungeon with air conditioner sticking out of the wall. But almost none of the apartments, your house Central errors that we all have with no units of some kind. But I am San. See, I have a wall unit. So that's what's going on in here. It's actually a total disaster in here because I thought that the end of wedding season would be a really great time. Teoh not only launch a brand new website for education, but also Teoh a part of my house. So I'm awesome. I pretty much have it slept since March. But I have my cup of coffee and a huge list of questions, so we're gonna get started in tackles, many of them as we possibly can. So, um, let's see question one. I wanted to know...

about positioning tips for the ceremony. You didn't give a general statement that, yes, they can't capture everything. But what I was hoping for is a visual walk through of what areas I should be positioned for different scenes in the ceremony such as the bride entry, the bride walk up, the kiss, the signing of the register, etcetera. I mean, I I hate to start out with a question that I can't answer, but there really is no solid answer to this question. Where you should stand for a ceremony really depends on what sort of location that you're in, you know, giving you places to stand for a ceremony that's taking place in a church wouldn't be the same. This places that you could stand in this fair money that's taking place outside. For example, if you're outside, you'll often have the freedom to move around so you can go behind whatever's happening or you go off to the side. Sometimes in a church, you're stuck all the way in the back, and you can't do anything except photograph everything from the back of the ill. So, you know a question like this. Um, while I understand that it would be super super helpful to be able to actually script out and then this happens and I walk here and then this happens and I walk there. There really is no visual Walk through of what areas you should be. The only real general tip that I can give you is I'm home is always in the aisle when the bride in the bridesmaids are all processing down the aisle Um, I crouched down on the mother of the bride side of the aisle. The reason why I do this is so that I can turn and look at the groom who was kind of behind me like this If I'm in front of the groom, if I want to photograph him, I have to turn all the way around. And that's you know, that's not exactly the angle for anybody is all the way around straight up their nose. So I almost always started research 20 in the aisle, floating off in the processional that comes down towards me and then I move around, and where I move around to really depends on where I'm allowed to move around to and what the ceremonies up looks like. I always try to make sure I'm back in the center aisle for the kids at the end of the ceremony and also for them to recess that down the aisle. But as far as everything else, there really is no one blueprint as to where you should go or where you should stand question to. For the next critique, images are sent and correctly should be. Resubmit them. Yes, you should do not re submit. All of them were trying to get through a critique in the time for month three live that we actually don't have time for. So where we're trying to crunch and move everything around so that we can give you more of the critique time that you were wanting, Um, you do. You can resubmit if you would like. We will send you une email confirmation saying that we got it. We haven't started downloading images yet, but I'm imagining the week after Thanksgiving will start downloading everything and sending everyone email confirmations. I also posting the Facebook group when we start sending everyone email confirmation so you'll know if email confirmations air coming out. You haven't gotten them yet. We're still not getting your images. Question three. Susan, I would love review under use of the D four d for S and T 8 10 I currently have the D four and D three s, but want to retire the D three us I'm debating between the 8 10 and the D for s. I'm concerned about the reception Focus on the 8 10 and the color of receptions at night. Since you're shooting both, I would love a review of how you feel about two cameras. And while I would love to add both, I'm not sure that I could justify three cameras on a wedding day. Okay, that's actually a great question and complicate things even further floating around in my office. Somewhere in here is 87 50. So I hold a one of them. I only have it for 45 days to shoot it and review it, so I will complicate things for you. Um, I just froze. Oh, Ambrose, complicate things for you by throwing a d 7 50 review into the next. I have not shot it yet. I've just been playing around with it at home, but I have been shooting in tandem. The G four s in the d 8 10 for about I think about 2 2.5 months now. And what I have noticed is that there are parts of the day where the D for s is absolutely King, and I will write out this huge review for it coming very soon. I promise the concerns about the reception focused on the D A 10 our ballot. If I've got a flash on the camera and I'm using the assist team and I'm shooting just guess dancing with my D 8 10 and my 28 millimeter in my flash on camera. I'm not having any problems at all, But if I'm shooting Mediate 10 with 72 flash off camera for things like parent dances, first answers and toast, I notice that the D A 10 struggles now it doesn't actually struggle. Or does it struggle because I'm comparing it the G four s, which could practically focus in the dark? I don't know. I do know that when the reception rolls around, I'm using