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Lesson Info

Client Experience and Workflow Part 2

Overshooting eighth deadly sin at my city oh ok very touched on this I'm telling you nail it nail it have the vision of what your work's going to be and executed and there's another thing that I didn't tell you guys about not over shooting so when we first did this transition from showing a ton of images to showing a smaller number and our profit margins went up when we did that on our customer experience went up when we did that and our workflow got better when we did that but the one thing I notice is that if I went and I shot a session and just for argument's sake I shot a session I shot sixty pictures and they got to see twenty do you know what I think is like the most awkward question ever and hate in the street all the time why are the rest of the pictures can we see the rest of them now remember I think that you should only show your clients fully finished images I don't think your clients should ever see an image for me that isn't retouched so then they want to see these ones t...

hat you didn't know that you didn't give up why honey, I'm in the business of selling your pictures it is in my best interest to give you the best once I don't have a secret drawer with the best photos that I keep for my snow I'm gonna give you the best ones but they still want to see it they want to see it and what happened when I started really doing the one shot one pose when I really got my shooting under control is your ableto ask not this is this is them what what there's nothing to show them and I don't think that I've never had a client think that's a bad experience but they always just want to know that they saw them all and if you can truthfully look your client in the eye and say like this these are your photos what's missing because then you know I will always offer like what did I miss something? Is it like you aren't happy? Oh no, no, no, we love him. I just want to make sure I got to see all well that's what it's followed up with. So, um chipping is super encouraged that are like like I love it you guys know what champion is right? So when you take a picture you look at the back of the camera and you call e do chimp look use it that's what it's there for you and look at these photos all right, so are you showing are you showing the photos to them or you're just getting excited? I will show my clients want and I will tell them I will tell them it's not really in my work flow I only want to show you fully finished images but I'll show you one because that with it solidifies the trust if you show them one image if you're like I love this crushed it you showed to him years ago yeah it's very good yeah it's good like if you solidify then they trust you and once they trust you it's goodbye always make sure that I tell him I'll show you one now I show you any more we'll show you one because we don't we don't have time for me to show you all of them and then you're able to go ahead. So, um I'll tell you a view over shoot these other ways that you can tell me take five shots of the same pose you overshoot, you take twenty shots of the same pose you need a clinic thing they if you were taking that many pictures of the same pose it's it's it cheapens everyone every time you click that shutter it's less of an original it's it's not becoming more valuable you're you're cheapening it. And if your clients have seen less than half of the pictures you take, you're overshooting if you take a hundred pictures and they're seeing if you're taken hundred pictures and they're only seen twenty you're overshooting if your god if you throw in that many way course in that situation I had someone I saw on like instagram or twitter this is a while ago and it was a session and they said I crushed this image oh my gosh it's amazing hashtag omg hashtag eh? I love this hash tag photo rock star and that look at the picture and it was a great image like I love the photo but then they left a little info up so you can kind of see what you took sixteen hundred photos you took sixteen hundred photos yeah, you better have an amazing one of a sixteen hundred tries you better have something that's that amazing so make sure that they just just process it guys know that if you're overshooting it's hurting you, I know how to identify if you're doing it every time you click that button it's not like a dollar it's like costing you a dollar all right, so you're spending more time colin spending more time downloading you're spending more money on service and cards and you have to explain to parents why they only get to see thirty of one hundred fifty that you took that sucks it's a bad experience then not an awful experience but that's not a great one knows the things that all will happen how do we solve it? One shot one pose and this is probably going to blow up the chat room right now and I like so just be prepared, but I take a picture, I look at it if it's not good, I delete in camera, I delete the file. If it's not good enough for my client gone now, some people will say that if you delete in camera, it can lead to your card going corrupt that's never happened to me have had corrupt cards, but never from this. What could happen is if you're overshooting and you bring your card to capacity and then you delete and then you feel it too capacity again, I could see that being an issue, but if you're shooting twenty thirty pictures on a four gig card you've been shooting to lead all you want, you're fine, so make sure that it's good enough to keep and move on. And do you know what happens when we do this life without calling let's? Just take a moment, think a moment and breathe in that freedom imagine that you plug your memory card