Lessons

Lesson Info

Final Q&A

One of our students would like to know what kind of papers or media do you typically print on? I'm a, I like glossy, so I tend to, I tend to print a lot on luster type papers. Epson has a hot press, one of the hot press papers on Epson. I like the Epson exhibition, is it exhibition fiber, called? That's a really nice paper. It's a little bit textured but it's not so textured that it's still, it still renders some really nice bold colors in it. So I like that paper a lot. And then I absolutely love metal, not metallic. I don't care so much for metallic papers. Metallic papers look metallic, like there's a sheen. It looks metallic. Metal is your photo on metal, which just looks super super glossy, sharp, almost like HD. So I get most of mine, I use a Nations photo lab for most of my stuff. So they do really nice metals. I'm anxious to see, I saw it at a trade show. They're printing on wood now too. I saw it at a trade show. It looks really cool. There's one waiting for me when I get ba...

ck home tomorrow so I'm really anxious to see, 'cause I've never seen one of my photos printed it. But I've printed on canvas. I keep going back to metal and I keep going back to a glossier paper. Black frame, white mat, keep it simple. Very good, okay, any from in the studio? Yep, grab a mic. How much pre scouting do you do when you go, like say, when you went to Iceland, what did you do to prepare for that trip? So, yes, yes? I'm gonna add to that question, not just Iceland, but let's talk in general, what kind of research you do and pre scouting and how you do that for any of your shoots, Matt? Sure, I think the first place I start is 500px.com. So that is like, that's like the home for really gorgeous photos. 500px, Flickr is another great one to start with. So I hit those websites and I type in the word of whatever place I happen to be going to. Look at the shots. Try to read the descriptions. See if they're sunrise or sunset spots. And you know, try to plan your days. Figure out, okay, how many days am I gonna be there? How many sunrises? How many sunsets? And which spots do I wanna go to the most? You might have to start hitting Google, Google Maps, see what's closest to each other where you're gonna stay. So it's gonna be 500px and Flickr first, and then Google Maps to start planning out where they are. Those are, I mean, I don't do too much more than that. I might do, if I'm not finding anything on 500px or Flickr then I'll hit a Google search and type it in. Google images typically will bring back more. They bring back a lot less quality of photos but you can kind of put yourself, okay, if I shot this photo with a nicer camera and better light, is this a place where I'd wanna be? And I found some spots that way that I wasn't finding elsewhere. So those are some of the big ones. So you know, when I went to Iceland, I hit 500px. I was also going with a group. They had been there before. They kinda planned it. So I didn't have too much to do other than say let's go back to that place. But when I was coming here, Sutro Baths, I'd never been there before. I did 500px. Does that get along the lines of what you were kind of? Yeah that was perfect. Exactly, great, thank you. I mean it's pretty simple. There's not many sites I go to. Those are the key ones Yeah, and along that same line, let's talk a little bit about permitting. So permitting's interesting. When we went out the other day, because Creative Live is a company for profit and we're going out there, I mean, probably not for profit but we're going out there with gear and props and video crews and all that stuff, so you need a permit. They had to pull permits for us to do what we did the other day. But, if it were just me going out with my photography gear, I don't have to get a permit for it. So let's go to, you know you got your national parks and all those things. If you do some researching on permitting for photography in national parks, what you'll come up with is if you're gonna have a model or props, or if you're there for mostly commercial purposes, but I don't mean still photography. So if you have model or props, that is defined as something you need to get a permit for. So if you're gonna bring out lighting gear, if you're gonna bring out any type of a prop to have somebody, a car, or a couch, or whatever it happens to be, but you could see portrait photographers would wanna, you know, you've seen the couches in the middle of a field and everything. If that were at a national park you'd have to have a permit for it. But the rule of thumb is, models or props. So it gets pretty interesting, because you think, well, what about if I just want to bring my son out there and do some portraits of him? Is he a model? Technically, yeah. So you'd have to, that would get sticky if you really started to research it, but if you're not gonna bring out lighting gear, you're not gonna bring out all that stuff, and you're just gonna take a picture of your son and you wanna take a nice portrait, I don't think anybody's gonna give you a problem. Now, if you're gonna bring out lighting gear and start taking pictures of your kids and your families, you could have a park ranger roll up on ya and wanna ask for a permit. So that's generally the idea. Us as still photographers going out there with our camera and our tripod, we don't need a permit. And it's not really defined, even if we're selling the photos, so even if I plan on going into Mt. Rainier National Park, taking photos, and selling those photos for profit, it's not defined by what I plan to do with the photos. It's defined by how I take, the process of what I'm doing to take the photos. Am I bringing models and props in? So does that make sense? So at the end of the day, though, if it's just gonna be you, you're good. If it's gonna be anything else, best thing to do is call. 