Lessons

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Siblings

um, so living on we, uh yeah, I think also obviously gonna move the family shoot tomorrow for our timing perspective. But I think also give us a nice little kind of break because it's kind of hard to watch and take it all in. I think that level, but we're gonna go now into brother and sister. Shoot. So a lot of people ask about photographing siblings. We've got a little Cody and Audrey and it's still cold. It's still rainy. Andi, I'm just meeting them as well. Do you ready? We're gonna take some photographs. Have you ever been photographed for your entire life? And I think what we did here was like delivery were up in the game. We plop them and we go. So it's this is kind of hard core, right? No. Wow. Then you must be photographed by great photographer. You don't feel like you have. What we're gonna do is a couple things. First of all, you guys look remarkably stylish. Well done. Secondly, we're gonna do one of just two guys here and there were some work handed. You don't Candids are c...

andids are basically photographs where I whispered You want I don't know. Okay? I thought the right here and together you have to The only way we're gonna survive the cold. Okay, so I know nothing about the survivor mentality. I know nothing about these two Children in terms of their relationship to each other. What their experiences of each other, how they do or do not express affection or receive affection. Um, again, if you want to do this the Safeway and the way I would have advised for a long time and I did myself is I find that out in advance so that you don't have this secret realization that someone hates to be snuggling their scream. And you just kind of lost a kid during a shoot. What I'm gonna do here instead, it's kind of evaluate how we're going and look for these, Like little micro expressions that tell me this is or isn't going Well, I'm gonna just kind of on the fly. So we're gonna get really close with this justice. What you say to her? You look at her to say it ready? Can you sell it? Okay. Is it just me, or do you like saying Hey, hey. I think you like saying, Hey, are you guys being rained on now? OK, I'm being poured on bythe you can see that. Not grabber. Okay, so what you see there? I said grabber. And how did she respond? Are you guys being rained on? Okay. Ready to favor? Just grammar. Okay. So she immediately hated that. That was a terrible idea. So the first thing I'm gonna do is immediately kind of like take it back. Oh, not grabber. I didn't grab her. I meant to say like this. Okay. Ready to get married? Wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait. What are you doing? Where you What? You She's not getting ready. You know what? I hear you saying, Audrey, you're saying I need a little space, okay? He's good. He's remember, Talked about seeing what I think they're saying and expressing it back on that, You know, I understand. Even at this age, I think they get there's fish down there. There's a 1,000,000 down here. Did you know that? So this this shot I've got is a little bit dark for my taste, but in terms of exposure, but I'm in range on, and I'm just gonna lighten up a little bit photoshopped a fish Eat your feet And I just saw That was dark and I adjusted my exposure. I glanced at it, I saw it. And that just makes measure while still talking, you know, you are J j a fish. Eat your feet. No, no, there is a, uh And so what we get is this this and this Hold on a second. Wait for it. This, um, all in a row. So these are all out of camera, and that's just that little exchange we just had about fish eating your feet. Um, and then at a camera, just with a little bit of no Generally like to fly over exposure or General like to go about 1/2 stop under now. Okay. This is what I would love to dio. I would love it if your brother could get as close as possible to you, but not grabbing. Is that funny? Come on. Even Tom, Come on in really, really close with Because I gave the wrong instruction ready, And this is already getting super post, but don't touch, okay? Very, But you're not. Hey, who is that? I don't know who I think it was Jacob. He's not contacted. Hold it right. Here we go. Grab me. Ready? Ready. But you can't let it rest. You ready? Okay. Did you see that loading? Do you happen to have a white show that you know, his hand floating? All right, here we go. That's it. That's it. That's what I'm getting his hands floating in there laughing because it's not touching. Don't get me. Don't. What? You're very good at that. All right. I wanna grab one child. Which one should I grand first? You. I remember the hand pocket. They Yeah. Excellent. And we're just gonna do what we call a photograph. Se photo excellence. Very good for guys. Get rained on. Do you think I'm clicking? How do you know what? You're looking at me. How can I be photographing you if you're looking at me? Why are you looking at the camera when I've ever No, What? I just asked him that question. Why? You look in the camera? I'm looking right here because I want to get a variety of looks where was looking directly in the lens and also looking off a little bit because I've got imposed. Like such and I want to mix these up a little bit. I want to get a little bit of a variety. Was looking over me, looking at the lands, looking back because I could do a whole fund. Siri's with these. And as you can see, that's why I'm doing it in terms of set up to him. I'm shooting