Lessons

Lesson Info

Intro to eCard Pro

it's time to start talking about how we make money, right? How do we make money? All this nonsense stuff. Once upon a time, there was a convention that I went to, and it was in the early days of screens and phones that became able to show TV and to show YouTube clips and as well as make slide shows right. We used to be able in the first versions of those flip phones, we would be able to upload some of our own photos, and it would make its own little slide show. And at some point we were able to upload our photos to some website and we could make a slide show. And then we could download it as a video file or an animated GIF file, and then we could put it on our phones, and then we could show people are really beautiful. Slide show. Well, unfortunately, we run into the first part of what we need to deal with today, and that is how long is too long. Well, that's a big deal. Will somebody sit and watch your 45 minute long slide show that you've put on your phone? It's pretty rare, right? U...

nless it's your mom and you know, she's really only doing it to be nice. And because she can always see right over the top that that's her favorite show in a Wheel of Fortune or whatever is on is over on the TV, she's gonna fake like she's watching and saying how pretty your pictures are. But she's really watching Wheel of Fortune. Okay, well, we want to be able to start developing the business part in the business part I believe starts when ah photographer realizes the skill sets that they have. Right? At some point you realize that you wanted to be a professional photographer, and with that came a set of skills. You may have already had those skills, or you may have. Maybe you had to develop those skills, right? In fact, do you say you go to the Seattle Community College Art Institute here? Once upon a time, I remember being at one of the Seattle schools here was really had a terrific photo program, and you could see that there were so many photographers that first thing that did was develop the passion for photography, and then they wanted to figure out how to generate photographs. Then they wanted to figure out how to generate money from most photographs. Well, unfortunately, a lot of colleges I don't know about yours, but a lot of colleges, they get those 1st 2 steps, right? But when it comes to showing you how you're gonna be able to pay the bills when it comes to photography and they go, well, don't you work as an intern for somebody for a while? Then you'll figure it out slowly but surely Well, there are ways around that system, and one of the ways that we're we've talked about earlier today is being efficient, right, and being efficient with our time being efficient with our tools, being smart with the dollars that we used to buy our tools. But more importantly, is if we're gonna enter into the world of being an e photographer, right? Ah, hybrid photographer creates e products. We want to be just his comfortable shooting video as we are with photo, and that's been a bit of a challenge for me to We talked a little bit yesterday about some of the things that I found that were really problematic and of course, The biggest challenge for me was audio. It wasn't photo, wasn't video. It was audio because I learned real quick that I was having a tough time, particularly on location. How I'm gonna make audio here what I wanted to hear, right. There's times where I wanted to hear certain things but not hear certain things to excuse me. What I couldn't predict what those were. I knew that certain microphones would allow me to photograph these two people that are talking about, say, a business idea. But yet way in the back there is a train track, and somewhere down the road there's a train and I can't really hear the train with my ear, but wouldn't shouldn't let the vibration of the train track had enough that my microphone could start to hear this train way before I could hear this train. Well, it ruling the shot that you could imagine right. There's no way to remove the train sound that's out of there, but when we get into control, we get into an environment where we have control. We've got the ability to take care of photo and video and audio and make it as productive as possible. So to get to that point, you're in this class and we can teach you that. That part's easy, hard part is how you gonna turn. It's when you get back home from this class. How you gonna turn this into cash? Well, there's multiple ways you could go right. For instance, I have a handful of photographers that run dance studios and quite coincidently, we had a girl that was in here today that was a dancer. And what they want to do is they want to go to dance studios all across the country and they want to set up like they do now, right? Typically, they go to and one of them does a lot of daycare dance. So there's a couple of parts of the country where they kind of go hand in hand. Well, ah, photographer goes into day care and they do the daycare pictures, too. And then they lot of those kids they have dance and either the dance classes right next door to the daycare class or they're somehow connected. Well, they get to do both at the same time, and that's one of the ways that kids get interested in to dance. They see everybody else doing it great. Well, when we talk about that souvenir photo, do we want the souvenir photo to be just a picture of the kid dancing? Or would you like a piece of video of the kid dancing or the kid talking or whatever? It's gonna be OK. We need to be able to get that point across to our customers. It's a tough thing to do. We do it. We in our business in the Crockett Co. Technologies. We do it by using the e card pro right. We talked a little bit earlier about the fact that there is a very popular product that's called the E Card Pro that has many different templates and its template sized environment, where photographer before can go in and say to a bank, for instance, and say, Hey, you need to get rid of paper, right? A lot of financial institutions they have. They have this issue from the Gove that they've got to be able to reduce their paper consumption right? Well, one way that you can do that is to stop printing business cards well, who prints more business cards than a bank right now. Insurance companies, maybe, but bankers. Big time. So I got a friend of photographer mine. And by the way, if you're watching Ed Ed, say hi. Uh, he