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Lesson Info

Speeding up Your Workflow

once you have, once you have the marketing in place and now you have customers coming in the door. Now you got to do something with all this stuff. You've gotta have some workflow. You've got to move them through the system. So is to produce awesome images. Okay. And this, to me, represents at least 40 maybe 45% of why my stuff looks the way it does. And I'm sure somebody out there in the Internet world because I experience it every time. They are probably somewhere saying, Well, I saw occurred, did yesterday and that's nothing special. And it's not. It's just it's regular photography. What you're about to see can happen today. That's when it gets special. So I don't I don't really care who takes the picture in the world. I don't care how fantastic a photographer they are, and I believe me, I am all about getting it on the chip. Better the exposure, the better the final product. Better the focus, the better the final product. The better the pose, the better the final product Better, Be...

tter, better. Better across the word across the world. But once you have the image on the chip. I don't care who you are. I can make it better in Photoshopped, it can always be better and that be better is what we're talking about today That is workflow and workflow. Looked it up on Wikipedia, said Workflow consists of the sequence of connected steps where each step follows without delay or gap and ends just before the next step begins. It is a representation of a sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. Okay, so that's the entire process. Would you like to see it happen? I assumed you did OK. Watch the little dude on the left. That is straight out of the camera and it's happening before your eyes. And just like that, he has been work flowed kind of class, and that's it. That's it's just that's it's magic. All you have to do is purchase this little. I'm sure if you heard just the course, they now just you do know I'm teasing. Okay? I want to say it again. Awesome. Watch the girl on the right, straight out of the camera. And there she goes. Done. Cool. All right. So that would you just look. That was before and then after. Okay, so I know you're you know, you can't visualize that too good, but let me see if I can help you visualize that a little bit better. Here we go. There it ISS guy on the left. You straight off the camera. Guy on the right is the finished part. Okay. And in the girl, Same thing. Girl on the left. Straight off the camera. And look, that's in my opinion, the one on the left. That's pretty good photography. Good exposure. Nice light in the eyes. You know, it's interesting posed. Now, some somebody out there says, Oh, I were right now. Well, I prefer the one on the left. That's okay. That's we talked about it yesterday. That's artistic expression. I prefer the one on the right. My customers mostly prefer the one on the right. I've noticed I've had people send me messages. I've had people send me texts. I've had people photographers mostly send me comments, e mails, that type of thing that say Kark, your stuff is just looks so fake. And I'm sure it's being said right now in the chat rooms. Well, I don't know his stuff is so fake looking. You know what? I'm not a doctor, okay? I am not a medical photographer. It is not my job to reproduce reality. That is not what I do. I do not photograph reality. I am not a reality photographer. I am a fantasy photographer. That's what I do. I photographed people the way they think they look, not the way they really look. And we sort of eluded to that yesterday. People look in the mirror and the brushed 80. They don't look at themselves. They look at their teeth, they comb their hair, they're looking at their hair. Rarely. When you look at yourself, do you look at yourself in the mirror? Okay. But you taken image and it's all little on on a page and you go while Do I really look like that? This is what you really look like. But you don't think you look like that? That's my job. That's the psychology of talking to the customer, having a conversation. It's happened to me. I think I alluded to that one day the last couple of days where I said that the customer comes in and you asking them about their favorite thing. And what do you love about yourself? I love my blue eyes. Then you open it up in photo shop and realize they got green eyes. I can't tell you how many times that's happened. Well, the fantasy is she has blue eyes. She may think she has blue eyes, but you know when I'm done you think she has blue eyes? Absolutely. Again it I'm not a really reality photographer. I am a fantasy. My job is to create the fantasy present the fantasy they go. Wow. I look like that. Okay, stop. I ate the revert back to the first day, But now what happens? Monies towards floating out there pocket and into mine. That's