it with a 35 right? Was. And I've got him very well lit from top to bottom with that reflector. All right, let's come down here. Since we brought Mom in because I want to get some of those shots. You relax your hand just a little bit. Yeah. There you go. Very good. Yeah. Sorry. You had my voice. What? Eso these? The ones we get up here just right out of camera. And as you can see, these rain drops all over here cause it's like reading a lot, and it's starting to pick up. Um, and so those are little things that if I had gone to black and white with these shots, would have really stood out. Very good. All right, e think she pulled her hair when you're walking away. Look at mom. Pleasure. There you go down there and a little bit towards their Just ignore me. Nothing to see here. No, not going to see here. Not going to see here. Just walking on the path. Okay. All right. I want to see you do put your arms up and show me the dance. Go do the weight. All. Oh, did you need dirtier shoes again? That's a little thing, but it can throw a kid off for 5 10 minutes. You guys know that yet? Way it's I know what you can't dio. And then these were, um, coming in This is that a camera at a camera camera? But wait, I'm just ahead. You can see that. Okay. Yeah, I fallen. Now that's your leg. Oh, I see your legs. Your stomach. Wait, What happened? All right, so I'm getting them wiggling. Okay. All right. I want to see you do Put your arms up and show me the dance. Go do the way. It all. Both of you. Oh, did you get darker shoes? You're the dirt we have waited That took about what? That was like five minutes of dirt reduction. Nothing like that. I know what you can't Dio. I bet you can't look at each other and wiggle. Try. Let's see. Job, look at each other. We've already take three steps. That way. Three steps back. turn. All right, go back to the other three steps. Turn Alright, Right now I want to see honesty back. Raise um All right, now we're to the tree. I already apologized for the that day. I apologize. Which cameras on? I'd like to apologize to the internet for that tenor. Yeah, take me. Ready you. But so do you see how dark that IHS That's a really dark shot. She's under a tree and we moved under a tree because while they were doing the wiggle dance, it started raining harder and harder. So I moved them under that on. What I'm doing is I'm sure I under this I'm afraid of. And this is at a camera on. I'm shooting in a way that I'm getting her and I've got that Greer behind her. So don't have to worry about that sky being blown out because exposures for her and that tree is being a nice little soft cover for May. What was your camera? Just what we're getting. Besides being very funny down to the golf course you live. It's not right. Nothing to see here. Do you see how you can you can You know how much? It's fine. No rain. This is how you stop the rain. Really? Here. I'll show you. Wanna watch? Okay, hold on. Give my job like your face each other like this. Hold on tight. And when I count to three Rabel stock ready? But you gotta hold on. Okay? This part I'm lying to them. I'm completely lying and saying if you do this, you will get this and I do that. Probably every shoot ideo And the trick here is that later I say or not, we could get a cookie or not shoots over Maybe. Or maybe Well, I don't know either way, Um, I've actually never had a kid get mad at me for that, because then they're like, Aw, and something like this is obviously extreme, silly. Like, I don't think that they expect him to get the rain stopped. Ready? What a lot. No, not my beer. Ready one. He should get my exposure. Right? The game starts. Right, lady? Hey, one holds. I'm making the rain stopped to, um, your squat here. This is what I'm getting at a camera. And then, if you can tell a little bit, we have some distance between There actually is a soft hes just because of the rain between us. It's not as sharp because of that. That's at a camera that's processed process. You see the haze between me and him. We're that close, and that's what that's doing. But I think this is a really adorable little set. And all we're doing is out there shopping and stopping the rain. Okay, I'm gonna make the rain stop of the kind of Well, what? And then I keep making the rain. Stop opposing them. They're crazy checking my exposure, and then we get we run back because it's freezing. That was awesome. We got great stuff. Great photographs. They were fantastic. Uh, we're used to this baby. And then at the very day, I want to get some with Mommy. Just one shot, because they do one together. Okay, if this were a regular shoot, I'd get way more than one shot. But I want to show how to bring them all together. with your mom. Say, Mom pulled together. Do not go to sleep on me. I do. And so I should I show this? What I'm doing right here is addressing each. It's so I'm talking. Audrey, I'm talking to Cody. I'm talking about You hear that? What about me? She was trying to go to sleep on me, Sleep. So the big thing here and I just right there. I just did my settings because I realized I was shooting the three of them. And every time Audrey would lead in, um, we were basically changing changing the plane of focus. So I needed Teoh bring my f stop so that if she moved in a little bit like this cause she's such a wild card, I wouldn't have mom out of focus and soft. That's what I was adjusting right there. Don't make sure that you're with them, because they're kind of forget I'll come up