knows he's got all kinds of connections with with one to actually bring good sized banks. He's going in there, and he wants to say, Listen, I have a better way for your mortgage lender folks to connect with their potential clients. I've also got a way for you to stop spending money on paper and to start built building up your relationship with the government of saying yes, we're cracking down on our paper consumption. Okay, good news. Well, the bad news is that Ed, unfortunately, doesn't have ah solid e card yet. He doesn't have a way to show an example to the client on how he's going to sell them these e cards. So what does he do? He grabs one of the bankers. That's act That's on camera that's got some acting lessons, brings them into the studio, photographs them, shoots a really nice e card, presents it to the bank. The bank is great. Say we're gonna take that. That's terrific. Boom. He's into business well and did it the hard way. What if Ed had his own card that showed that he had the ability to shoot whatever he wanted to shoot? Um, he had the ability to show them what his skills were. All right, that's what I want to do. You right here today. What we're gonna need to do is we need to be able to prove as a photographer that you are a hybrid photographer. And, of course I do that all the time. I make sure that when I say that I am hybrid photographer, I prove it right. It's on my sign. It's on all kinds of things. It's also in the in the the corporate slogan of our business, right when you take a look on our website, you see it's Chicago portrait dot pro Chicago style family business and talking portrait's. The talking part is emphasized, and that's what I want you to emphasize now, whether or not it's gonna be a primary part of what you do or what it's not going to do, right? Um, marketing wise, do me a favor, fill me in Chris. Marketing wise when you talk about rocket men, creative What do you use as far as a branding phrase? And what do you have? A Sfar as the ability to to have that little elevator speech stick to somebody. My tagline is launcher identity Propel your image. And so I give me the against solar, please Lunch. Launch her identity and propel your image. So I'm working with entrepreneurs to help them elevate their brand identity and accelerate success. Wow. So that's a type phrasing and like to put around it. That's an outstanding tagline. Thank you. In fact, I don't know if I ever share this with you, but I once upon a time, I thought maybe be kind of cool to rebrand myself because I like Rocket Man, right? And they used to call me Crockett, man, right Until I met him. And he's rocket man. Well, I can't do that. I can't be crying, Rocket man. So I thought Wouldn't it be funny if I would change my first name to Wilk? W l C. Then rocket will crack IQ is now Will Crockett. Oh, are you kidneys at a market? These guys dream or what? All right, it is right there. I'm telling you. Well, Well, that's the tagline that we want to get across. Now we need to show that to your clients is an example. You want to be able to be a hybrid photographer and you want to be able to shoot E products. The best way to do it is to work inside that template, ties it environment that you're gonna need to be able to shoot into a template. Meaning you're going to be able to shoot the photo and the video like we just did. You're going to send it over to somebody, and they're gonna put it together into this video in this video is going to be installed into a delivery platform, and then you're going to be able to hand it out the way you want to hand it out. As of right now, do you have your own e card or your own way to deliver that message to a customer? Not yet. Not yet. Yeah, that's a shame. You're handsome guy. You're a well dressed guy. You're well spoken guy. You know what your marketing is and you know that all this is going to multimedia, right? It's all going to screen. We know everything is going to scream. We know soon our television, in fact, in our own homes. Wow, That's one of the things that's gonna change to. Not only is it just gonna present their own television, our news as well as our favorite television shows, but it's used as a bulletin board. It's used as now away from me to share pictures of my recent trip to my kids. I have TiVo connected as well. Asan. A couple of Apple TV boxes connected to it well, and I don't get a chance to see my daughter very often. She travels around a lot. I travel around a lot when she likes to see it like Sunday, we're gonna go. We're gonna shoot some new Seattle pictures well, before she calls me or text me every day and says, That house, the whole Seattle thing going so well, let's go, agreed me and said, But I I want to show you some pictures on Sunday of what we're gonna do. So she's excited to do that and that television will be that point. Let's talk about your business a little bit. You want to get into photography in a deeper way, do you have? Ah, you have a more solid way, Lorenzo, that you want to present to customers of who you are and what you are when it comes to photography, just like right off hand. Being a former athlete, I wanna market myself to up and coming athletes. Now, um, there are a lot of times when I was competing, whether on a national international level, and did not have any images of me anywhere whatsoever. And that's, you know, I don't care what athletes will tell you. We are conceded. We want to see images and actions better when we do something that we're all Yeah, I did that. I mean, we may not say that out loud in our hairs were thinking that tell you the matter line So But I would like to be able to especially, you know, like if you got high school guys that come out getting highly recruited for college, that's right. And they want to be able to build their recruitment package so they can instead of waiting for recruiters kind of damn Decatur that can shop that out school. That that maybe that's right. That's right. All right, so we're gonna have to develop here. And the reason we're having this conversation here is of course, I want you to be comfortable. You'll notice. By the way, one of the things that we do subliminally is when we have business people who come into us and they want to talk about the E product we're gonna make for them, we're gonna help choose the right e product for them, right? They may have already be one of the sales people that we talked about earlier that's