Lessons

Lesson Info

Data Collection Workflow Prior to Photo Shoot

So yesterday we went over a lot of the details a lot of the black and white science of how to kind of give a job today we're going to hopefully say that you implemented that information and you got a job and now what do you do so we're really going to go over like a sweet said earlier in the pre show all the details on a complete workflow and we're going to actually show you how we actually process an actual job so with that comes a lot of issues the main one is collecting the data and as I said again in pre show collecting data is by far the most important thing teo anything on any type of volume job that data is the most important aspect being a school beat a sports league whatever the only time you really not gonna have data is if you're doing like a school dance where the actual clients are coming up to you at that point and we're gonna talk about that as well that's another way we can handle it here today but before we get in that let's talk about just more of your common jobs you...

're you're daycares your schools your sports leagues I'm not signing talk about sports leagues right now let's just do daycares in sports I mean daycare and schools most of the time in fact pretty much all the time they're gonna have a roster of these children we're gonna have a roster is gonna have the teacher's name they're gonna have the class they're in they're gonna have all this information you don't need all the information you don't need their birthday you don't need their address and so make sure you tell him look, I don't need any of the personal information of these children just make sure you get their name and how they're going to come to you so you need to set it up once you have the job you're under contract everything's good now you go into the different mode of actually making sure you understand all the all the information's gonna happen on photo day and when he says how they come to you it means like if they come to you buy class my class period or by teacher or sport event or whatever like that so how were the grouping is going to come to you and how that you're gonna need to return the photos most likely yeah and that's extremely important because if they're going to come to you in there p e class in the physical education class they're going to come to you in their science class that's the class period that's the teacher that you wanted in the data so you need to make sure you ask that as well it's all gonna make sense later on we'll show you because any of the data you collect with our workflow in the software we use, you can actually use to sort later on. So the more information you have, the better, but some schools, as I said, our very, very picky about getting that personal information. So the whole goal of this is is to get the information, get that personal data will show you how we entered in just a second, and then the rest of day we're going to actually use that data and it's going to be a step by step process of what you would do for an actual photographic bowling job. Again, I want to stress we're photographing the crazy idiots here, creative live today and I mean that with love, but it doesn't matter what our backdrop looks like, it doesn't matter what our lighting pattern looks like, it doesn't matter what any of that looks like that's unique art in this, we're doing it very standard to what we usually do for, like our schools, but our day cares are always different in this or sports leagues are always different. We can't show you, unfortunately, every single pattern that we do because we're in a confined area, we want to be able to show you and so don't get hung up on all the little details that we have. And I'm saying this to you in the chat rooms, too don't get hung up on all the little details just pay attention to the process, the workflow, because our workflow that we're going to show you today works for every type of event that we have sure, we have to change it a little bit here and there for that type event, but generally this is going to work for just about any type of balm you have that's the important part you want to come or could pull away from today is not exactly how we light it. I think it's important that we use that we're going to show you a four lights set up and next segment, and we're going to show you how we use it in how we meter it how we set it up in the equipment that we use and all that good stuff and that's important for that set up. But again, if your want to do it outside shots, you want to do natural light shots, if you have day cares and you want to set up a full beach scene, whatever you can do whatever you want in light it however you want, so don't get hung up on that with the data. You want to make sure they give you and I say they the school, whoever your client is, you want to make sure they give it to you in a format that you can cut and paste in some of the type of software there's lots of times I'm going to give you just a, uh a pdf of it because it's easier but it doesn't work all the time look up! Sorry it's gonna hit his hands and his head it's live tv! I'm sorry I was cracking up trying at the lab so make sure they give it to you in a format that you can cut paste because you're going to use some type of document being exelby google doc something and we're going to show you that in just a second that you're going to need to output into what's called a c s v file, see if the file is a comma separated values what see if he stands for it's extremely standard program or file format is very much like changing a j peg to a gift if you're going to save it and photoshopped you know you just have a little drop down menu there's multiple ways you can save the file that's going to be a format and either one in any almost word processor it's going to be an option, but you want to say that file is the csb again we're gonna talk all we're going to show you all this in a second so don't worry I'm just giving you the details but that's why you wanted in a cutting pace because you do not want to re type these names we've done it before and where we live we have a lot of hispanics and they have three four, five names sometimes I don't understand spanish and I was just brutally murdering these names and if you re type it in incorrectly it's going to be incorrect the entire process this sometimes this could be one of most difficult portions