two cameras. The D 8 10 is the one for the old dancing all the time part of the night, and then the D four passes for things that I need to be able to focus on in a little light, such as parent dances, first dances, toast, basically anything that I'm going to use with my off camera flash. It's not that the D a 10 panhandle it. It's just that the Deport as can handle it better, so I hope that helps. Oh, question for this is my first year of doing business full time this year I really Groupon promotion. I shot over 20 weddings this year and a lot of portrait. I tremendously improved my portfolio. I've even want a fearless award e twinning Romney 700 to $1000. And by the way, I'm reading the questions off my computer screen. I'm not just zoning out, so I'm not looking directly at you guys, Um, each wedding running about $702, which is incredibly low for New York. Groupon really did a great job marketing my business. My questions are, should I continue with Groupon and slowly increase my prices and shoot as many weddings I can or go for average $2,503,000 spend all my time trying to look decent brides? I mean, listen first of all Groupon is taking so much money from you. I don't know how in the world you're being profitable at all by the time you're done paying group on their incredibly large percentage, take and paying taxes and paying your cost of goods and sales. I don't know how you're making a dime when all is said and done. And you said here the group on did a great job marketing my business, but didn't Groupon did a great job marketing you as a business that gives people deals on? The problem is once you kind of become known as the photographer that's on Groupon or the photographer that you could get for really sheep on group on. That's marketing to a really specific subset of clients. I'm not necessarily certain I would want. So yes, doing a group on is going to get you a lot of work, but it's going to take a lot of your money and is not going to market you to the type of clients that they're going to refer you to other types of clients that you want. I would rather see you stop with Group on and start trying to book your own weddings. You will be much more profitable in the end, and you'll be able to reach out and connect with the clients that that you need if a client find your own group on it because they're looking for a deal. And I would hate to see you become the photographer that everyone goes to just because they want a deal. Next question. What do you think on toning black and white? I'm not talking about CPO but rather adding tent. The highlights. Yea or nay, I don't know any night. I'm not a super huge fan, but I'm also not a super huge channel of things. So you can take my word as the gospel. Really, when you're trying to figure out what you like, you know, just because I don't like C P a. Tony images, I actually almost never see Peotone image anymore at all. I used to love doing it doesn't mean that sepia images are beautiful. It just means that my processing has sort of moved away from that. But if you like it and your clients like it, there's a reason why you shouldn't do it. Next question. For clothes, A portrait of the bride. Do you do touching for your clients as part of what they pay for the package? Or do you only use skinny retouching for your blog's? Or when they order an album? We do. They're doing very, very, very light retouch on anything that's in the proof gallery. Mainly, it just means that I run portraiture on it. Or I used the totally rad pro retouch to just do a little soften and then send it on its way. But I'm talking like 10 seconds per image or less. It's not taking out lots of lines. I'm not removing blemishes. I'm not fixing straight hairs. If I can't do it in 10 to seconds, a nodule, yet I'm only doing it on maybe 10 12 images total. Anything that they want more retouching on. You will get it complimentary in your album. You will get a complimentary if you order a print through me or they can pay hourly to have me go back in and re retouch images. But I know a lot of talk percent and a lot of time retouching images on the proof stage, and that, you know to me is, is kind of, ah, losing proposition because I'm spending a lot of money on something that I'm not being kind of accurately compensated for. Now, if you want to raise your rates and make sure that you are being compensated for the time that you spend retouching by all means by head. But for what I do is very, very, very light retouching. And then, you know, having lost something, they don't retouch it a little bit more. But to be honest, the images on my wall already been really heavily retouched. Um, Question seven. How do you handle light going all over the place in a room with low ceilings? I can't attach an example here. Do you? Just make sure your assistant with the flash is close so that the light fall off is less spread out. Or do you raise the flash up in England down so that it less hits the ceiling? Or do you zoom in the flash head or use flags or other white modifiers? Yes. I mean, honestly, the answer to that is yes to all of the things, and it really depends on the room. You know, a room with a low ceiling that has really dark walls is going to be different than a room with a really low ceiling that has white walls or mural or marbled walls. You know, sometimes it's really tough in the light does go all over the place. If I'm in, there's a venue in Philadelphia that's very marble, and no matter what you do, the light goes insane all over the place. So in that instance, maybe we'll use a suit or he's a grid or you something that focuses the beam of light. Ah, little