already coming in because his boss is paying for half of it. But the portion that were sitting down and having this conversation here is extremely important because now we're both getting comfortable with each other. We're both sharing ideas and we're both on the same track with the fact that you've got a message and you've got a message and we need to deliver that message. One of the things that I'm really lucky that I'm good at is I'm really good on camera. I'm really good on a microphone. I have the ability to do voiceover. I do a little bit of voice of work. I've done television work. I don't have any problems whatsoever, speaking into a camera and speaking away from a camera. And that's a big difference. Reality television shows, for instance. Rarely do the main characters speak into the camera, right? They speak away from the camera. There's a person over there. Sometimes they use a target, and that's just a less personal way to get that message across. Well, if I want to use your services, in fact, I have used your services, and I've been very happy with your services. If I want to use your services, I want only I want to leave to know what your services are. But I want to know more about you. Are you the right guy to do this job for me? If I'm gonna hire you for a $5000 logo and marketing and rebranding job, that's great. This is Seattle. There's probably in offense. There's probably 30 or 40 folks that I can scare up in. Ah, maybe a 12 hour search that have very close to the same credentials that you do that are going to allow me to decide which one I'm going to go with. And I've learned a long time ago. Don't go with one with the best website because that usually means they spend a way too much money on the website and not enough money. I'm doing what they're doing, right? So let's take the easy one first. That's OK, right? Chris? What? You're hopping on the set. I'm going to get people comfortable on the set. So when they come into the studio, I want them toe to know right off the bat that they see where the sets at, right? So when you come into the studio in Chicago, you'll notice there's a really long hallway, right? You'll enter in through Uh oh, uh, just a single, A glass door that's awful, rather busy Street Racine Avenue on Chicago's rather busy street. And then you'll come through Ah, a small little gallery and it will show printed photographs. It'll show black and white photos all are framed. Some are framed in some of the unusual frames that we do, and there's also some Elektronik panels. Well, those electronic panels are also freed in the same way that our prints are framed. Well, we're just moving in the process right now, but try to imagine this tried Imagine you're coming on in. You see a white gallery wall right there. As soon as you walk in, it's well lit, right? And you see a 16 by 20 size print in a 30 by 40 black frame. All we do is black frames with off white mats. The photo itself has a black border on it, and then it has a bit of white paper barrier there. Right? And of course, I do all the ancient putting their myself. I'm really fastidious about the Egypt. Pretty All right, Well, in the wall built into the wall happens to be a television screen. Right Soon will be in in our new space, in the old space there is, and that screen also happens to have a frame around it, and it also presents a black and white photograph. So at some point, when you're walking in your not really paying attention, because you've got a full 40 maybe maybe 30 or 40 different photographs that they're in this gallery. But one of those is going to be a television that's framed up to look like a frame. Interesting, huh? Yeah, well, that's available for the people that want that one little extra piece that want to see what things look like when you expect them to be photos. But they turn into things that move when we talk about a business card. And if I were to hand you a business card, you expect that to be a photograph. But what happens when it moves? What happens when it introduces you and what you do and how you do it? Or more importantly, what happens when it introduces your spirit? So what I need to do in this part of the process with my customers is I need to connect with them so that they understand one that they trust me and to is that you're about to spend a chunk of money with me that you're a little bit unsure of, Right? You're thinking, Well, hang on a second. I'm gonna spend this $399 for this guy. He's gonna get me in and out, and he's gonna in an hour here, and I know that I've seen some of the cards thes e business cards that this guy's done and they're pretty darn cool. I want one of those for myself. All right, Well, today we're not going to shoot one of the full versions of the E cards because in order to explain each one of the components and shooting that it would take all day. Actually, to do that, there are easier ways toe learn that than going through here. And there's a lot of people that are gonna be as quite as interested in some of that stuff is we are so one of things we got going on is, in fact, you know, you're you're, like, made for the for the set right here we have blue put your blue like like we designed this here, big boy here. So what we're working on first up is what we call our table shot. And the table shot is the first shot that I tell hybrid photographers to get working with. Why? Well, we're gonna talk a little bit about technology in a second. But first of all, I want to get their shots so that we could get it sent out and get it edited. Right? So first up, we're going to use our standard lighten. Remember, this is the standard light we've been using the entire time. This is called the light smarter. So you're able to get any sort of led light that you like. I'll spin around for you, Willie. You go. And he sort of led lights that you want to use whatever I use a brand called Cool Lux doesn't quite matter whatever it iss right, these air one by ones meaning one inch by one inch. The reason that that's important is that the size of the diffuse that we're going to use is a three by four foot diffuser. Now you're also going to notice, just like in before I use this in a horizontal position. That's pretty much because I don't want to use any sort of fill board unless I absolutely have to. Now there are times I use Phil board, but we do have enough light in the room here that we don't really have to worry about it too much.