Lessons

Lesson Info

Post Production - A Real World Workflow

Probably a very exciting topic for some postproduction understanding our workflow how we back up images the whole thing from shoot to actually presentation and there's to work clothes we're going to cover we're going to talk about the work flow of just doing it in house doing it yourself and then the workflow of outsourcing and so very similar work clothes I think there's probably some steps that we can help you with and help you find but just keep in mind that whatever you're doing I'm going to keep thumping you over the head we've got to get images to in front of our clients in that two week max three week window two weeks is really where we need to be targeting so whatever you do do this is where I tend to see for tigers lose time we just lose time here we want obsess about images and I'm no I'm no better than any of you by the way I start getting engrossed them images and I just hours slip by anybody else like that I just lose ours to the post production process and it's fun to mee...

t that garden you know people talk about gardening and they say that's therapeutic not that I would know I dont garden because it does not seem therapeutic can you imagine me like planting like carrots or something like that? You come to a scene I'm throwing dirt everywhere everything's dead and dying so no but for me editing truly is very very therapeutic I enjoyed doing it but I don't like to have to do it that makes sense of this difference being doing it because I'm doing one or two images and I'm just like chilling out and relaxing or I want to learn a new technique or something like that that's cool but then there's definitely a difference between I have to do it and I'm up at one o'clock in the morning editing pictures because the client's coming in the next day look look at those images there's a huge difference in those and so and those two scenarios so you've got to figure out what's gonna work for you on your business but again what's your growth plan what's your scalability plan you've got to figure that out and so the workflow hears we're gonna cover we're gonna shoot shoot to preview workflow what we do and why our internal workflow editing using light room slide shows that events blawg and a moto I'm gonna show you how we do that how I moved so quickly we're going to show our outsource work flow we're going talk aboutthe signature at it and how to maximize and get to the edit the one thing being unevolved is we obviously do signature and it's for you guys we offer that as a service to photographers and when that signature and it comes in it actually hits my desk and so when you submitted an image for signature at it it's not automatically going to get done, I'll actually push it back I review every single signature edit that comes in that door that request and if it's not up to par, not up to snuff, I'm going to get that image back to write because there's things that go in tow, what a signature at it is and we're gonna talk a little bit about that because I see people getting tripped up on what they're editing, how they're editing how they're presenting it everybody thinks they can do a signature at it now it's harder than you think to produce that level of image where you're swapping out of sky slopping out of sky there's a lot that goes into it it's gonna look really you don't want to swap out of sky and make it look fake that that's the key, right? And so there's just little things you got to consider when you're doing it export scripts. I know when you had some questions about that, I'm assuming other people do is, well, you know, how do we create our our workforce? So I've got a script for digital negatives of scripts for skin softening a script for facebook, a script for instagram and so as anything I can automate that will help me save time is something I'm willing to make an investment look, there's tons of pre sets out there in the world, right? Whether it's for photo shop withers for light room, whatever the case may be, and I'm definitely like a preset junkie. I don't know about you guys, anything that you're selling for, like fifty box or sixty bucks if it's going, if you could give me one image out of it, but I'm going like I'm probably going to be on the hook for it on buying it's just a way where I think we're wired but here's, how you got to start thinking about stuff like that? Anything you invested, by the way, dear uh outsourcing, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera plug ins, presets whatever you're going to invest in what's the time return on investment how long's it gonna take you how much time is going to save you? So something that's going to save you let's call it ten minutes a job. Think about it that way. Ten minutes or job? Well, let's, just say keep number simple let's say you shoot twenty weddings a year and you can now save ten minutes a job on those weddings that's two hundred minutes. You you can save, right, so it's just called two to three hours and you're gonna be able to save what's two to three hours worth to you that's how my mind works so whenever I look at stuff when I'm at trade shows we go to trade shows my wallet burns every time I go to a trade show are crying my credit cards on fire um that's okay is gonna help me save money and is going to say save time and he's gonna help me make more money that's the way you got to start looking at these things right as business owners and so let's dig ah intuit workflow these are the questions that come up all the time wherever we go how do we shoot? How much do issued how do we back up on someone and so on and so and today we shoot roughly from a wedding for thousand images so four to five thousand images from from the wedding will come off my camera. My second shooter taylor shoots it's usually three thousand thirty five hundred images per wedding that comes from one of her jobs right there's no right or wrong answer here it's just the way I shoot it's my rhythm it's it's how I work and engagement I'm gonna shoot four to six hundred ish there's no hard number I'm not going out and saying let me see how many pictures I can take today and just trying