of this job is getting that file from people depending on the supporting lead they were dealing with at the school sometime you call me up so I didn't even see you csb file that has this information you'll get it within ten minutes other times it's yeah I get someone to get that to you and you're just finding this an hour before the shoot and you finally get it I mean sometimes you have to really stay on people and you really need to stay on in a polite way but this is like I said the most important part of the whole tire process you have to get this for sports leagues a lot of sports leagues use online companies that keep everything organized for him they they bind to like a little league package where they had like this company will make a program for their rosters everything else and it uploads the websites automatically and it's pretty much worldwide I mean they have a lot of clients and they out output to pdf by default so when you ask for a roster I get pdf all the time sports leagues and I had to call him up and say ok, thank you but I needed in it some form that I can cut and paste some some way that I can edit it without having to re type the names and lots of times will say I don't have a clue our software didn't do that I've even going as far as what software do you use? I look it up online find a contact information, I'll send him an e mails that look I'm a photographer we have a client, they can't figure out how to get your information their roster that's entered into yourself were out is an excel file or is a something that I cut paces or possible way of doing that and they're right in back and tell me and then I ford that to the league whoever the lady or person that I'm dealing with this getting the roster so I need to do the homework to make sure to take care of me because again this is the most important thing in the whole day and I always stressed with them I know you're being a pain but I promise you if I get this day to the way we needed in a cut and paste form, your photo day is going to be flawless they're goingto have zero headaches and when you mentioned that they're going to go okay, I'm going to do it. I got to get this done because I don't have any headaches and there's multiple ways if you don't have a roster or in this case and creative live what we've done and again we're going to get into a little bit later we have a lot of the san francisco and seattle offices their employees here created live we have there, but some of them we don't have and that's gonna happen, so even if you get the most updated roster and you're going to have new baseball players, you're gonna have new students in the school you're gonna have people that in this case new employees that weren't on the roster and we're going to show you how we can we can cover that as well. So what? You still want to get the most updated ross we possibly can, so it's cody said it's important to call and get it, but sometimes they send it right away and you got another month before photo day that's also a hindrance as well because you're gonna have so many new people that are on the roster is not finalized so, there's that fine line, you kind of have to work with opinion on how big your sports league is or how big your school is getting it, and as you get involved in this a little bit more, you'll realize how easy it is. And you, khun, wait later later, later, but don't wait too late, because then, if it's a nightmare of a data, I've literally done that, and I've been up for like, three or four in the morning when we have to be the shoot at seven or eight that morning, getting the data done, so I can't stress enough how important this data is and that you needed in a cut and paste format. Generally, that means it's like an xl or some some form, I like that in your regular type processing software. Google doctor is great, but you need that. So if you, um, would switch over to my computer, I don't know if they can switch with the people can see it. I want to show you what we've done with with creative live here, so here you go. This is what I've already done after I basically got the information, and I made it into the format that I wanted it to look like, so it could have fifteen, twenty different columns are gonna have their addresses, you have their phone number, I remove all that because I really don't need that for this type of job. So my main concept is, is I had the first thing. The last name in this case is the position that they work it here, but what we would have is mohr, this could be your classroom. If it's a school, this could be the sports team. If it's a sports league, you know, it could be the giants, the astros, whatever it could be the science class, it could be ms henry science class that could be mr, whatever that could be the classroom and then this city, they're in here, the seattle, san francisco that could be their grade let's say, if you have a school so I could be great one, it could be great, too, so again, don't get so confused or set on what we have, and then the far one in row e over here is an id number that I created for them. Sorry again on the coughing, the I d number is important. That is the most important part of your workflow when you're using this software, a photo velocity, which we're going to get into later on, but the idea is important no matter what, because you could have two john henry's but because that's a very common name in america but you'd only have to r one that's gonna have idea number one two three five and the other one would be three four five six seven or whatever so the idea is more important now unfortunately we don't really pay attention to the I d numbers we pay attention to more the name so you need to have both because that correlates easy with humans to understand who was who but the idea is extremely important when I create ieds just to kind of give you a little tip trick I used to just start off with like one thousand or ten thousand whatever else and just go all the way down if I had three hundred people it would be all the way to one thousand three hundred you know it would be all the way what I've started doing and it really helps me putting this together and kind of breaking down the data if you notice the san francisco office roadie if you roll over row e they have a two thousand I d and in the seattle office has a three thousand idea so when I create I d numbers for these people and we're going