bit mawr. Sometimes my assistant doesn't get closer. Sometimes we do bring the light down a little bit more. But again, this is one of those situations where there's not one rule as to how you handle the scenario. It just depends on a lot Depends on the room that you're in a lot depends on the situation that you're in as to how my my course of action we'll go. Okay. Question eight you some reference, sometimes needing to supplement off camera flash with on camera flash. My guess would be that the benefits of additional pre focus infrared helps the camera in low, like my question is what are some light modifiers you use for on camera flash, which you feel are helpful in that environment? Um, well, to be very clear, I don't supplement my off camera lighting with on camera flash. That's not the way I'm thinking about it. On the only time I'm ever going to use on camera flash and off camera flash in tandem or when I'm shooting dancing. I'm not talking about first answers or parent dances or anything like that, but like guests on the dance floor, partying all night while dancing. Sometimes the room is just dark. There's no separation between the dance floor in the background, and I need on off camera flash to supplement my on camera flash. So it is a matter of thinking I'm not using on camera to supplement off. I'm using off camera to supplement on in that situation, and in that situation, the flash that is on my camera. It only has that little stove in that it comes with you know, when you buy your knife on speed letter, you get your cannon flashed the little milky milk jar looking thing that goes on the front of the flash, the stove in. That's the only thing I have on the camera. I don't have any other light modifiers other than that. Question nine When using off camera flash during toast and adore Perception Hall, I checked my LCD on the back of the camera and the flash. It's properly exposed. When I look at the uploaded photos on my computer, they're all consistently Oneto, 1.3 self under exposed. Thus there is a lot of noise. The shadows. Should I just adjust the brightness on the LCD screen, or is there something I can look for in the history, um, to get better? Um, I don't know. Uh, if you are looking at your pictures on the back of your LCD screen and they're consistently 1 to 1. stops under exposed on the computer, are you talking about all of your images that you shot throughout the day? Our one stop under exposed? Are you just talking about the images that you're using with flash or not? You know, I'm not really sure how to answer this one's look, if you're watching and you can clarify on this question, if you could ask it again and give me a little bit more detail that would help me answer you a little bit better. Um, next question. Question 10. Um, you assured so much with us about off camera lighting with first dances and all the traditional elements of the reception. Do you continue to use the off camera flash throughout the entire reception? I'm sorry if you answered this already. Whether or not I use off camera flash throughout the rest of the reception is again a situational thing that really depends on the road. If I'm in a bright, gorgeous, wonderful ballroom that has up lining on the walls and 10 spots on the tables and you know a great ambient light going on in the room, chances are probably not going to use an off camera flash because I'm already getting separation between my subject in the background and foreground with what's going on with the other lights in the room. Now I m ineffably dark room. If there's no up lighting. If it's just kind of like you shoot with on camera flash and everything else behind it is just dark. Then I will use that once up a little speed, like often an angle often angle like if this is the dance floor they flip around. This is the dance floor and, like the band is up here at the top on people out here dancing. And when I shoot back into this part of the room, it's just completely dark. Um, I'll have my assistant stand, they here or here with the flash angle towards the dance floor like that so that it just gives me a little dimension in the background and the light is going to be in a very low power. It's gonna be eight or quarter, because I don't want it to overwhelm what's going on in the room. I wanted to be just kind of a little kick of ambient light instead of Whoa. There's a lot of flash going on in the background, so just be really careful with, with How are you going to use your life on it? You do have a flash going on in the background, and I never use more than one. It's always just one in the background. Next question clear in the process of establishing a sales system and it's been challenging, we want to make sure we take care of the client without being pushy. Any advice on how much and how often do you communicate with the client? Uh, any advice on how much or how often I'm guessing to communicate with clients today? I heard a book after an inquiry. What is most effective way email, phone or text? It really has I sort of a multi point way of reaching out to people after they inquire. If someone calls me with an enquiry, I'm going to call the doc. It's like e mails with an enquiry. I'm going to call them that are, Let's try this again. If someone called me with an enquiry, I'm going to call her back and something evil. He was an inquiry. I will email them back unless they've asked me to call them. I generally don't like to do first inquiry points of contact on the phone because it's someone in time. We're going to reach the part where they say So tell me about your pricing and it's a really hard thing