in and you know that that's that you all got deuce color correct in photo shop, you don't have to sort anything sorry done I mean that's, that's amazing and how many people here like our suffering from from calling I went toe um I'm here I'm here for you we're here to get through this I went to aa class wasn't a speaker I saw once and they were talking about their weddings and they shot like fifteen a thousand images between three photographers at a wedding was their standard workflow and I'm just like you know that it'll work if you take your finger off you put back on, it'll work again you don't have to hold it down the whole time fifteen thousand images is more than I would take at an entire year's worth of shooting weddings jen my friend jen who's one of the most amazing photographers I know she's going to here on day three she and I go shoot a wedding will shoot for eight hours and we'll come out with two thousand so shooting fifteen together not each together will come out with two thousand images so understand that like the weddings I love a different weddings you don't have time to check it and you're dealing with bridal parties and so I shoot mohr than one shot will impose but my wedding portrait I don't you have the time to deal with it so to do this you need to understand your equipment you need to get it like this is this is one of those things where we're talking about excellence in your business this is excellent in your photography you need to understand how your light works you need to understand what lenses you should be using. You need to understand how howto move your reflector what it's going to do it this location if your light needs to be higher lower you know these things guys and these are obviously things that you aren't just going to know and this does take time with practice but but continually work on this if you are a person who struggles with your exposure on your photography consciously work on correcting your exposure like make that be a focus of your of your work you are working on getting better at having a perfect exposure so, um understand your pose understand that certain poses will make them look girly and certain poses will make them look manly, okay like understand the rules and understand that that that that's just basic stuff but by knowing that you're going to be ableto make your clients look amazing and do it without having to tweak the pose till it ends up looking right, you know what it should look like, ok? And I understand that your client's perception like how many? Well, how did I work under some of the clients? Experience is independent of how many pictures you take if you come to me for a session and I take a hundred pictures and you come to me for a session and I show you twenty pictures the end result is how many amazing photos did I give you and how much fun did you have doesn't matter how many shots I took if I meet your expectations with delivering you twenty amazing photos and you had fun doesn't matter there's never going to be a client that feels cheapened by this his eyes you're like what they should be expecting you deliver or more they don't care money shot to take it matters to you but doesn't matter to them so this is ahh a real session that I shot and we're gonna work on some of these files next but this is every a single picture I took a couple more is every single one that's every click of the shutter and I know you guys are like oh but she's so hot and she's like a pretty seventeen year old girl it's gonna be easy photograph for no it's the same thing whether they're pretty or they're ugly or their fat or their skinny or their guy or there girl understand these rules learn it, live it and deliver the best portrait you can without messing around all right at a twenty frame challenge I want you guys to go shoot entire session with twenty images you've got kids they're going to hate you but go practice go try it and goal post that I have a facebook group it's facebook dot com slash groups slash matthew the body obviously, um, go go to the good of the group page and post a link to your session. Post recession. Show me what you're doing. It's absolutely gonna be worth your time. And he do this. I promise you that. So go do, like, show me because I'll tell you right now that the first time I ever shot a session like this the first time I made the conscious decision to go one shot, one post not cut back on my shooting to do one shot, one post. It was the most uncomfortable session for me to shoot. It was so out of my comfort zone, but I knew I had the vision of what I wanted to achieve. So try it. I did it on a real pain client. I don't know if you guys wanna do that or not, but, uh, but I knew that I was I knew that I was delivering her good stuff. I knew it. You could see it. So I think I really encourage you to do that. I'll give you, like, a month, get it done by april. My birthday is april twentieth. I'll pick a winner. Remember that they will do something it's gonna be worth your time, tanner all right, I love we've got people that guy says challenge except that what we're gonna do it on like deebo points out when film is what I was shooting I only shot one role, which is thirty six shots not that much more he's like I need to come back to that now it's an interesting thought that there's a lot of people who like you said kind of freaked out a little bit about the deleting in camera aspect and then also a lot of people were like crazy just yeah, I love it and I like and the deleting and camera thing I get like I understand that people that's something you read about like I've read it on forums I've read it, I do it every day and I've never had a problem with it and like I said, I think that the leading in camera leading