to show you how we entered into software later but when I create I carried a different number starting number for each grade or each like maybe if you have a sports league so for pee wees it would be one thousand for the miners that would be two thousand for the major's would be three thousand so as they change leagues I will do a different number and that helps me mentally break down my league into smaller groups which are easier to understand and easy to work with on a on a middle level. So instead of having to deal with all five hundred kids where's both you girls said yesterday you have three hundred kids and that scares you instead of dealing with all three hundred kids, I can break them down into smaller groups of maybe fifty and it just becomes a little easier in the long run and so in the very through the entire workflow really. But once you have it all done, you know, in the back your head if they have a three thousand idea there from the san francisco I mean seattle office and someone says, you know, that calls up and says, well, let's, just say, you know that they're in fifth grade if you have a five thousand I d that's what I do for school so my first grade has the one thousand my second grade has a two thousand, my third grade has a three thousand keeps it organized, so if I do prove sheets game we're going to get into it later and littlejohn and loses his proof sheet I could look him up it's a five thousand all your sons in fifth grade yeah that's a great age a love that's such a fun age that small talk that I'm making with my client they know right away and it breaks out and again it makes it more personal that we're talking about yesterday and it breaks that I so instead I'm just a personal in the other in the line I'm actually a person that actually cares and nose and we could start that communication and so that's really really important just those little details and it helps like I said separate everything so this is an excel file and what we would do is we would simply if you want to save it as a psd I mean excuse me a c s u v you can hit just save as and if you notice when you browse you can hit save as it'll actually brought let me get there right here you can actually save it has all these different and one time if you look right there is a csd and that's what you want to save this as a get out of this what a c s v is is it takes each of these columns when you put a comma so that first name would be matt comma when you put that comic it's actually makes a column so the khama becomes a column in the csb basically so zach, same format is just a digital foreign, so even if you had, like, a text document, you would just write out first name, common, last name, comma position, comma city, comma id it would actually come up like this when you say that it's a csd follow so you don't really need a whole word processor to do this kind of thing. It helps it's easier when you don't really need it. So once I save it is the csb, which I already have just to kind of speed things up, go to my data here or I'll show you, I have my cs vi and I have the xl. Now I'm gonna go over into what we are software, which is photo velocity, I let me I'm gonna I'm gonna try to clarify this as much as I can. I don't care if you use photo glossy or not. I don't care what software you use, but ohio suggestion, today's, day and age that you find a software that you're happy with and use it because it takes out the human air. It makes your job so much easier because up to this point before you had software that's affordable, pretty much the way a lot of people would do a volume job is you have a photographer, you have an assistant right beside on as the person's coming up they would have a roster you choose the file you'd say I'm certain off with image one thousand to image one thousand five is this person you put the numbers right beside their name and then you would go on get home download everything then you mainly would have to sort all those images that's very time consuming it also opens up anytime they're human it opens up a possible human hair so find a software happen with unfortunately not a lot out there which is why we ended up creating this and so we're going to go into it I don't care again if you use it or not I just want to stress if you have questions about other software out there feel free to ask it's not going to hurt my feelings because I want anything we can do to help you guys learn and help you get over this fear that's what we're here for right so I would create a new job this is kind of a shortcut menu here we don't have any recent jobs this is a brand new edition of photo glossy that downloaded but if I had extra jobs you would have like a shortcut so they would all be right here so you're most current jobs will show up I'm going to create a job we're just going to call it creative live back in type today and now you have three options and we're going to go over all these options. I have data that I need to enter from a c s v file. That's what we were just talking about that's, the most common that's. The way that you would like to receive it. You get that excel file, you get that cut paste format and then you exhale or google docks or something else. She would actually curate the file that you need with the data you need in each proper column. You say that as c s b and we're going to war to fix, we're going to do that in a second. Thie other one, it is, I have an existing job that has an extra mile follow. Once I entered this, we're going to go back and forth this segment, I'm gonna show you all three different ways that we can do this once I enter this the neat thing about photo velocity that registration codes good for two computer. So you have, like, a laptop desktop, one on location, one in your office, but let's say I needed onto desktop to the house. Or in the office and I want to switch it from computer to computer this xml when there's an export option once you have a job you can export all your data like him to a thumb drive and switch it from computer to computer if you don't have a network and that's what that xml follows so if I enter all this data I'm in seattle I enter all this data and I got to go to san francisco to do a job I got my laptop or have a computer there that has photo bossy little just have a fun dropped the data and enter it and I'm like all brand new right there so that's kind of nice the other thing that