to do because I have three packages that I'll have three different things in them. They all have three different price points, and I havent out on thing. So if I start getting in the pricing with people, then they're gonna be sitting down trying to write collection. One comes with this, comes with this cost this, and that's just kind of messy. So if I do have somebody on the phone and they do want to talk about pricing, I will always, always just start off by sending them, um, sending them my pricing list in an email. I'll say, I'll say it just like this. I totally understand wanting to get pricing information over the phone, and I can I can absolutely go over it with you. However, you know that said there there are a lot of different elements to go into the price list. There are several different collections. There are a bunch of different Adams I would hate for anything to be confusing, So why don't I just go ahead and drop you in, you know, and send you the price list in an email, and that way you could take a look at it at your leisure share with your fiance shirt with your parents and whoever mind making the decisions. And then, um and then from there, we can talk further, so that's how that goes. Most of the time, people, you know me and they want me to email them back. You know, most people are contacting me from work where they can't really talk during the day. Sometimes people are just shopping. They just want to get the info and get out, and that's totally fine. But we have a problem with that. So let's say someone he knows me. I will email them back. I tried to email back within 24 hours, and then I follow up with them five days later if I heard from them after the first email and they want to talk and they want to email more than great. But if I haven't heard from them, I will follow up five days after my first point of contact and I'll say, you know, hey, I just wanted to follow up. You know, I hope your plans you're going great. And here if you have any questions, I'd love to work with you on def. I don't hear about from them after that. Then I just marked into the dead lead and go on. There's only so much time I can spend chasing leads before I'm ignoring other parts of my business. So I reach out once you reach out again. If you don't get back to me again, then you don't get back to me again. Then you're either a photographer trying to get my price list or you were just shopping and I'm too expensive or you found someone that you like better or any 1,000,000. You know, anyone of the 1,000,000 reasons that they'll hire another photographer. So a Z faras, whether phone or email or text, is more effective. I'm never text for business, ever. I make this very clear. My client the only time texting is okay, it is to say, Hey, I'm running five minutes late to the engagement session or Hey, we just checked into the hotel Our room for tomorrow with Text is not the place, in my opinion, to be running your business. And I had perspective clients text me, and if they text me, I just text that you know high. It is Susan. I don't business overtaxed. Here is my phone number. Here is my email address. Please contact me that way. So following up the attacks is something that I never do. And even if I talked to somebody on the phone, my follow up to them will always be any now. And after a certain point, you know, if they want to get touch with you, they're gonna get in touch with you. And if they don't get in touch with, you have to just marking his dad and move on. Next question. Do you still get print orders? Three years and polio galleries is dying and not worth pursuing. I print orders. I mean, they're not large and I don't get a ton of them and they don't promote them very hard. But I do get them. I knew get them in on occasion and usually around about this time of year is when I start getting more print orders. But I'm not looking to make money on print. Wears when when someone orders a print from me, I haven't actually just order it directly from Inpex because honestly, if they're gonna order 35 by seven, I'm not making a single dime on the order. By the time I process it, pull the file, send them off because I don't do a lot of print orders. It's not part of my day to day workflow. That said, Every once in a while I do have clients come back. They order larger prints. You know they want things for their walls, and that's great. But that's not that is not where I So that's not where I excel at selling couple. Uh, next question. You said that you should cloudy when you're shooting, But how do you alter the fight balance in postproduction? Do you neutralize it with the dropper and then adjust it or view? Keep everything on quality, quite balance and tweak it. Okay, I don't This is an example of taking something that I said and thinking that I mean it all the time. I don't shoot cloudy when I'm shooting all the time. I only shoot cloudy when I'm shooting. If I am outdoors or working with natural light, If I am indoors, I'm working with flash. If I'm outdoors and working with Flash, I'm on flash. By balance, if I am in a lighting situation, that's kind of tricky. I'll goto auto, knowing that is a nice neutral now to pick my after my balance and light remind you use the dropper tool, and then I have just the warmth and the color temperature as necessary. Question 15 I noticed that you use a photo transmitter that lets you use often on camera flash at the same time. What is the model name? Mine is the photos, Odin, but it won't let me use an off camera flash at the same time, right? The only won't let you do that because it doesn't have the past through hot shoe. I have