to rack up numbers that's not my goal and you saw my system, my progression tight, middle wide vertical horizontal, different expressions looking at camera looking away that's my ultimate goal. I want to have a repetitive process, if you will. Seniors five to seven hundred pictures that's what I'm looking to photograph out of a high school senior so that's kind of across the board families, they range all over the place. Just depends on what we're doing. How many people are there? But you're still going to be in that five to seven hundred range for families. We're gonna get back to the studio and I want to download all those images to raid storage. So recently, we had to go on upgrade. So I just got a brand new mac pro. Very, very expensive machine. We max it out, right? So the machine was, like nine grand for the mac pro. I will tell you prior to that had a mac pro on. It was seven years old, so seven years ago, I bought a mac pro mac maxed out, maximum memory processors and everything. So this is a tough, not first all swallow here and have this conversation what's your time worth how much time do you spend sitting there watching images download because you're downloading them over u s b one or usb two to a very slow, hard drive, how long does it take you? Time is money and so you got to start thinking this way and so for me we we made sure that our storage right we got a g unit storage um to ji eun gi storage what is the company and I know I just made up a new company. All right, so what is it? Ji tech thank you. G unit right is I don't know that's a fifty cent I have no idea and his g unit guy uh wow. Okay, edit that out. I'm slaphappy I don't even know what I'm saying. Uh, so we have ji tech store rate storage so it's ah it's a thunderbolt storage it's one of the first of its kind and so now we're using thunderbolt to get our start to a raid storage so I mean man, I get home from an event I'm plugging up on a usb three reader and it's dumping it right to that to that storage to buy so frickin fast what would take hours literally hours to download is now taking fifteen minutes and so this becomes really important a ce forest time is concerned and moving data around and so we get back from a job we put those images we immediately back him up and this is rate storage, right? So it's writing to hard drives that the same time this way if one fails I've got the images on that other dr this's a four to six hundred dollars solution for you how many images would you have to lose for it to be worth four hundred dollars to invest in something like this? Not many eso if one hard drive is it has anyone here ever had a hard drive fail okay so I see hands going up if one thing is guaranteed hard drives will fail they're mechanical pieces moving unless you have like an ssd drive your drive will fail knowing that your drive will fail to get that drive to be recovered you're going to send it out to a company like a drivesavers ok so if you've never had a drive fail you should write down this company drivesavers they're the ones we're going to save you when this fails because they've saved me uh it's gonna cost you about two thousand dollars two thousand dollars to recover that hard drive if it fails so you got a choice go spend and make sure you've got a backup solution that's going to last for all you have to do is have that one hard drive fail and you're looking at a two thousand dollar recovery fee I mean that's reality and so we use that I get back to the studio I immediately put them there and then I back him up to another hard drive so at this point they're sitting in two different locations just in case something happens okay one becomes a working dr one becomes purely a backup drive we don't change the name of the file nothing like that it just sits there for pure backup raw files only that's my work flow um and so really, really important to be doing it this way now when it comes to an outsourcing workflow okay now all my images they're sitting on a hard drive they're they're they're backed up there in two different locations let's even step further back I don't have it in the sides but the folders our client last name session date right? So sin kata engagement date sin kata wedding date sin kata video date right? Because whatever on producing that's what's going there then when they eventually have kids it would be sin kata right baby shoot family shoot whatever that is that's gonna be the folder makes it super easy for anyone to find it. And uh when you're looking for these images two years from now you're not going to remember some convoluted naming system that you've come up with so I just wanted to be really simple. I wanna look for all the cicada images, all the jones images I just want to type in their last name and haven't come back, so by naming that way it makes it really easy to find your images over time we've never deleted ah single file that we we've taken we just don't believe it they all get backed up they'll get saved program we use is something called cd finder so you may want you may want to go look this up it's unbelievable tool it's like cd finer dot d okay, so it's not even a u s based company but just google cd finder it's like a thirty nine dollars tool and this allows you to catalog all your hard drives so I would say at home all my back ups and everything we probably have somewhere in the neighborhood like forty hard drives that are sitting sitting on a shelf sitting in a basement city in different locations. So what happens when a client this just happened from three years ago calls us up and says we lost our digital negatives can you resend them to us? I literally have no idea what hard drive that's on you imagine sitting there and trying to plug in hard drive after hard drive to find these things it's a nightmare. So now you use this program called cd finder it is catalogued every hard drive we have so you catalogue the hard drive and then the hard drive can be off line and they're leaving catalogs thumbnails off the pictures so now I just type in johnson wedding and he pops up and it says that's on hard drive twenty two and now I just go get hard, drive twenty to plug it in, and now I