a little bit, so don't make it for too much. You got what out there So weird like that? What That's all about? Okay, this is our last one of almost got taken. Can you believe us? All right. So bring it ready No, don't look at him. You okay? Now I'm assigning strangers. Bad superpowers. What a great job you're doing! Cody, look at you. You're fantastic. You're brilliant. You're like a statue among men. All right, Here we go home on our you move this forward. Yeah, that's shot. I just got as I told him, Use the statue among men. And that's the thing to when I have multiple subjects together. And one of them was looking fantastic. I jump in and shoot a really tight shot, and then you're going okay and seen. I love to stay steady. You're doing a great job. It's like you know what? To dio. Yeah, I think what we have here are wild card was Audrey. She was just bouncing everywhere and looking at everything, and she was just all fired up. And we had Cody doing really great. And so what I don't want to dio is give all my attention toe Audrey and not give coated the kudos he deserves. So I'm constantly saying, instead of just working on the one person who is having a problem with my makes, everybody else knows they're doing a fantastic job. Good job. Mommy you clearly are experiencing this? Is that you? I showed him a picture of him. I gave a treat. Actually. Just one look at me and say, Do a good job, lady. Say that to me. Right one? No, I bet you can't get your mouth like this. Watch. Okay, Fast forward goes on for a little bit. And then, as you can see, I get them there about a camera that's not a camera. So it's a little bit off, and then I re crop. It's what I want. And that's it. That's a shoot. Thank you. Thank you. Um, any questions about that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, let's go. Audience. Um, do you find that the birth order of the siblings makes a difference with, like, their personalities? And you can kind of, I guess, a little bit by birth order or yeah, I mean, certainly is a little leverage you can take in there that the traditional ideas is that with birth order, the eldest child is usually more responsible. One who's gonna kind of take charge in the middle Child is usually the clown and the crazy person, the and the youngest child is the baby, right? That's kind of the traditional classic, Um, assignment of personality. I don't find that's always the case. And of course, you don't always have siblings that come in threes. And in this case, though it did. It did. Cody was a little bit more together, and you do find that with Children are a little bit older, you will find that that could be the case, but not always. Sometimes the older one, like that sample I showed you with the brother and sister that are the two brothers attuned one year old. The one year old was really easy, going and quiet and fine, and the two year old was a crazy man. So we had a reaction to the 100% J peg comment, and Chris David says, If you are spot on consistent and know exactly what you want, J. Peg can ease your workflow. Do you feel like that? Yes, that's the Red is exactly why I am not a joke. I've had the great pleasure of doing a photo focus with Scott born like eight or nine times or something, and the joke is that he mocks me and I call me Jay Pegasus. And he does. He is like, you know, I your palate burgers or not doing, Um But Jerry Jones is gonna join us tomorrow. He shoots J. Peg and I know a number of great shooters were still true. Shooting J bag. You should j pay gap. So if you feel comfortable with your exposure and you feel like you're in a certain range and everything else is going great and you're not delivering images that are gonna coat the entire side of a warehouse building, that is like 86 square feet and stuff, um, the largest level of J peg in your camera will suffice for nearly for every shoot you do it mean I've done marketing shoots that have been, um, you know, very large open spreads and this and that. Every so often, I'll have something there like we wanna be able to use this for anything and might be a billboard. It might be we cropping and 1/2 and then build it up. In that case, I'll shoot raw. I'm not nothing against raw. I just find that work flows faster with JPEG, and your camera has how many megapixels my camera I should have five d mark, too. Okay, so that has a lot of them. It does many of those little things. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. Megapixels. Many pieces of information. Did more questions from the audience. Go back to the Internet. Okay. Okay. Jonesy is asking in the chat room what happens if you end up with twice as many photos of one kid as opposed to the more difficult sibling do. You should only show the parent equal amounts of each sibling. Okay, that's a very good question. Theme happens if you find that with the child, that's a little easier to shoot, you have a ton of photographs. And the one that little more difficult is less photographs for? Certainly. You know, you get a five of how that's going while you're there and you're shooting, you know, with the intention of making sure you have some sort of even mix. Um, and I think that later you can also address that in editing. When you notice I wouldn't give a client like 50 shots of one and two of the other like that just wouldn't happen. Um, but if there's a little bit more of one of the other. I don't stress about it. Does that Di answer? Yes. Okay. Yes, you do. Excellent. You answered so quickly that I was like, What question? So quite a few questions came in. I'm not sure exactly who this came from, but how many images do you shoot? And how many do they were talking about? 