what happens because they can't help but by it does that make sense? OK, so I just wanted to kind of touch on that, And I know you're gonna again. They think I'm going off topic, but I'm not in photo shop day. The third day is very jump around in my mind. It's you're going to kind of get a internal picture of how Kirk thinks. I mean, it's bouncing all over the place inside there, especially when it comes to photo shop. But if you are out there doing seniors on a regular basis, you gonna notice that high school seniors, especially the girls, are and especially the pretty girls, Where you gonna show him the image on the back of the camera and they're going to say, Hate it? And you're gonna say, OK, no, no problem. I can take another one, But before I do, what do you hate? And she's going to say, I don't know. And you gonna say, What is it? Your hair now? Well, is it your smiles because you didn't smile? No. Well, is it the Post you think? Opposes? You know, it's too silly. No. Well, what is it? And she's going to say, I don't know. And you're gonna say, Well, OK, well, I could I could take another one and another one and another one, but unless I know what to do, I just don't like me. I'm just I'm just I just don't like me. I'm just I just don't like me, Okay, that is your cue to stop right there and say, especially if you have the time. Take that image into photo shop and say, Let me show you something and take out a little line right here. That little funky piece of skin that everybody has somewhere on their face make that go away, okay? For her. And in the course of doing that, take and flip the image. Okay? Just, you know, you have to tell you what you're doing. Just won't flip that imagery. Oh, What about Oh, I just found this one. Do you like this one? plus percent of the time they're gonna say, Oh, well, I like that one. Do you know why you do not ever look at yourself without seeing yourself in reverse? When you look in a mirror, your reversed You look at yourself when your phone and you do one of these pictures. You know that picture you see all the time? It's reverse until it shows up. You understand? You only see yourself in reverse, Shawn. A low guy yesterday had one eye. Big one. I small, they don't catch it. Do you see it when I beg when I small when he's going to see his pictures to him? It's gonna be backwards because he sees that. But he sees it in a mirror. Do you know how crazy the human mind is And has the ability to just instantly tell that yours? This side of your face is skinnier than that side of your face and instantly look at somebody and say, Oh, his nose kind of does this a little bit And as a result, you can look at someone and within the flash oven Ibok on I blank your brain goes I can't do that Pretty ugly, ugly Pretty, pretty ugly, ugly, ugly Pretty You know you can You can walk You can look inside of, ah, restaurant ago where there is a pretty girl Ugly girl Ugly Pretty, pretty, pretty ugly. Just just that, just like that. And what is that? You haven't stopped and ask yourself. Wow. We all got the same parts. Eyes, nose, mouth, hair. You know, we all got the same parts. How come someone is pretty? Someone is not pretty. What is it? It's symmetry. It's all symmetry. It's the distance from here to here. It's the distance from here to here. It's the with of the nose, the skinny nous of the nose, the crookedness of a nose. It's one I Big one, I small, it's this. It's this. It's this big forehead. It's this little forehead and the list goes on and on and on. I saw a thing on the Discovery Channel a while back about beautiful people. Okay. And interestingly, they did all kinds of measurements of beautiful people. And what did they find? They all got the same numbers. I'm talking about this number and this number in this number in this number and this number and this number in this number, they all had to say numbers. Same. It's male, female old. It didn't matter. Same number. Would it would power Do we have as a professional photographer? So when I was a crooked nose, put the light over here, straightens it right up our do it in the computer. Straighten that nose up. Okay, so I photographed the guy last week. A big old things right here. Jowls. Okay. And I just put that right in, show you how to do that in a little while. And he loved, loved it. Always like to tell the story about the guy. Went on vacation with one time a buddy of mine. I mean, him hung out forever. I photographed his daughter practically the day she was born. We go on vacation while we on vacation together. Been knowing the family my entire life. He has heard every story I have ever told Every one of them. And his daughter is a little overweight. A little, Not a lot. Just a little bit. And her arms or part of the overweight. I mean, it's what happens. Don't go on it. You get a little overweight, the arms get a little big. She comes out to do this picture