any photos I think they're called. The Strad owes. That's what I use and they have their They go on your heart to a camera, then they have the hot shoe on the top so you can put your flash in it. Which the Odin Design Question 16. Which camera calibration profile do you use in light room Adobe Standard or the camera generated profiles such as camera standard and camera in it. I'm going to hop right over here my chat box where I asked Gen. From sidecar post about this yesterday because I wanted to make sure that I was getting the right answers descend to you guys. So what? She said waas Okay, I asked you a question about power Calibration Profile and Jennifer Sidecar pose that it depends on the camera. For example, for a 904 we happen to use camera standard for Canada. We sometimes use camera, portrait or camera neutral. So that's what you know, asking Jen of sidecar these questions. Are you gonna get a better answer than asking me? Because she's the one who does the bulk of my role processing. So she is our go to answer for those. I've gotten these questions. I've been asking them to her so that I can give you the right answers. What color space do you export your images in? We have four are, Let's see, Jen says, Hang on, here, go. I use SRT D and I've always been using us. RGB and Jen from Sidecar says we also use SRG. The reason we do this is because most photographers, for now presenting their images to clients online and SRG, has been best for the Web. Hopefully, that helps question 18. Do you ever do curves suggest, since in light room to add contrast, or do you just use contrast lighter? I just use the contrast slider. There's nothing wrong with using curves. It's whatever gets you there. And for me, just the contrast. Slider usually just works just fine. Question 19. Amusing that you were leaving a lot of money on the table by not doing pre designed albums is that by Is that I need Is that because leaving the image selection up to the clients that either never upgrades when I'm I guess it was a question is asking, is that by leaving the image selections up to the clients, they either never upgrade their album or they don't choose images within the timeframe allotted. If a client orders a collection with an album, but they don't select within the time frame, do they forfeit the album portion of the collection for you? Or does it get refunded? Okay, first of all, it does not get refunded ever. Never, Never. You don't get your money back. Just because a client doesn't get there and start their chosen images to me within that time frame does not mean I'm getting their money back. They actually can't ever have their money back for an album if they have. If they if it's part of their collection, there is just no refund on it. They get a discount for pre purchasing it before the wedding, but they don't get their money back if they decide they don't want to use it. If they do not select, my contract says is that they have a year to select their images, and if they don't like their images after a year, we select the images for them and do a design and make a book and send it to them, and they have no input. However, we don't do that because a couple of times I've done that. It's just made people angry and they said, Well, if you've given us a little bit more time and this isn't really the book that we want and it just ended up being ah hassle So what I tell people now is you know, we're not gonna do that for you. I'm not Print this and send it to you. However, if you read on further into your contract, if you wait longer than a year, you do the charge it up. See for every single year that you wait after your wedding, because if I have to go back and I undercut your images after four years and do an album for you. I need to be compensated for the fact that the album has gone up in price in the past four years, So it's nothing crazy $100 a year. So if a client weights two years to come back and do their album, it's a $200 fee, and they know this. They signed this in their contract. Where I leave money on the table with albums is because I do two things. First of all, you will make more money if you pre design. If you can work that into your workflow, if you can make that the way you sell your albums, it is definitely a bigger money maker. I until recently have done all my albums myself, and I simply have not had the time to try to do something like this. That said for 2015. Now that Sanders designing all those for me, we're talking about what we can do to make these albums more profitable in the end. So we are on our and revamping the way that we do albums as well. But if you don't leave a client on their own. They're almost never going to upgrade because we'll talk themselves out. Okay, Sorry. I froze for a second. Next question. Question 20. Can you explain what you mean by a production folder? Can you explain this process I currently import directly onto my? That doesn't matter. They told me how they downloaded how they doctor and whatnot, but that's not relevant. The question What I mean by the production folder is what folder are you going to put your images into? All your editing them for me When I'm looking at the hierarchy of my images in Like, if I If I look at my, um my hard drive, the hard drive that I work off it has the folder that has a client's wedding in it. And then inside that folder, it has other folders. It has my rahs and out takes. Holder has my Rock keepers folder and has the Ross that pulled a blogger. That's what I mean by production boulders. How are you going to the set up your line of production in a way that will make sense to you? Oh, I lost my