100. But they weren't sure. You give the client 100? No, I mean in terms of how Maney shoot. I don't necessary track that I put in a four gig card and just experience interaction. You know, I don't ever think about how much I'm shooting. Exactly. But in terms of delivery, I try to keep it. You know, between, um I think again that 50 60 ranges is nice. I will go over. I don't think I've ever gone under for that on. I do agree that I do agree with other schools of thoughts that you can overwhelm your clients by giving them too much to look at. So part of my job is to make it that they have, you know, a good selection. And if I have something where there is very incremental differences and how this person was shot. I think it's my responsibility to choose the ones you know, Um, as opposed to, like here. All these shots are creek, and that's what they're kind of getting, you know, just pull the one or two that are fantastic. The difference there. I don't remember this shot of our little kids in the rain is if I'm shooting something like this, I find that this is a set, mostly because of where Cody is the boy, because she's pretty steady and his adjustments up and back around I think, are adorable. They really speak to this kind of loving interaction with his sister like he's checking on her. He's laughing, is coming back to me. This is a great Siri's. I'm gonna present all four of these, and I'm a strongly suggest they frame together. And as far as black and white versus color. Do you make that call all the time, or do you give the client Yes, I make that call the time clients know when they book portrait sessions that all images are returned fully edited in a combination of color, black and white and any sort of toning styles that the artist chooses, and, um and then when I deliver them, I let them know that I can cover anything into, like, a black and white if we want to put it together. But if they select a black and white image and they want that brought back to color, that there is a process involved with that and it's, you know, kind of archival retrieval image and they can put it back. But each image is gonna be a $25 fee to go back and take the time to pull it up in color and reprocess it. And I think the trick with that is communicating that, you know. So if I have a client who had of nowhere is like, I am genuinely shocked at that. Then again, I care about that relationship. So I'll say, Oh, if that wasn't explained to you, Well, then let me waive the fee. Of course, you know I'm not going to sacrifice the greater, um, sale for this one. Little tiny surcharge. Okay, question coming from Andy Stacy. How do we tell the clients that it's time to wrap up? Sometimes it feels like the parent was wanting more shots but that they won't ever say anything. How do you tell the parents has time to write but wrap up? I am actually as much as we're having all this thing and I'm thinking about my settings and think about my exposure. I'm thinking about the interaction. I'm also thinking about the configurations I'm getting. That doesn't usually kick in until about 3/4 for the shoot. I start thinking we're probably close to wrapping up. Did I get Mom with sister to get with Dad with brother? Did I get Mom and Dad just together alone? Um, that those kind of little internal checklist comes from a lot of sales consultations when I realized if I'm putting together this awesome canvas piece and I've got a great representation of the whole family, but none of just brother and sister together, that that's a miss and it's actually a poor reflection of this whole family. So the checklist to me is because I don't want to sit down and say, Oh, I wish I'd gotten you with you're I got you the two siblings, but not the other one. I guess you don't love him as much because he won't be on the wall with you, you know? So I'm tracking that in my head. And when I know I have everything down, Um, I'll say Okay, we got everything we got. You guys there, get this. I feel really good about our shots, Get a lot of Campbell candids. Um, And when I deliver it that way, no one's going to say to me like, Are you sure you got enough of everything you just told me you got which was everything, you know, so and that's part of it too, is you're going to the shoot. You may hear me. I get a lot of feedback on how people are doing how they look, what the shot looks like. I don't know if I'm having a whole experience. That's just in my head of how well things were going. I'm doing my client a disservice of having this lovely reassurance that really feeds until the future images were taken for the like. This is going well, you know, and I'm not going to say that it's not true if I if I'm everything, is just going miserably wrong. I'm not going to say this is great, you know, I'm only gonna say that when I know I'm getting shot better coming. Well, do you ever have the opposite problem where the parents are like, OK, I think you got enough. Like, Can we go now? No. Maybe not worded like that. No, I don't think I have ever had an experience where the parents want to go early. No, because keep in mind, they're paying for the session. They're reserving the time. It's important for them. They've already committed to it and they've shown up, you know, I mean, obviously, if