allows you to do is and we'll get to it you can actually have ten computers hooked up to this um and you'll separate because if it does not have an I d which we created for them it will create one for you and it generally generates numbers through zero through a million roughly but you can hook up ten computers to it and what it does when you separate the computers you tell minicomputers using for this job it breaks up those ieds in a mathematical formula so they don't ever repeat so you know you don't get a duplicate id number we just had a genuine that lacks a lives here in seattle that actually flew overseas to dubai and had the job to make your books very similar what we're doing today with creative life but he made him for the united states navy for the aircraft's the people that were on the on the aircraft carriers and he had eight computers running and he was shooting every night a group of people and he sort of home and did everything and he was able to compile it all back together the one big job and he comes back here and everything's happy, happy and we're going to talk about because what he had to give the captains before he left was output all the images basically that administration cd that we talked about yesterday he needed to give our administration cd and so basically he photographed he inputted he used photo velocities sort which we're going to show you later today and then he output of him all by their first name last name, the department very similar the data that we have here I'll put him on the disk and give them to him before they leave the ship so everything is nice and organized everything's processed and then he came back here to seattle to do all that uploading online with passport code protection, the sale and all that stuff so it's a very versatile software, so we're going to start off right now with just two cs avi because that's what we have well before we do that let's look at that I have no data import and we'll be entering one person at a time. That last option is for lecter school dances were doing prom homecoming is that whatever you have it you actually enter they come to you you actually with type in their name we'd have a little barcode printer right off to the side a little label printer like a brother dime o that you could get flight forty dollars or something here in the states and as the person comes up to us if the school dance we have a couple we have an order form there filling out they give us the order form here and we look at and say who is going to receive these photos because there's there's two of them on ly one who is going to get the photos back in school whatever name they say we put in there or whoever pays for it we like to do whoever pays for it is technically that's our client whoever gives us the money is our client so that's who we would enter so we would be in this option I have no data again we'll show you in a minute the personal management screen would be just into their name hit printer prints out the bar code which is the whole this is the whole concept we're doing is to make bar codes for every individual so since we have the c s v, we're going to go ahead and enter the csd and I hate creates so now I've created my job and I have my csb ready to enter and so I'm going to go ahead and browse and find that cctv file and you basically know where it is. I have everything ordered if you notice I have my creative life older, ready and here's all my rosters and there's my csfb fall right there and so I had going hit open now there's several things you have to do now that you have that. But the computer has no clue what these columns mean to the images the blank slate it didn't have any idea the first of all, if you notice that very first line with the red is it has first name last name title, I really don't need that in my system, so if you do that in your cellar, whatever you look over here, the first row column contains the title you can just click that and it will ignore that first row but that's always nice because when you're dealing, especially with unknown people lots of times her first name and last name looked the same you don't know whose first whose last and it will mess up your system we've done we've done it quite often, probably to too many times so having that information there's can be handy can be very helpful but you don't want it if you forget to do that the worst case scenario is just going to make a barcode first name last name it's gonna be a useless barco but it'll be in the system so it's not this huge dramatic problem but it's an easy fix if you just click that check mark and if you look right below it is going to say generate passcode if I'm gonna do online hosting but numerous companies that photo velocity works works with legs in folio suit proof smugmug collages, etcetera and you wanted to create a ten digit pass code it's a new american alphabetical pass code you can just leave it by default it's checked if you don't want it, ewan, check it, but when I enter, this information is going to create that passcode an individual for every little child I suggest you're doing it anyway because even if you don't use it it it's there you don't have to worry about it's not gonna harm anything so that's why we leave it is default. All right, so now I got to tell the software what each these columns are so I click on column one and if you notice this says column one right here and then I say I won't call him one to be the first name you notice how column one turns from column one the first name now click on column too you know you're in column too because right here and I'm with the last name and you go down the line and you tell it exactly what it is now you don't have this is where again you don't have to be black and white, so here is the title of the individual that's works it creative live but let's just say that that's the teacher it doesn't really matter as long as you understand and you have them separated you could name that whatever you want so don't get stuck on if that's their job I gotta have a job column I gotta have a job in that download it doesn't really matter you can there's a couple extras you khun do I usually just try to think of it all is a school function so even if it's a sports that's the team is the teacher and you know it doesn't really matter as long as you separated so column four will be the town so let's just say that's the grade and the column