have access to the images. Remember, we started this conversation time. That thing is thirty. That program is thirty nine dollars. You're telling me thirty nine dollars? I probably just saved as solid hour of time easily a solid hour of time just looking for one job, let alone if I have to look for anybody else's job well worth an investment on something like that. So keep that in mind, it's all at me. Consent now, let's say you're outsourcing, okay, we're gonna talk about doing it yourself to let me show you how I would add it and what I would do let's say you're outsourcing now all your image is backed up, I'm going to send a light room catalog to evolve. Okay, I picked you plug in your outsourcing company in there, whoever you decide to use, I'm going to send that that catalog to evolve. Okay, smart previews used to be in the day when you were outsourcing. You would have to send all the raw files, right? So that became a nightmare evolved today's working with clients from australia. We're working with clients from london, right? Because they don't have to send us all these were all files over the wire they're just sending us the smart previews much much smaller file so it's the lightning file there's all sorts of tutorials on how to create a smart preview but is built right into light room five so in light room five you're going to send a smart preview okay they're gonna edit that so they're going to color correct all those images my particular workflow is every wedding every job I want let's call it a wedding I want a hunt let's go back to the slide so on a wedding where I'm shooting four thousand images I want eight hundred images to come back fully color corrected I want another seven hundred to come back not color corrected just selected three star so the color corrected image is there going to be five start these are the ones I'm going to show my client the other seven hundred images they're going to come back they're going to three start now you may be confused here why you bring back another seven hundred images here's what happens on a wedding day I can narrow it down to their best eight hundred hell I could probably narrow it down to their best four hundred but the reality is clients want to see more pictures they're going to go I thought I saw you in the corner taking a picture of my of my end where is that picture? I don't see it well maybe that picture was blurry right? Maybe I just didn't it was really noisy I didn't like it but I took it well that's gonna be a three star picture so that's gonna be there in the selection but the color corrected ones those are gonna be the core eight hundred for them that I lose anybody. Okay? So that's kind of my work flow from an engagement session and the number I like is about a third so even if you don't shoot as much as I shoot what you're going to typically want to present to the client is about a third of the images seniors, families, babies, weddings, whatever you shoot probably going to end up in around a third of the shots right? Or maybe a little bit last that's a good rule of thumb toe look for about thirty percent thirty three percent an engagement session four hundred, six hundred I'm gonna want to show them about one hundred fifty to two hundred pictures there's no three star five star at that point a senior session about one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty pictures that's what? We're going to show them now off the wedding when I outsource it they're gonna they're gonna get four thousand images they're going to send me back eight hundred of the eight hundred I want twenty five to be black and white I want to give some diversity I'm gonna want ten to be what I call premium edits those gonna have textures on I don't know if you guys like texture or not I do it's my thing I like it just gives the image a little bit more grit if you're open airy style photographer you're gonna hate texture and that's fine don't use it if you want something little more edgy a little more gritty you're gonna love texture okay just gives that image of different looking field and so that's that's the route we're going when we do stuff like that same for my engagements my oh and from a wedding I want one signature at it every wedding comes back with one signature at it and here's my mindset because its signature added to commence if it's one hundred dollars here's my mind set on that on that editor if I don't sell it to them that socks I don't make any money but more than not I've gotten good enough that the signature at it that I know I can sell that to my client it actually helps me sell big prints by having that special edit there like we have to have that okay so that's one but if they don't buy my mindset is that's okay it's gonna be in my portfolio am I willing to invest one hundred bucks to put in my portfolio? Yes I am and that's that's kind of my mindset with that stuff engagement sessions one signature at it senior session no signature at it they don't buy it right because my style of signature and it is this big dramatic shot you know what every mom wants to see in a senior session no face it's all they care about my best selling image to a senior is a three quarter shot it could be horizontal landscape doesn't matter they want to see the face a little bit of the upper body and mom is happy as can be and so what we've started doing on our senior sessions is offering instead of a signature at it we're bringing back ah beauty at it that's what we're bringing back write a true fashion beauty at it write really cleaning up the skin nice skin softening enhancing the eyes so we do one image from every senior session that has ah that has a beauty at it that's being what's working for us and now I've had to listen to that feed back out of the sales room remember don't take my word for it gage by what you're seeing happening the salesroom eighty percent of the time not twenty percent eighty what's happening eighty percent of the time and so for us taylor was giving me this feedback she's like nobody's buying these big dramatic shots she can't sell him I cannot sell him she's like moms are all saying the same thing okay we'll stop doing them when we did