on the beach, and she has this dress totally sleeveless. And I thought Whoa. Okay, well, I'll fix it in photo shop. And I did shrunk up. Every one of those arms made him all of nice When they got the book of proofs and looked through, they go, Oh, baby, look at that. Oh, look at this thes air offensive. You see, I told you you didn't have big arms, and I thought they know what I'm capable of. They know they've seen me do it like you're going to see me do it today. And yet they still didn't believe I did it to their child. it's what we do is humans. We we don't want to look at ourselves and go man, I Look, look how big I am. Oh, my God. That could. That knows I've got Oh, my goodness, do my looks really go cock eyed like that. You don't want to know that. So when you see an image and it looks like you but it's looking good, you go. How much do I owe you? Fantasy photography? Okay, fantasy. That's what we do. It's a fantasy. Cool, moving on. So workflow. Here's what I want you to do. Let's call it a homework assignment. Ah, personal homework assignment the entire world. I want you to go out, and I want you to make a detailed list off every step in your photo in your workflow process. Here's what I mean when I say a detailed list, the very first thing I want you to write down if you're gonna write it down on a pad, this is how I did it the first time I ever did this. It was a It was a legal yellow legal pad. And on the first line was take the picture and ah, body mind at age and age color Lab said, You know, Kirk better than a legal pad is a pack of sticky notes. Okay? And I said, Why is that? He said, Because if you take a pack of sticky notes and you make yourself notes on them, so we're gonna put take the picture, take pig. And then if you take that sticky note and you stick it somewhere when you got to see it every day. So say this for the sake of pretending this is a wall in our studio right here. And this wall is a wall we have to walk past every day. Okay? And we have to walk past it. And we have to see this every day. So after you take the picture, I'm a throw it out to my studio audience. You've taken the picture. Click. What is the next thing next? Logical step going to give you a demonstration? What? I mean about detail. What would What's the next logical step? Look at that. Make sure it looks right now. You've already looked at the back of a camera, huh? You're taking more than one picture. No, no. We're just gonna take one picture. Click. Now. Now, what is the next thing you got to do? Turn off the camera? Okay. Guy like that. Turn off camera. Good. What's the next thing we gotta do? You think the card Take a card out. Take cord out. This is how crazy I want you to get. Okay, Now the card is in your hand. What you gonna do next? The card, club card and computer. But I'm using acronyms. Is that okay? Huh? Blood card in computer. What's the next thing we video? Your computer's on the program. That's gonna do. The editing on that is No, no, no blood. The photos gonna get get the images off the court. Right, Right off cord. Great. OK, we don't have to keep doing this. I think you have to get the idea right now. I'm gonna stop right there. Because remember yesterday I talked to you about anyway, you continue. Continue. Let me do this. At least continue. Continue. Continue. Continue. Next thing. Next thing customer comes in, sell the car. Picture the cups in damages to the lab. Right. We're gonna set up and now put money in a bank right there. Boom. Make a deposit. There's our last thing. So we need to go from Take the picture to put the money in the bank. That's how detailed I want you to make it. And I want you to do it with sticky notes. And there's a reason. And I want you to do the sticky notes somewhere where it's going to be a place. Maybe it's down the hall that leads to the studio camera room. Maybe it's on your refrigerator. If it's if it's a home studio, something you gotta look at every day. Maybe it's this bedroom wall that when you wake up in the mornin boom, this is what you see every day, every day. OK, and there's a reason I want you to do that, because I want you to think about this process every day and there's got to be away. Got to be away to start taking sticky notes off the wall because every time you pull a sticky note off the wall, your speed enough, you workflow. So right now, however it is if it involves watching TV and working three images, right that out, OK, right, the whole thing out. Put it on the wall. Now. I told you yesterday that I have a wife. I transmitter right. That WiFi transmitter allows me. Whenever I go click it automatically sends it to the computer and puts it in the right place. Look what I get to do. Turn off the camera. Picked the court out, put card in the computer, offload the court. All right. Getting this on camera cause is my favorite thing to do right now. It's in the hole. Okay, Hole