I'm dragging things out and taking forever, But I'm pretty fast case and we're moving through and we're getting a lot of stuff going, so they see that it's a productive shoot. That's part of it to like keeping on track and keeping things moving. They see that things were getting done, and I think a lot of people feel like, OK, this is good. This is going well. This is an efficient process. If I were really, really slow to do the next thing, they might kind of say, Let's wrap it up, you know, been playing off of that question. What do you do like I've had. I've had a couple of clients that are like, OK, well, now I just want to try and get this shot. And now do we Can we get a shot Or And it's like, you're, like, two hours in, and they're like, OK, now can we go to the pond? And you're like, Okay, we're creeping up on our number three. How do you deal with me like that? I think you get that. So if you have a client that wants to keep going and keep going and keep going, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I think if you are telling them, Look, we got so much, we got so many locations and I'll even say What we don't want to do is sit down at the end of day. Look at all these images and they're so many. We don't even know where to start, you know? Yeah, I felt really comfortable saying that. So I've got a random not in my hair. So there's a lot of product questions. I'm not sure. Product questions. Okay, if if if there's a different day where you're gonna be talking about what you offer, I could talk to us about here and then on. Um, tomorrow Saturday, I'm gonna kind of step to the set up. But I couldn't talk to it right now. Sure. Okay. Um, que f d photo. And Twitter would like to know what products do most of your clients order? What products of most my client's order most. Nearly every shoot is a combination of, um, frame France floppy prince canvases and, um, coffee table books. So it's some configuration of some of that. Do you put yourself or do you have that old? Yeah. So I print with White House custom color. My friend separated with Buckeye Color Lab for a long time. They did a great job, and I did all my cards and press printed products to White House. Um and then just from, you know, just transitioning over White House is such a great job. So I just started transitioning everything to them. And do you have it sent to you and then you give it to the client, Correct? Yes. Yes. I would never have something sent directives. And with that, do you offer people the digital negatives? If they so want like and they buy like the city of Images. Yes, So I have. Basically, my my mindset when it comes to pricing is if there's anything any sale that you end, that a client bought some things that you're like. Oh, they only bought that. That may be your pricing structure isn't working very well. You don't want to like if you ever have something where they just by the digital negatives from you and nothing else and it wasn't worth your time and effort than that, then That's priced world, you know? So everybody has different ideas about how to price digital negatives. I have them set that when if people were to only buy and which rarely happens. But people will say I only want to buy all the other prints on DVD and again, terminology here matters. Did you digital negatives? Um, images on DVD by the rights by the rights to reproduce. I use the terminology by the rights to reproduce. No one is ever buying the rights. Like I always own the rights to everything I shoot, you know. So they have the rights to reproduce and, um, and reproduce the imagery as they want to dio under some really good guidelines for me about like, Hey, if you spend all this time and effort to get these great shots that I went to a lot of trouble, the color correct and produce, please don't take it here and have everything washed out Messed up, you know, and they're not gonna want to take it there. And after we go through all that, so there's a little bit of educating your clients in there. But in terms of the images, with the rights to reproduce, I will sell that so that if they decide they only want to buy that, it's worth the cost of my average sale that I know that the average sale that feels really healthy to me. So it's not gonna be a small price. I also have kickers in there. When people get to a certain level of revenue purchase that if you get here where I would love for you to get, we will then include the by the rights to reproduce. And if I have people that are close, even like if they're in $1000 range, they'll kind of like All right, let's just do this because that makes sense. That's That's really nice. Did you say you're having them sign a contract when you're I mean, are you having them sign anything that says this? Or is this all verbal eso? When people buy the rights to reproduce, they get everything on DVD along with a conversation, Because I think if you put everything in writing, I don't want to put anything in writing that trash is certain laps. I just don't think that's my place. Just we've done some local lab testing. We figured out what you know, the same image, and this is a really good exercise. If you haven't done this already, take one image and bring it to like six or seven local labs and see what you get back from the same image. It's remarkable, like the spread. And so the ones that I do like, you know, I feel really comfortable saying that. But I also don't want to put that in writing because I don't