five is the most important the I d number you're going to the c I d so now that we have everything listed, so now that we have everything there were going to go ahead and hit in port but before I hit import this should not have any problems because I've checked it before, but if you have problems it's going to pop up and say ok, I have to john henry's with the same idea number are these the same people? Would you like us? The auto sort so gives you the chance to say if you know that you had been there twice, you just click yes, it'll remove one. The worst case scenario is we have two different names and one I d number it won't let you go forward. You're going to have to solve these issues before you enter the data because you don't want to people with the same idea number. So if you created your own id numbers and maybe you messed up your duplicated one didn't realize you did it's gonna catch it for you, so it won't allow you to import this until you correct all those problems. So once we have an imported we've gotten are ieds are generated pasko's we're going to ignore that we're going to go ahead and click input and it tells you exactly how menu imported we'll have one hundred seven people that have important and now brings us to our personal management screen and if you notice we have the I d number the first thing the last name here's that pass code it was that was made for each individual that's unique and we have a teacher which again is theirjob that's the and then the grade makes sense so far on this by default we have is group and we're going to talk about that later. So if you do sports tina team and team and individuals you d'oh spring portrait's where you have the child in their class photos, you can actually assign one group photo to a group of individuals so it actually the way that will work and we'll show you later I take a group photo I will barcode I'll take a group photo already have individuals so this group photo is the giants on a sports team and that's what we name it group giants and everybody else on the team in the on the team column with teacher colleen whatever is giant and you will tell photo velocity basically to sort that giant team folder into anyone that has in that one, collins says giants put this photo in all their their individual folders so it's very easy to be able to sort team photos into individuals as well using this or school we could do up to three groups to any client and then the pitcher pat are the package pick one right here, right now we have zero photos when we get more photos in there per harmony photos you havin per individual you actually have a column so if we have four photos per person, you'll actually have for these will say package pick one package speak to package peaks three package paid before and that's how we would also order photos, which down the line will show you how to do that. Once we get into this, you'll see associated images so let's say you photograph a school of three hundred after we run the sort feature it's going to tell you how many images associated with each individual here if you're only supposed to have one per person should have a one and all those columns if there's more than one there's a problem in that folder and there's less than one meaning zero those the ones that I can actually just cut and paste and make another like excel document and send to my school and say these are the kids we did not photograph yesterday we need to try to find them, so we knew right away on the kids that we didn't photograph as soon as you hit the sort feature, which is extremely helpful for trying to do yearbook you're trying to get all the kids in there. If you miss some kids, you'll know the ones you didn't photograph generally before the school now, and so whoever your client is if it's the yearbook teacher your you know for a big high school or principle I'll always email that stuff right away to him and let him know so then you know, re take days maybe two weeks away they can start getting on these kids to make sure they get him for retake that all right? So we have him in here they're basically all entered we're good to go on that that's one way so now let's say we want to export it and go to another computer before we go any farther all that would have to do is simply export it file export I have my export data files and that's what I want to do and you hit next if you had multiple jobs going tohave multiple jobs you could drop down, you can select the job that you want but by default it's going to come on to the job that we're working with and you export now it's going to tell you where do you want to export it? To export it to the same folder that we were into because I'm going to use that thing same data so now the data has been exported to the location you indicated and you can close out of this you would then excuse me you were then go to the other computer let's say we're on another computer at this point you would expect I would say that file too, like a thumb drive you would go to another computer you can create another job we're going to create this just creative life to just have some separation and now I would pick I have existing job within xml it create it's going to ask you where is that xml and you simply just browse to find it and now this data uh forgot to save it this data will be the exact same once a temple I have to hit import maybe we'll be the exact same as you had on the other computer so now you have the exact same information that you had before so you can import and export very very easy from computer to computer to computer if you have a computer on location or if you want to do you wantto go from location, location, home, office, studio whatever it becomes very very handy or there's two people working in a job you can collect half the job you can collect at the job you could bring him back and merging together for one job when you get back in the office so it's nice and like for this instant there's other ways emerging as well we're going to show you what's neat about this job it creative live is again world to different locations we have the seattle office which we have yet to photograph we've already photographed the san francisco office a couple weeks ago which will show you later on the program so how we merged all that data? How do we get all those together? It's? Very, very simple. We're going to show you that as well. Later on in the program.