in one. All right. That's what I get to do. And as you find things like that in your workflow because you're going to write it all the way out, right, it all the way out all the way. Detailed, ridiculous details. It's going to show you, huh? I didn't realize that I have the walk all the way down this hall. Turn here, move that basket. Go through here, back up into here to put my card over here, then have to walk way over here. I know it's dumb. And then go over here toe offload. Once it's offloaded. Have to go all the way back all the way back over here. Go into this thing. Get the card, Take the card, walking all the way. All the way over. You see where I'm going with this, and I'm know I'm making this up, But what if Wait a minute. How come I don't put that over here? You realize I could just do this? I could just go right here, sit down, plug the thing in and start doing it. Whoa, That would save me a step. And that is what this homework assignments going to do for you is gonna force you to look at it. Mawr. What is that word? Analytically, You know, I mean, this is how it's go step by step, by step by step. Is that helpful? Helpful over there. Except like, it is genius. And I love this. I've seen people mapping out the workflow before, but the fact that you can maximize your efficiency by taking the post it's off, and then that physical sensation of it gets good after a while. Yeah, because you like, you'll sit there, look at the wall. And this is another mind blowing moment when you got a big hole right here, big hole, and you get to take all of these and move him up. Speaking to tithe, all of us. Beautiful. Posted notes. Sales went through the roof right now, like home people is gonna like what happened, What we did. Maybe some Kirk McLean branded post. Maybe just not. All right, so just to kind of give you an idea what I'm talking about Here you go. Take the picture. That's something we cannot. We're never gonna take that. Post it note off the wall unless unless Canon develops the mind chip, huh? Yeah, we're working on that. Right. So you go let me shoot your picture. You got it. Is it beautiful or what? Hey, don't laugh. Don't hate you. So this really is playing. They own. And it was like, I love Kirk stories. Okay, here's a true story. Big group of guys like this, we get together and we all shooting the breeze about the future of photography. I do this with people all the time will be at a convention or something. I'll get in a big circle, have a couple of beers and talk about what do you think? Where's it going? What I'm gonna do and we're all in this group, and I This is in the film days and I said, You know, I see I forsee one day will like facts are negatives to the lab and the lab alike. Get this fact and then from the facts, they'll print the prince. But the negative is useless, you know, because I've got it at home, the original. But now they have, like a fax. But that's just a good as the original. And they'll crumple up the facts and throw it away, and they'll just send me the prince. Sound familiar? Yeah, and everybody in the group went, Oh, Cardozo stupid. I saw that coming, buddy, and I didn't know it was going to be called Digital in the Internet and all this other stuff, but that's what we do. I mean, a Faxon, but it's what we do. It's the exact concept. So anyway, yeah, that's just so funny. So, hey, that's yet another little homework assignment for you to go. Do find some people you're comfortable with. Some people, some friends, get together getting a little group and say, OK, how do we make this world better? This photography world that we live in and, you know, brainstorm that thing out is just a very powerful thing. That's why I have been hanging with you guys for three. All think I'm just a good guy? No, I'm ripping off your brains. I'm totally I'm not taking all in my ideas. Your spewing away and I'm gonna use all that stuff is what we do. We are re inventors. That's what photographers are. So after you take the picture What? You never, probably, ever going to take that off the wall you got? I WiFi them. Like I just said to the computer, That's what I do. After they're in the computer, they are opening up. The raw files are opening up right now in bridge, and they are being rendered so that I can then begin to do stuff to them. After that, I go back in and start taken the picture again. Let me explain that to you, senior girl. She just has to outfits. Let's just say red dress, blue dress. I take pictures in the red dress. Clickety, Clickety click six shots. Those six shots set shot into the computer. They have been rendered into bridge. Okay? And they're in a hot folder. I then leave the studio Thanks, Mom. Let me know when she comes out with the blue dress. I didn't leave. Walk over to the main computer with my main computer sits and their her six images are already opened up in bridge. Looking at me, I can