questions. Tell you my questions back. Sorry, guys. Okay, Question 21 my husband on a job offer in Seattle. And I'm freaking out because we're considering all of our options in terms of establishing your business in a new state. Do you have any tips? You moved your business from Florida and you were able to do it successfully. What was the hardest part for you? Well, the hardest part was the 1st 2 years. I moved up in 2008 and for the remainder of 2008 and almost all 2009 I had to pay my own travel. He's back in Florida to complete the weddings that I contract. Before I moved because it was on the client's fault that I moved. It was not their responsibility to take care of my move. So I had to buy all of my airline tickets on my own dime to come back and put myself up in hotel and so on and so forth. So it was really extensive. That was the hardest part on git was also just really hard to get Ticket known in a new market. I mean, yeah, I did it successfully, but it was also super hard because I didn't know anybody here. I mean, I knew Cliff when I moved up here, and I had a few other photographer friends, but for the most part, I didn't know anybody, so I had to go back to business 101 the way that anybody would, where they're starting a business. I was just a photographer in a new market with a slightly better portfolio than somebody was starting from scratch. But I had to go all the way back to the beginning. I had to sign up for vendor directories. I had to go shake hands. I had to go introduce myself to people. But as far as the hardest part, the hardest part was definitely taking money out of my own pocket. Fly back to Florida and fulfill all of the obligations that I had there and then trying to figure out I still have a huge client base in Florida. What do I do about you know? What do you do about people in Florida who still want to put you are your home state that still wanna book you after you move? What are you going to charge them? And then how are you going to explain to them that it's more expensive because you moved in. Your friend who hired you a year ago with much cheaper because you lived down the street like just the whole managing tool markets for a couple of years was really time consuming. I felt like I couldn't really concentrate on building a market in New York because I was still taking care of Florida clients. I felt like I wasn't giving my Florida clients all of my attention because I was trying to build a market in New York, so there is no easy way to do. It is really tricky, but it can be done. You just have to be okay with going backwards and for me. I also took a step backwards in price when I was doing it as well. I dropped my prices when I moved, and that was kind of a blow to the ego, but nobody knew who I was. I had to start from beginning, so that wasn't fun. I hope to never get that again. Question 22 I've been following a wedding planner on Facebook for a while round shows beautiful events that she never sure his professional photos of them. I'd like to offer to take some pictures for her, but without it, then the wedding photographer. I wouldn't take pictures of the ceremony or that people. Just the decor for the wedding planner. Oh, it's kind of a tough one. You really do run the risk of really irritating the hired professional, especially if you're trying to get shots of the room while they're also trying to get shots of the room. I'm not saying don't do it, But if you do it, you to find out who the wedding photographer is, that's going to be shooting the event. Contact them well in advance, explain what were going to be doing. Explained what you're going to be there for, and then say, you know, what can I do to make sure that I'm not in your way? You don't know gonna shoot your clients. I'm not sure the party I'm not shooting anything with people in it under shooting the room, But how can I do that in a way that that won't intrude on what you're doing? But then again, um, you know you even if you say that even if you reach out that way. The other photographer might be kind of irritated because the other photographer might be perfectly willing to give that planner their images, and they know that even they give them their images. The players are going to use them because they've got your images, right? So it's a tough place to be if you could maybe make a planet really happy. But make another photographer really angry and also just because the wedding planner does it, Sure, professional photos of them doesn't mean that she doesn't have them. For all you know, the other vendors have been reaching out and giving them to her, and she just never been using them. So it's just kind of a sticky situation. If you decide you want to get into it, just proceed very carefully. Next question. You mentioned that as well as Exposure six and Nick, you also use some totally rad presets. Do you happen to know which totally rad presets you use? Are they just for light room and would you recommend them? I'm looking for something I can use in light room that will give me a crisp and clean look so that I don't have to keep taking all of my images and photo shopped to use the actions I currently use. Um, you know my question to you would be Why are you going from, like, room to photo shop in the first place? You know, there's nothing that I can do in Photoshopped that I can't do in light room. Um, other than, you know, skin retouching. And you could still skin retouching light room. I just find it easier in photo shop. But if you are working in Leiberman and you're going in the photo shop, you might not need that Photoshopped stage if you're able to actually