Lessons

Lesson Info

Retouching and Sales

This is a very hotly debated topic as well. A lot of photographers spend many, many hours behind the computer till two three o'clock in the morning working incredible hours having having a very detrimental effect on the family you know you used to and this is this is reality now the way I see it when I was shooting film I was the specialist photographer I shot the images I gave it to a lab to process the lab printed the images I got them back and I've handed them over to my my papa my papa did the flat mount album we presented it to the client I'm specializing I'm getting the specialist photographer the specialist lab to print and the specialist p a to put the weld them together so I'm going to bring that philosophy into my business now as well I um uh hard to say this without I'm the photographer I do what I do best. I then hand those files out or either in hand those those files over to my re toucher my re toucher is a way better re toucher than I am and obviously every touching I'm ...

a way better photographer than she is a za photographer so I do the photography she does the retouching I look up fashion magazines and check out different poses and lighting she's reading design magazines and increasing her skills with design and you know checking out you know, being on the adobe tv websites and doing all that kind of stuff learning about a dobie and photoshopped techniques and and I will shoot experimental work and then I'll have communication with her and she'll say to me I've just checked out this new teeth this new technique what do you think about this and other yes that's amazing or it's nice but maybe it's not gonna work for for this client or you know let's let's see how we can adapt it so if I get a specialist together I wasn't there that the mayor ofthe new york giuliani is that right that's his leadership philosophy get the best people possible to get the best product possible I'm not a great re toucher also my time is more expensive than her time that's what she does for a living as a photographer if I'm sitting behind the computer that means I'm not making money shooting right now I am speaking to you right now my re toucher is touching up the images that we shot yesterday in fact I know that she's done already because she lives in london and it's the different times and she's done what we did yesterday the album is ready to go to print on another she's doing it obviously tio compress us here in creative life it doesn't happen like that every day usually takes about a week or so but she'd been up all night I went out to dinner I'm chatting to you now and my time is spent muchmore valuably then you know, spending time behind the computer I'm doing what I love right now I do not love sitting behind the computer she does and I know that for some people it's difficult to understand but you know she doesn't want to be a photographer and I don't want to be a re toucher so with regards to how those images are touched up if you are going to outsource your retouching and remember how much time it takes and then work out how much the cost would would involve for that. So if you're looking at that that outsourcing the retouching any fifty hours behind the computer incorporate how much it's going to cost to have your images retouched and incorporate that into your costume remember you're saving fifty hours so whatever you spent whatever you make during those fifty hours that's what you're gonna offset for how much it's gonna cost you tio send your images to somebody else to retouch right? So in terms of the retouching please guys let's not overdo it with the post processing because I'm getting paid enough money to shoot the wedding I don't have to rely on actions and, uh, techniques that are batch corrections so that all my work looks the same eyes every single image is retouched individually color corrected individually all that kind of thing so this image over here you can see that just the enhancements are made just to help out a little bit if you look at this image over here that was exactly what we did yesterday with the backlighting except it was natural lighting coming through from behind you know you get these these type of curtains that looks like the droppings normally you know coming down in front of a window beautiful window lighting wrapping around and you can see like a soggy ece it's not difficult it's really not difficult to do if this shot over here her shoulder looked a little bit big so we just liquefied there and made that a little smaller touched up underneath the eyes fixed up a little bit of skin and that's pretty much about it obviously on the guy's a cz well just to go through this kind of thing quickly this image is a little lawry's it was a screen capture but you can also shoot stuff like you saw yesterday I shoot stuff that I visualize what we can do later so I took this shot the shot was inspired by a vogue magazine shoot called war horse um it was probably that was on the same make there was the same magazine with the cover off the girl from the dragon tattoo the same cover says like november twenty eleven or something like that beautiful images in that magazine what we did here I knew what I wanted to do show so I shot at the right time we shot this at in the afternoon so that I knew that this value would be in the shade that highlights on her on her face is the octa soft box so that's intentionally put in there and what we today well what samantha did they was she just drew apart around when I say just another that took a long time so I'm sorry way shot clouds on a different day dropped the clouds in over the top uh multiply screen or whatever she does uh this was this was also a technique that I picked up from jim gonna when you overlay the images and then blew a certain section to get the same tonality throughout the whole image and then uh she did something else way took it then we took it into mix soft way nick is obviously a plug in that you can get that works in photo shop and light room it's a third party plug in that you can get uh and pretty much there's the final image so yeah and you you know a lot of people have seen this image around and it is an image that was pre conceived and then shot in a way that we could make it work okay anything else so you said you have but uh one thousand five hundred images that you do for a wedding you send that off to the designer to you're not I choose the images first okay so if she's if we're together um uh when I say okay so so my designer her name is samantha lauren she uh america you'd say lauren she lives in london not in the uk she was she worked full time for me for two or three years way we said right down next to each other but now you know with me travelling and the way the internet has worked she wanted to move out of dover dover is quite a small town is people do tend to leave s o she moved to london and we just carried on this relationship from there and it was working perfectly so so what happens now is when she when she was with me should be sitting down next to me and we'll do the layout together now I do that by myself because all she was really doing was writing down the on that piece of paper that looks like a dog's breakfast so what would happen now for the storybook layout? Maybe mr skipped a beat that thank you for that with a storybook layout I would go through all the images and tagged them in bridge that the images that I like so I just go through them yes yes yes that's nice that's nice that's nice and I would end up with, say, three hundred images. I would then send those three hundred to her she would retouch all of them then use those images in a book shell send the layout to me. I will skype with her or face time with her or whatever and then satar okay, I really like this but perhaps move this picture to that page that picked right I'm happy let's go. So that's that's the kind of thing that that it would work so you would get a physical book from her? No, a pdf video. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay, well, good. All right, so now, in terms of so that was that's with regards to the postproduction side of things let's, look at your other options. Now, how can we retain this client? And how can we still make some more money out of this client? So what you could offer if it hasn't been taken in your original pricing plan would be something like a post wedding shoot. You know, when you speaking to your client initially this kind of drowned the gown or I don't really like the term you say it rather I don't like that term because it sounds as if you're actually going out to ruin something beautiful, so I don't like that I call it a post wedding shoot I just think it's more positive or drowned the gun because john the gun sounds quite cute in a way you'll see what I'm talking about john the gun in the second ok, so what can we do if they haven't when the client comes to initially and she's spending? I mean, that dress that we had yesterday it was a six thousand dollars trace, you know, a great fashion designer back home fronts one of them designed that dress for me for this specific shoot I mean that's a six thousand dollars trying to convince her before the wedding that we're gonna go and get a dirty might not necessarily be on option she's contemplating just yet, however, after the euphoria off the wedding has settled and it's two weeks later and addresses heinous thinking, well, maybe I could get a duty, you know, because you understand the psychology that so if she hasn't had that in the pricing plan and in my pricing plan, which we are going to talk about that's only available really in the most expensive option, it would be an add on if if if they didn't take it in the most expensive option. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna do a post wedding shoot so many options there are so many things that gives you poetic licence to do whatever you want like I said go to fashion editorials dot com don't all go they're on the same the same time now because apparently after when I announced it on monday the server went nuts over we're done because that so many people went on to fashion editorials dot com going have a look there look for ideas to to shoot post waiting post waiting images this image over here this was shot on a mind dump on the top of a mine dump in johannesburg and it is meant to look a little bit theatrical we playing now these poetic license so this image is supposed to look like james bond at the end ofthe quantum of solace when he's you know that type of thing so you know you're allowed to play now that's the cool thing about weddings weddings just a fantasy anyway so you know you can come up with stuff that gives you the license to I mean if he did that by himself if he said okay I want to fight a shoot can we go and do this his mates would be all over him like a rash come on what what is that you know but because it's the waiting he's allowed to because the photographer city must you know he's got an excuse he likes it he loves it but because it's a waiting you've got that that poetic license so we're going to go and shoot stuff like this where it doesn't like I said it's very sandy some it's a mind I'm so she is going to get a little dirty but we can do stuff like this now because it's you know it's a week after even the day after the wedding drop the gun can get a little weight which is which is cool it's nice and fun this is shot with the with the ranger with that you know it's this is it's sunrise depending on what coast ur depends where the sun comes up this's it sunrise get some nice lighting from the front you're owed under exposing the background you getting some nice images like that and then you can play you know again in the waves and have a bit of fun there even underwater if you wanted to to get shots like that is not that difficult is a really cool underwater camera at the nick on a w won ten taken underwater bank you know take a couple of shots you obviously need to be able to swim and your clients need to be able to swim but yeah so you know it's nice it's different images kind of flow the dress kind of floating it's it's you know good options to have but you have tio you have to have images like this on your site before people are going to book you for that I wanted to shoot underwater images for a long, long time and I would try and convince my clients in the back on the water under water I mean I don't mind being on top of the water but like underwater and yeah he's so cool and I know it won't until I did this shot over here this is zane zane was my assistant er I don't know two thousand for three to two thousand seven and he's a photographer working in london at the moment now and I said to sane, you know this reshoot some underwater stuff off course let's go you know way went and shot some underwater images with him on his his wife lisa and I we shot that image at the bottom of a swimming pool it was a charcoal colored swimming pool so that allowed us to do a bit of post production sorry the lad's samantha to the first production on met image there in nick's software to change colors of the pool and all that type of thing to bring in lighting. Nor does this such as natural just like that timing is critical here fact button focusing back button focusing I'm lying down on the ground there obviously the wave goes out there lying there back button focusing wholly on waiting, waiting, waiting and then as the as the wave comes eleven frames a second you've got something there somewhere okay, so let's talk about a few other things post post wedding shirt reprints framed images his canvases parents storybooks that type of thing that's where we want to start now utilizing what we've what we've got and we have to remember this they cannot get those images anywhere else so first of all there's going to be a premium on those images it sounds like emotional blackmail but it's business I've got something that they need and they're willing to pay for it so your your reprints obviously you're going to want to get a nice big reprints into people's homes team up with a local framer go and speak to a local framer and have some sort of relationship with them so that you could offer that to your client I know that shawn the photographer who's helping out here yesterday and the day before he's now got framed images in his pricing plan as well which I think is quite a cool idea because then you're actually giving something for them to go and hang straight up in there in their in their homes and then obviously nice canvases acrylic prince there are so many things that you can do that can obviously increase sales post wedding now if you start so many people have already seen and maybe it's a buzz on internet already with regards to teo that's so much admin I don't want to re prince I'm just gonna hand over the disc I make between thirty and forty percent, mohr on the reprint side of things and the post weddings, the post wedding sales I will make thirty to forty percent mohr on that wedding then I did, you know, obviously for shooting the wedding, and if you look at that, what worked I have to do now all I've really got to do is drag a few images into a folder and uploaded to my to my lab's website and have the courier delivered. I don't even leave my home, you know, and then let's take lipstick that, for example and say let's say, I make I don't know even five hundred dollars a thousand dollars it's a five hundred dollars if I make five hundred dollars from sitting there drag and drop dragon drop how long it's gonna take me twenty minutes, five hundred dollars for twenty minutes work, but you want to give that away, but you're happy to work for nine dollars, fifteen cents an hour, but you don't really want to work for for five hundred dollars for twenty minutes. It just doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any business sense whatsoever. It's art so much edmund what is awaiting a waiting like fifteen hours of work, but you don't want the edmund off having to work for half an hour? It just doesn't make sense