using my presets again. We're gonna do this So it isn't like you got to send messages and say why? Yeah, show us that. Show us that because it is going to happen in the next segment. I take those six images as they come in, I move them into her hot folder. And what I mean by that, her folder. It has her name on it. I re number them her name. Dash one through six. I then do something to every one of the images. Whether that's a slight exposure, tweak. Or maybe it's a little bit of a vignette. Or maybe it's turning it into black and white or brown tone. Or, you know, maybe it's like color adjustment or whatever. I do something to it Enbridge at this point. Then highlight all those images and I start start the raw conversion. It starts being converted into a JPEG. A full rez saved the quality 12 s rgb Jade Beg, which is what my lab wants. Okay? And once I hit the button for it to start converting, I leave the computer, I go back into the camera room. Interestingly, it takes about that long for the customer to change into the next outfit, and then I start taking pictures again. So do you see that for my personal workflow? My system. I am able to literally begin working files while I'm shooting the images. Does that make sense? Way following so that sometimes I have photographers say, Kirk, you shoot raw. I should JP because it just takes me too long. Well, when you when you just physically shoot something in J peg, it's already compressed in the JPEG format. So if you do some sort of an adjustment like an exposure adjustment or color adjustment, or maybe add a little vignette or whatever you do to that image at this point you are literally trashing the image. You're destroying pixels. They have to. The system has toe throwaway pixels and do things like that to cause that effect. So in a Roth us in a raw format, the software short of shifts pixels around. You're not trashing it. You're just shifting them around. And so, then, as a result, what you end up with is a much cleaner, better, more perfect file. I do convert him to J. Peg because it's easier to upload. And, you know, people are right now on the Internet saying, Yeah, but a J. Peg I would rather use tiff, and that's okay if you read the used because it does trois less and you're absolutely correct. But you know, I'm mostly open an image once or twice. The destruction is extremely minimal at this point, and it saves me hard drive space. It saves me upload time and so that you have to do this. Everything in photography, everything that we do is all a big juggling act, its balance, its balance. When do I go home? When dough I stay window, I play with my family window. It's all just balance. It's all a constant balancing act. Well, the same thing is with this sure tiff would be better, but there would be there would be certain consequences of saving it as a tiff file in your world, you may like that those consequences may not bother you. So in which case, do it so make sense. Go ahead, Russell. So, um, when you render them T j. Peg, do you? Then after you're done with the sale or whatever, do you get rid of the raw file New. Never get ready to roll. Five. Since you asked it, I'll just go ahead and address it right now. It's part of my archival process. We take all of just the raw files and burn that to a CD DVD, whatever. Okay, we then burn on Lee, the J pegs or the developed. You know, the images that have been rendered in enhanced onto a separate CD DVD. OK, why two different ones? Well, what if? What if I put it all on one and that CD got scratched? They're going, whereas by having it in two locations, even though it's two different formats, the raw file CD could get scratched, but I still got the ones that they've seen that one could get scratch, and I could always go back to the raw and reprocess, see what I'm getting at. Not since we're going. There's for his archival. Um, I am a freak about archival Okay. I have the main hard drive where I do all my work, have a little carbon copy thing that happens. That then writes everything from the main hard drive onto another hard drive. Okay, At night, time machine takes the entire computer and burns that to a Drogo at the entire computer every night, every night. Well, so we got the one hard drive backup for a drive, and then the backup hard drive then writes to a drove Oh, that the entire network can look at. So I mean, at any given time, my stuff is in 123 That's four places plus the CD, plus the other CD. So, technically, I'm in six place. 