'Cause you don't wanna, you don't wanna plan a trip and do all that and find out. Just call the national park and say this is what I wanna do. Do I need a permit for it? Yes. Matt, were you gonna touch a little on making a little lens money? Yes, wanna talk about that now? We good on the permit thing? Yeah, we have a few more questions, but we can hit that one now. It's not a problem. Okay, so making a little bit of extra cash. So you all got Facebook pages, right? You don't have to go on your Facebook page and try to sell your work and say, you know, post a picture and say prints available and blah blah blah. But one of the things that you can do is go consistently post your photos to your Facebook page. And what'll happen is, and what you can do is put a link back to your portfolio. Now, great if you can even set up a portfolio that has links to buy prints and stuff on it. Like if you go to smugmug.com they'll set up everything for you and people can order right there. It's interesting, Justin who was in here before, who was out with us the other day, he was telling us, and I've seen this too and I've even found this. You can have it available for people to buy prints in your page but there's people still like to call when they're buying a print. And he was saying, he's like, you can buy 'em all right on his website, but for some reason they still email or call or contact him if they're gonna buy something. So I think you'll find that. So I wouldn't sweat it too much if you don't have a store built there. But post a photo to your Facebook page. Prints available at my website, blah blah blah blah blah. And what you're doing is you're just getting your friends and your acquaintances to know that you shoot. And if they want a print they can come to your website and they'll most likely just send you a message and say you know, hey, I'd love a print of that. Do you do that? Gotta be careful about, I've fallen into this, where if it's a good friend of mine, I wanna give it away for free. You know, so, it depends. If it's a super good friend of mine, like one of my best friends, yeah, I do free work for some of my best friends. But if it's acquaintances and it's your cousin and your cousin says oh my God, I showed your pictures to one of my friends. He'd love a print. Will you make one for me? I will for a hundred dollars. You know, it's like, because people will start to take advantage of you a little bit. But here's what I found about it. And I recognize this and I'm the last person that's gonna sit up here and tell you go build your social media audience. If you don't plan on doing this full time and making a living out of this stuff, I don't know what building your social media audience is gonna do for you. Number one, it's gonna be very difficult to just go build random people to come follow you, 'cause it just doesn't work like that anymore. So I'm not gonna try and tell you that. I'd rather tell you how to make some money with the audience you have, which is your friends. So just post your work. Let 'em know that you shoot. People will appreciate it. And sometimes you'll come across somebody that wants a print. The best thing is, this is what I do on my personal page. So the deck is of course stacked in my favor on my professional page if I wanna post this stuff because, and I don't say that in an arrogant way. I'll probably have more followers than you will. So the deck's stacked against me there. My personal page though, you know, I've got a few hundred friends on there. So I post stuff and you know what happens? One of my doctors liked the photo. We ended up trading services. So I provide prints, he provides services. The other cool thing is, he lets me put my cards up on the counter. He's like, hey, you can put your cards up on the counter. So then people come in. Who made that print? Oh it's so and so and so and so. Oh, his card's up there. And you can get their card. So there's some, there's some opportunities there. I'm a landscape guy. I like to shoot family portraits outdoors, just real casual. Like I'm not gonna do a lot of studio work. I actually do enjoy it but I'm not gonna do it full time, but I enjoy it. I do that for some of my close friends. And so this, true story guys. I had nothing, this had nothing to do with my professional life. There's a gym I go to back home. These people don't know me from anybody in the world. I'm just a regular dude that walks into the gym and works out at the gym there. But it's not a gym where everybody goes and works out. It's a class based thing so you get to know each other. I did portraits for a friend of mine in the gym there. He posted them on Facebook. We're friends with 30 or 40 people from this gym. I swear to God, within like four days I coulda had 15 gigs booked on family photos if I wanted to. I walked into the gym the next time, like, oh my God, look who showed, can you do my senior portraits? Will you do this, will you do, I mean, it's like, people just kept asking. And it's tough because I can't, like, I got a job and I can't take that extra time away 'cause this takes time. But I probably coulda had another 10 or family portrait gigs from that if I had the time to do it. But that's like, it's just my gym in my home town. I'm not going out to my public Facebook page for it. These are just my friends. So, I think posting your photos. Maybe trade if you have some friends that are in services in your area. Maybe trade for services. Don't devalue your work. At first I'm thinking, this is my doctor. He's a friend of mine. I'll give him some prints. But it's like, no, wait a second, people pay money for this. So I'll give you, you give me back. And it doesn't, it costs him something but not really. It's not like he paid he hundreds of dollars for the photos. So those are some options for ya, your Facebook page, the prints. If you wanna start getting really creative about it, maybe hit some local smaller restaurants or B&Bs or anything like that and offer to make a print and hang it for them if they will include your cards at the front desk or something like that. It'd be tough to get in with a big hotel, 'cause they usually do a lot of that stuff nationally. But get creative and make some relationships out there. I think there's some money to be made from it.