integrate what you're doing there in light room. And as far as the totally ride presets, I don't remember which exact ones I used. I had them for so long and I tweaked all of them. So I'm not sure which ones are actually still native and even just saying the one that I use isn't really going to be helpful because there are certain steps that I take before I used some of them like, for example, if I'm going to use their warming up Chris preset, I'm going to make sure that the image is a very neutral color balance before I add that on top. So I could tell you what I used, but without telling you the entire process that I use every single time I used them. It's not gonna be really helpful, but my take away from this question, the most would be. It seems like it's a workflow streamlining issue. And if you have things that you're doing in photo shop, I would recommend looking for presets or even building your own presets so that you can do those things in light room to take out that extra step in your workflow question. 24. What is the difference between a program like Crotteau Sink and a Cloud backup like Crash plan? Chronis Inc backs up to an external hard drive, Crashed 1,000,000 backs up with cloud. That's the difference. Um, okay, Question 25. I know that you mentioned that your client select their album images throughs in Folio. How do they make other tactile album choices such as cover type, page sickness and quality etcetera? When you meet initially with a client before their wedding, do you have our own sample books with you at that time, and give them the opportunity to make those tactile decisions at that early stage if they know they will book the wedding with you. I'm thinking of using that approach because it gets such decisions done, and we perhaps get my clients excited about their album and the whole process of working with me. No, I don't do that at all. I do show albums declines, but it's just to show the on problems to the clients. There is no way that somebody is going to know to 18 months before their wedding, what color they want their album cover to be like. If they do, they could change their minds. They're gonna forget, and they come back later and be like Wait, what? We can't believe Black. I want black. Why wouldn't think black? So you never have to make that decision. Actually, choosing their album color is the very last decision that they make after we finalize the layout, then they tell me what color they want. Then they tell me what they want to do with imprinting on the front, and then they tell me if they want to put a picture on the front or not, uh how did any other tactile choices cover type? I have all of these watches from Madeira Online so they can go online and see them. I also actually have physical samples of of this watch is that they want to come into the studio, look at them so they could do that page sickness. There is one option, like they're not multiple options for page thickness. So that's not really an issue, really. Their only choices that they have to make our what material they want for their color. Do they want any imprinting and do they want to photograph on the cover? That's it. It's very, very simple because the albums I offer very, very simple and the last question there was. Is there a way to do this process online that the client lives too far away? I 99% of the time do it online simply by having this watch is available for them to see online. Um, Question 26. I'm having a terrible time with album design and getting the clients to turn everything back to me, and then when they do, they expect their the only album I have to work on and they don't understand or care. I have policies, but they think they don't apply to them. I guess I'm a softy. Please, can you? Sure. How you do it. Any health is greatly appreciated. You know, you you have to have policies. You have to stick to them and you caving and letting a client push you into putting them at the front of the queue when they're not, um, you know, it's just not a good way to do business were very up front with clients after their wedding. If they have an album included in their collection, I e mailed them. I tell them that stuff they need to take to get the album information to me, and then I tell them how it's going to work after we get It takes three weeks to get an initial design any, um, any changes that you want her adjustments to the layout take two weeks, and then we always deliver in that period of time and sometimes Sanders really fast. Sometimes we'll get an album design and you know she'll behind or in the next day, and she'll be like, OK, I got the often designed done now, 24 hours after the client submitted their images, and I won't let her give the album to the clients at that time. I make away week because I don't want the clients to think, Oh, well, they bust out a design in a day now. Why are we having to wait two weeks for the revisions? Well, the truth is because she didn't really have anything going on then and now We've got a lot going on now, and you have to go back into the regular. Q. You know, nobody wants to hear that, so you know people don't understand or care. I hate to be flipped, but I don't understand. I don't care if they don't understand or don't care. If someone comes back like, Where's my album? Design will say, You know, reference back to the email that I sent you after your wedding. It takes three weeks to get the design. Please rest assured that we're working on it and we'll have it to you very quickly. And then somewhere between 2.5 to 3 weeks, I get that designed to them. It's always early, but it's never so crazy. Early