7566 places. Right. So is that overkill, huh? Yes, it's overkill. But you know what? It's I sleep real good at night because of that. And I just can't bear the thought of something getting long. I've heard too many stories, and it just it hurts my feelings. Does that help is an answer. Good problem. Yeah. You said you shot this. Six pictures declined to go. Change her clothes and you come to your computer is already upload okay in, uh but then is you been profiles? They're uploaded and you go one by one and fix. Okay. The brightness here, Nutribullet, um, or or the sharpener here. The shadows. So you do all these tweaks before you come back to the second or no, is just the main thing. I'm doing Enbridge. At this point, the main thing is exposure. There is some sharpening going on, but it's preset. There is actually some vignette ing going on, but again, that's preset. Sometimes I tweak it, but mostly it stays the same. There is. There's all sorts of things going on when it comes in. But then I make little minor adjustments and I will show you those minor adjustments one by one. Yes. Expose your contrast. Cook a little saturation. All these different things that I do. I'm going to show you that in the next second. Then you export. Then I exported. And then once I exported That's good. That's good. Hello. Brings us to hear I go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Now the customer leaves and what I have in my hands or all the images they have perfect color they have perfect exposure. They have perfect sharpness, a little bit of a vignette on him, of some other than converted into black and white or blue tones of brown tones or whatever the case may be. But they're all at this point, I could literally send that off to the lab and have proofs made. And, ah, lot of customers would be very, very happy. There's a lot of photographers on the planet at this very moment in time. You could literally just send that off and B s static. But what I want to do is I want to now take it to yet another level. Okay, if there is sort of like not to pick on you Pollo. But I'm looking at you right now. You have these little things underneath the eyes. I would take that off. Okay, That might, because you was up too late last night or something. Okay, I'm looking at Kim. Kim's got a little thing going on right here, Little brown. That's going on right here. I would fix that. Okay, looking at Look, I got this little bump right here. This little bump right here bothering me, this little line right here. I would take that off. We also got a little piece of hair hanging right here. I'd either, you know, I have to take that off is bugging me. So anything that bugs me, I'm then going to at this point, do all kinds of stuff already talked about that. We go back and forth, back and forth. I am going to do all kinds of stuff to the images. In photo shop, I might add a little texture. You remember the little guy that we just show a show? Judy was just up on the screen. He was had that texture that was that showed up on the background. The girl. Did you notice that a piece of her dress showed in the original, but then the dress went away. That's because I white it out. That dress, you know, all sorts of things like that. Anything and everything that I could do to the image to make it perfect. I'm going to do at this point now, inside my computer, I'm going to point out to you when you already looking inside my computer here in the next segment, I'm gonna point out to you my best best friend And that ISS in the upper right hand corner the clock. It's my best friend when I'm done. But at the moment that I'm retouching at the moment that I hang out in photo shop, me and that timer fight constantly. I look at the clock. It says Right now it says 11. 56. Okay. And I'm looking at 11. will not Oh, no. Oh, no. It will not change to 11. 57 before I am done with this. I can tell you that right now, because there's okay, 11 57 But okay, I'm now okay and finished and save. But the next one it will not change. I am so sorry. And me and the clock fight back and forth, back and forth like that constantly. And my objective is three minutes or less per file. Perfect. Fast as I can. Fast, I can't at this point. Time is money and s Oh, yes, there was this morning after I was about after I'd retouched about 20 of the images. I guess I think I had three or four left. I can't remember exactly when it was it was it was a little after it was a little after 7 30 I think whenever I was getting to that point and I suddenly realized, I'm like, Hey, TV is not on And I popped the TV on and the last one's took me longer. No offense and that messing with you But yeah, because I have been looking at the clock and the dude say something on TV and I'm like, Go clothe clocks, women. And so that is what I do me in the back of what Back in the back of both. Okay, so from Photoshopped, I'm doing all sorts of actions. I catch myself doing something over and over and over and over again. I'm making an action of it. Okay, there's some scripting things that I do. And then after I do all that stuff to it, there it is. Sometimes I posted to social Media. I also then uploaded to H and H Color lab for printing. And so that's the entire sequence, basically, without all the many details in between, that is my workflow