know if that lab will be great. In a year, you know, things change management, they change equipment, they change paper types. Eso I'll just verbally say I think this this and this is great and you know please stay away from this. And then they sign something that says they have the rights to reproduce. And I've given them that permission because labs will stop them. They won't because everything's got my branding on it. So labs will stop there. Say, we're not gonna put this in love. Let's get permission from the artist. Okay, we have a glimmer to the shoot. We have a number of questions with regard Teoh the lens that the lenses that you were using, the choices and then some people saying, Can you explain again why you used the wining lens for for your portrait? It's, um, OK, so a couple different things. If I'm shooting kind of off the cuff and the camera away from my face by shooting with a wider angle lens, I have a better chance of getting my subjects in focus. Then, when I'm shooting with a long focal range, I'm not gonna, uh, months long focal length. So if I'm here and I'm shooting someone 100 millimeters away and I'm shooting with 100 millimeter lens, I'm not gonna do this. That's just, you know, that's unlikely. Um, that I'm gonna get anything but if I'm really close and I've got a lot of scope and I've got a little bit more of a grasp on the field of sharpness, Um, and I'm shooting at a little bit of a deeper depth of field, then I have more flexibility to shoot with that. With the wider England's five 5568 11 when you say that middle now like for O for O is pretty deep from Thea like, I mean, I think the most I ever get to is, uh, maybe a 56 for family portrait. It's if I'm really close. Six people. Yeah, and the other thing to keep in mind when you're shooting with the lens and you're shooting relatively close range with a wide angle is the closer you are to your subjects, the more or less of them is in focus. So the exact same shot from here If I'm shooting you with the same aperture setting, I'm apt to have a lot more of you and focus. But if I'm sitting where that pen is right next to you and doing the exact same shop with the exact same settings, even though the lighting might be fine. I'm gonna get, like, your eyes in focus and that's it. Or an I and focus and not the other one. So the distance of the subject to the lens matters, That's we're gonna go that little more in the technical section. But I know that I need to be a little far away. I can't be right up on him and doing this. Yeah. Okay, um, chippy, the would like to know. And Twitter, have you ever had to work with the child that thought it was fun to hide from the camera? And how did you deal with that? If I ever had to work with a child, that that was fun to hide became a yes, and I went with it. I hit from the camera to, and then we were on the same side hiding from the camera. Yeah. I mean, it's most of it if they're initiated game of any sort of what is sort. The best thing you can do is jump in and be part of that game, you know? And you get a lot of images that way, where you're just like, Oh, God, Don't look at me and then and then she looks up and then you shoot. You know you can do things like that. Question from Rummy in the chat rooms. If a group shot isn't working, do you ever break up the group and go back to shooting some individual shots before moving back to the group again and trying? That's a good idea. Yes, I have done that where I have a whole group together and it's just like I am killing myself. Let's pause. It takes breaks. What I can do is, if you saw on that, that shoot with the brother, sister and mom is get really close and somebody who's doing a great job and you can knock off some great singular porch. It's that way, especially if you're doing a little bit of been getting on the edge or just kind of pull them out. I'll do that. We'll go in and I'll just They come here. Okay, you know, on. And then the kid thinks it's funny that, you know, you could make a game about leaning them out or something silly. Or let's let's let's clean out of the boat or whatever and just make it into a game. Um but yeah, And if I find that you know nothing's working and it's a mass, I'll say, you know what? Time out, this is not working, although don't say time out, cause then kids think their in trouble. Have a question. Um, as far as your, uh, career in sales or, you know, the business crew that you had prior to this. How much of your business now? Like what percentage is really good photography And what percentages business do you do? You feel like it's mostly business. Your success is mostly business. Um, well, you know, like I said, when I first started shooting, I cared more about really improving the quality of my imagery than I did about getting a good market, getting a lot of clients. That was first and foremost me. So, um, do I think you can run a really efficient business with average photographs? Yeah, I think you could do really well with that. Um, and I think you can also have, um, excellent imagery and no business sense whatsoever and not make a dime eso. But there's something in the middle there, you know? I think the best of both worlds is if you're producing imagery that you're happy with, and you feel good and you feel captures what you're going after, and you've got a sound business to support that, Um, so it's kind of, you know, it's kind of that both I'm 50 50. I don't know what the percentages. It depends on