to corrupt files in my honest experience and I feel confident enough to share this with the world it's when you're filling your stuff up and you're deleting to make more space and then filling it up again that's an awful idea do not do that get a new card, but if you're just going through and deleting the ones that you don't need, fine, yeah, you're fine and the other thing that's so funny about talking about people who shoot film it's like back in the day when you go in, you'd shoot a session you would have no idea what it was if it worked or didn't. And remember, you had to pay to see if your picture turned out. You had to pay a buck, something to get your roll of film developed and printed. It was like a buck for every click of the shutter. And so even the bad ones if they blinked, cost you a buck. Imagine let's, let like let's treat it that way. All right, so we need to confirm they're going back to the session. So we've gone through. We've nailed the session. We've crushed it. They've paid. They called. They booked. Well, they paid. We shot the session. I always confirm their proof book. Pickup time before they leave. Now our proof book pickups pretty simple. Takes about fifteen minutes. We bring him in. We do show them their images on a big screen tv. They get to see a slideshow. And then we walk them through our order catalog and we give them the proof book. Then they go home. They don't place their order at that time. That's just an opportunity for them to see images big on the big screen and understand how they're going to order from us, so but we confirmed their pickup time. And then we take with these plastic job holders that air just like getting at staples or office depot or whatever and I put a piece of paper in that prints out from studio plus that's the kinds name they're session number and we write on their pickup date and we write on all of our memory cards are numbered and we write the number of the memory card on that piece of paper and all goes in a folder and it all gets sealed up and put on the shelf to be worked on cool so now I want show you guys this is when our digital work flow would start ok and our digital work flow is matthew really quick just before before you move on I just want to let everybody know who does still have questions about how you shoot and that kind of process of do you look at pictures do you not do deleting all that stuff we will be doing two sessions of shooting one with a male model and one with a female model are not models but school kids way will be doing two sessions tomorrow of that so you're actually able to see it in motion yep and what's important to know too that I want to play it was like like russ was just saying these air legit high school kids these are not people that are got from an agency these are not people that mop like this is just some kids from seattle so uh so you talked about initial part of your work flow with the phone call about you doing anything with emails well as faras like any kind of automation or is that in studio plus you know we do have an email that we sent out and it's something that we're working up for a high school seniors this year so it's a little bit different this year our work flows evolving a bit we currently for our boudoir stuff if you book a session the moment you book your session I like to do it while I'm still on the phone with them because I want to make sure that the email address actually works that I understood them but then we send them a pdf if you go too elusive our dotcom there's a section where it's like ten tips for your upcoming boudoir session and it walks them through all just general stuff about what they should expect and then it talks about the session types that we have and it also is pricing now we will be doing that with our seniors this year but we don't we haven't in the past and that's a great way to make sure that you have it like in writing like not a you knew your session was at three o'clock like I sent you an e mail it's in writing you were supposed to be here an hour ago and it's also a way to just make sure that you can communicate your expectations so yeah all right cool so first thing to speeding up your digital workflow keyboard shortcuts learning use them love um have a good friend joy who that lives in florida nationals around a bunch and she really wanted to get she really wanted to understand her photo shop tools keyboard shortcuts like you want to learn that so I think that's what she did she hid the tool tell that she got rid of it in photo shop do you want to know the fastest way to learn your tools cuts have to google what is the keyboard shortcut for dodge burn tool and you're going to get really annoyed and memorized those fast I don't necessarily think that's a step that we all need to take but there are a certain number of tools that we use in photoshopped routinely that should be your keyboard shortcut ok I like I want to lose my mind when we bring in these new people that work for us and love them like we'll come from an art school and they'll be doing something photoshopped number like ok undo that and they go like dragged the mouse uh think file and then they undo and I'm like ah just hit command z please give me way faster way faster than dragging your mouths all over learn these I set up a free keyboard shortcut list it's free. If you register for the course it's under the class description, it is not every single shortcut in existence, because it would be seventeen pages, and you would probably not use most of them. They are the ones that I use it's. What I use even add to it. You can change it. You do whatever you want. But I just want to make sure you guys know that the keyboard shortcuts is a massive thing in our in our workflow.