that creates an unrealistic expectation. You can't let your clients push you around, especially if they waited a really long time. That is. My personal favorite is a client who's waited three years to get me there. Albums of my selections. You know, I had somebody emailed me the other week when he was in 2008 and they're like, We get our selections to you, you know? And we start the process, you know? We finalize it all by like, I don't know, like, the second week of December. Can we have it for Christmas? I'm like, No, because right now we've got, like, 12 albums in the queue. There's no way that I can pull your files from so long ago and get started on a process, and I can't. Um yeah. Question 27. When loading files on my computer, I am court directly into a light room. My computer is backed up using back plays an external hard drive. Is it wrong to import directly toe like room? Um, I don't know why you wouldn't work directly into light room on. It just doesn't It doesn't really make sense. I just important directly into whatever folder is going to be in on my hard drive. I don't import them through another program to get them where they need to go. All right, Next question. Do you provide clients the retouch photos that go on your block? Yes. Because if I'm going to Blawg, I blogged before their images are delivered. And, yes, I always put the images that I have edited for the block in their final taking images. Um, next question, I used the looming quest nine by nine on the flash for the reception. Do you feel that the Omni balance will provide a better kick to the light? I don't know what the limit quest is, so I can't speak towards what it does or how it doesn't. Even if I didn't know what it waas, I couldn't speak towards it unless I used it. So I'm sorry about that one. How would you handle the situation? The clients have agreed for you to display their images online. After you have blogged their images, they change the run and ask you to take the photos down. So that's the sort of thing that drives me completely insane. But to be perfectly honest, I take the down. It's, you know, it's just not worth it. Yes, you could fight them on it. Yes, you could tell them that it would cost extra money to have them taken down. Yes, you've been invoked contract at them. But all that's gonna do is to make them really angry. So I would probably take them down and I would tell them, Listen, you know, I will display them on my website and will display them on on my block. That's fine. However, if I did have an image that was really stellar that I wanted to use for competition, I would try to seek permission to use that. But if they want it down, just take it down. It's just somewhere that in the long run to fight them on it. Next question. Regarding albums you have clients sign off, uncover designs online for clients who do not live near your studios. I mean, let's be very, very, very clear about how do albums. I don't do album design in person ever. If we meet and we look at things, it's really just to look at the cover options. It's to look at what imprinting looks like it's to revisit the sample albums, but we do not sit down and design the albums together. Ever. The whole process takes place online, so they do sign off on everything. I use a program called album exposure for them to be either alms online, and there is a final step where in they do sign off on it. So they signed off on everything before it goes to print. So hopefully everybody okay with their workflow trying. Teoh get through Month three. Identifying your problem areas above business, about marketing, about shooting above everything, that thing that defeated me the most and daunted me the most. Waas workflow. It was just a lot of pulling everything into light room. The thought of getting it all done. The thought of how am I gonna get through this number of images. It's one thing to work in, like women do an image or two images or three images. But to do 600 to you know, it can really take it out of the very daunting process. And, you know, hopefully you guys aren't having too many troubles out there. There weren't too many questions today about, um, about the actual introduces on work clothes. I hope that that means that you're doing really well with it, Which would be great. But I don't see any other questions coming in at all to give a couple second pause, see if anything gets written in. I don't see anything else. Um, it looks like we're gonna do this again next week. Sorry about what happened on Tuesday. The Creative Life computer decided it wanted to scream at me every time I tried to skype it. So this was much better today with no screaming or shouting electronically in the background. So hang on. We might have a question coming in. No more questions. Okay? So I'm not sure you know what you guys are doing with the rest of your day. Hopefully your work on workflow. I am working on getting my occasional website for photographers up and off the ground. If you ever, ever sitting at home and thinking, you know, it would be really fun to do for business blogging. It's like being at home and thinking, you know, what would be really fun to do for Mrs Photography? It can't be that hard, right? I am defeated. by belonging in a way that I haven't got defeated by any other business venture. But it's been a really great learning opportunity, and I will have this entire new venture up online for you guys to see next week. Um, and in the meantime, I'm going to go back to listening to serial the podcast that I am utterly obsessed with Andi getting right back to work. So I'll see you guys next week. Have a good weekend.