the situation. There are times that I produced a shoot that went pretty well, and, you know, I knew was was good. It was not my very favorite ever. But I had enough really good. Um, business, uh, processes in place that the sale is terrific, you know? And I had. And so in that case, I would have said it was 65% business, you know? And then flip. There are times that I delivered a shoot that just, like, had me on my knees like this is so I'm going to show this to you, and you're gonna cry. And for them, it was a big sale, and for me, it was disappointing sale. Um, and like, you know, where was that? So it's so kind of one of one. I do think that, um, you can I think it's unfortunately the way it works right down This industry is, um if you don't have a really sound business model, you're making a lot of mistakes. And you could be doing a fabulous job and you're bleeding revenue, you know, And what that does to you as an artist who cares a lot about creativity and wants to stay fresh and want to stay focused and managed burnout and get sleep, um is if you're, you know, burning that revenue, it can be really disheartening. And it can be exhausting. And that kind of lack of business skill come believed right into your ability to stay fresh with your imagery. You know, I mean, I guess I've been hearing, you know, a lot, that it's 90% business in 10% photography and, you know, to be successful. And so I was just kind of getting I think that's a high ratio. Because if a client's consistently getting average prints and they're looking over here and they're being pulled by this beautiful imagery of the studio over here, um, I think clients look, I think they look around. I think they're reassess. Yeah, I'm any business matters, and we're gonna talk about that a lot Um, but, um, I don't think that it has to be an either or I think they're both really strong components. What if that was somewhat interesting? Question from Leslie Lee Photo. How do you work around birth marks or scars with kids, or do you leave them in? Or do you talk to the parents about in I mean, a couple of things, like a parent makes a comment to me specifically that their self conscious about this or this or that, um, you know, or can you just try to photograph more from this side of this side? You know, I'll respect that. And, um, whatever the case might be, but, I mean, I know for me, I had a car accident. Um, gosh was, like, 14 years ago now, and I have a scar from it, and I've had multiple friends of minor dermatologist saying, you know, I can take that off for you and to me, the experience of what I went through with that car accident and how traumatic it was in the kind of aftermath of it was significant enough that I feel like it had an impact on me. Um, And by removing this, I'd be removing something that changed me. So I feel like when I'm looking at people who have situations, whether it's a birthmark or a scar or anything, who am I to say that doesn't look good on you? It is you, you know? So I'm really kind of like if you tell me you want something ocal respect that. But otherwise that's you. You know, snap turtle on Twitter would like to know if you use photo shop exclusively to edit. I used photo shop in addition to light room eso. Uh, the way my process works is I will do the shoot. I'll come back, I'll load everything, um, into the system. And I will do my edits from the browser and bridge. I'll pull them through our run batches in photo shop, and then that will slam into light room while do my crops and any sort of exposure tweaks that I want to do. And then I'll pull that back into bridge as final final images where I looked through and I'm like, OK, I want that skin retouch. I want that. I want that and then I deliver so it sounds convoluted, but it runs free smoothly. I got it down. I don't know that down. They know a lot of people now in light room three or doing those little facial re touches in light room on. And that's probably something that I need to just sit down and get better at. But right now, my flow feels really comfortable and good and effective for me going back to the sales thing if you don't have a studio like people here don't like, for instance, I don't actually have like, a studio space. Yeah. So, um, where do you have these meetings? Where you go over the princes. You originally just have them at your house. Did you? Your house is that Did you go to a coffee shop? Like, what's where did you Yeah, that was part of my Okay. So when I first started working from home, we did the upstairs addict. I answer this recently? Yes, I did. When we did that Q and A on Twitter yesterday are two days ago. I think you were just talking to Katie and I bought that way. We're here. Yes, great. Though on the the the house he bought had 1/3 floor that had 600 square feet or so of just kind of unfinished base, and that the house was purchased with intent of that being my studio, which it was for the 1st 3 years of my business. Um, the upside to that was the fact that I could just kind of go and have us studio. Um, the downside, of course, was that any time someone came to the studio, they came in the front door and through the living room and tripped over the toys and, you know, went up the stairs and saw the wet towel that was still in the bathroom floor. And, you know, it was just It became really exhausting to manage the flow that s special. And things got a lot busier. Um, but what I would do because of that is I wanted to minimize the traffic into the studio. So I wanted to use the studio for shooting, and that was it. And all the other meetings I want to do somewhere else. So I did meetings in Starbucks and at the client's home and, um, coffee shops and wine bars. Wine bars are great places. Sales meeting doesn't say um so I would do It was kind of like mix it up and stuff. I didn't want to be going to the same place every time and have such a clear virtual office. So what kind of shift? In different places and go to clients, homes and stuff. So, yeah, I did a lot of that. And especially when you're doing wedding photography, because again, I shot 42 weddings my first year. Um, to go to a client's home with all your albums is ridiculous. You know, it's just like and people tell me they do that. I'm like, I know exactly how that feels and you're getting out the car and you're like, Oh, my God, Don't drop it. Um, it becomes really cumbersome. And, um, again, I'm always thinking about two things from a business re. Second is this Should I be doing this? Is this efficient for me to be doing this thing in my business? And from a creative perspective, anything I'm doing that I feel is like bleeding my love for what I'm doing. I pay attention to I've learned to not shelve that and say, Well, whatever, suck it up. You got to get going because that can do you in that can really kind of kill your passion for what you're doing. And I think you need to pay attention. Those little voices like that say this is ridiculous. You know, What can I do to make this so that I'm not abhorring parts of my job? And that's the part where I was like That was one of the big incentives for me to get a studio. So get a studio that could be a commercial real estate space that could be like a separate entrance that if you have a garage where you can pull that up, I mean, a studio is there. That's not like the place in the mall. I mean, that's a 1,000,000 places that could be just a private, dedicated space that hopefully you have some sort of access for clients to come in and out. That's not so destructive to the rest of your life. Do you feel that it's worth investing in that earlier on? Then later? Do you? Do you regret not going to having your own studio space earlier in spending that overhead? No, I don't regret not doing it earlier because I got myself to a point that when I really got a studio is like, Oh, Lord Almighty, I am saved and free. And I appreciated the heck out of it, okay? And, you know, just financially, I want to get to a certain point where I could take that leap because I was gonna basically bite off a year because I signed the lease. That said for at least the next year, I'm responsible for these payments. Uh, Bernie just told me it's five minutes to end of tape. Uh, so, you know, I need to be able to be comfortable that I had my business built up enough that I could do that, you know? And I learned a lot by the time I opened a studio. We're gonna talk about this tomorrow, establishing a studio. By the time I opened a studio, I learned a lot of how is running my business, what spaces I needed and what I didn't need. And if I open up a studio the first day I opened up business, I probably would have really designed a poorly run space because I didn't really know how is using it. Do you want to perhaps talk about the next couple of days. We have a few minutes. Four? Yes. Okay, Perfect. So, tomorrow, tomorrow we start with the family shoot. So a lot of questions Air coming in. Like, how do you do with parents and this and that, Um I start out by giving an overview of how this is experience is gonna go and what I would love for them to do and what I would love for them not to dio. And so we taped one of those meetings, and we're gonna start, but with just kind of how that conversation goes and go right into the family shoot, um, and kind of stop. And we had a whole bunch of dynamics going on with that, so that will be really fun. We were on the move, and we're going places, and you're doing things, and we're gonna start with the family shoot, and then we're going to go right into establishing a studio and the budget design challenge, which is, um, take $250 run all over Seattle and figure out a bunch of stuff taken out for the studio. We got a bunch of stuff So we're going to show that, um and from there, we're gonna go into simple lighting theory and simple lighting set up. Oh, my God. I'm so tired. And then we're gonna keep going and wait. There's more. Um, And then we're gonna have a bunch of kids join us, and we're gonna do live shooting. Um, these people here will be doing live shooting, and we're gonna do kind of live feedback. Okay, You got this? What about try this setting this angle? Okay, then do it again. We're gonna do some of that. And it's again, the idea of theory, practice, theory, practice, and let's do it. Um, and we're going to the image critique with Jerry Ganis, which should be fabulous. Will do a kind of a whole new More people can upload to the flicker pool and kudos to those who did have the guts to say, All right, here's my image. Put it on the air in front of all those thousands of people and evaluate it while I sit here like this. Um, that's awesome. It's fantastic. Um, and is that I think that's a lot, and that's just tomorrow, and that's just tomorrow So, um, and I think we have make sure we have a good Q and a time to so on your block and the schedules that my block tomorrow lackey dot com It's got a lot more detail in there.