so now from from evolve we're going to get back that catalog we're going to import that catalog now we're going to wire him up, right? We're going to reconnect the edits with the images via this light room catalog, and so once we get to that point, what I'm advocating you do is not trust anyone do not trust any editors anyone, but you were neurotic. We know our image is better than anyone else and so even me to this day when I get that catalog back, I'm scanning through that job to see if they missed anything to see if they selected the wrong image to see if they are a little bit off on color temperature, maybe it's a little too warm little too cool all of that is normal when somebody else's editing your pictures, you've got to determine how much time you want to spend being neurotic about it. Now if they give you an image back and you're outsourcing is green that's problematic right it's way off but if the tint is off by two points your client's not gonna know the difference spend your time focusing on things you need to focus on that's not one of them I'm going to scan through my job's, mind you, this is still my work flow to this day I could have my entire editing team do all of this and I don't, so they're going to get the job. It comes back to me, I'm still scanning through to make sure they didn't miss anything. I'm hoping they get ninety percent of the way there. I never expect one hundred percent from somebody else. It's just not possible. It's actually never gonna happen. It's a miracle for doubts. So I'm going through. Yep. No. Looks good. I should be spending ten minutes on a job when he comes back to me. If I'm spending more than ten minutes, I mean and I mean, one of my editors face about right? I don't want to spend more than ten minutes. I got to spend more than ten minutes. I'll do it myself down a wedding I usually would spend about thirty minutes that's normal. I would spend twelve hours, so if I can go from twelve hours to thirty minutes on the job success that's where you want to be spending your time, what I'm going to do now is I'm gonna add a vignette toe every image, right that's built into the light room super easy to do. I'm going to rename the files, I'm going to then apply skin softening toe all the files and then batch that job out I say again you're outsourcing company can do all of that for you I still to this day I want that level of control over my images I want to see the images before my clients do if I let up that control I've lost control of what's happening in my business and I can't do it none of you can I want you to pay attention to what's going out of your studio the naming convention of the files we're going to the job name cicada or call it smith underscore w for wedding b for bridal thie year for seniors twenty fourteen twenty thirteen it's not uncommon for you to get siblings right so if you got jones the brother and then jones the sister two years later right? You couldn't just say senior that's why I put the year there so would be jones twenty twelve jonestwenty fourteen so that's the event e for engagement be for bridal w for wedding underscore zero zero one or it's probably zero zero zero one three zero zero one why? Because if in the numbering if you put him in order in numbering it'll be like ten one hundred one thousand and that's not what you want to have happen you need to be able to go in sequential order one, two, three, four, five, ten, eleven, twelve you with me thie roz and what size are you making the j pigs? Yeah great question when we do this renaming in light room, it is renaming the raw files that's a given what we're not doing is renaming the backup files the back of files remember my files are always in two places the backup files will always retain the original finally right the underscore d x one two three dot cr to were not renaming those okay, we're on lee renamed them on the production drives that's why I want may images always in two spots it's almost impossible to keep the two drives in complete sync and it's not worth it the only time you're going to that backup drives if something goes horribly wrong on the main drive so that's what that's what we're doing there? What was the other party in question? So we're not there yet when we were in the route that j peg it's full rest three hundred d p I e and whatever it is I'll show you the export script in light room everybody with me so far okay, so I'm gonna thump on you one more time. I know we talked about this before uh if you're not in evolved from here and I'm talking everybody at home as well if you're not in evolved from here, check out the program it's one ninety nine a month okay it's unlimited color correction and so in the spirit of that if you decide to keep it in house and do it let's make sure we're doing it right let's make sure we're working image is the right way to be a sufficient as possible so we talked a little bit about this one we're calling I want to get my wedding's down to fifteen hundred my seniors two to fifteen my engagements to two hundred but we've got to do fast editing think about this when I'm working a slideshow I've gotta put together I've got to go through two thousand images typically when I sit down that slide show I'm only looking at the images coming off my camera not all this is I don't have enough time to do it so I'm typically looking at two thousand twenty five hundred images I've got thirty minutes to go through those twenty five hundred images and find one hundred to one hundred twenty five images and added them I've got thirty thirty two, thirty five minutes I've got to pull this off and so you better be fast you better have your system down your rhythm down spend time where it matters and so everything is preset driven for me everything I don't want to sit there and go left right up down I want to be really preset driven er and so we're let's let's dive into that so I'm gonna jump over to my laptop all right so this is a recent shoot we did bear with me because normally amusing ah wah come tablet. Anybody using tablets here? I can't live without it, man. I love my tablet. I love working with it. Uh, I do not want to end it with a mouse. I do not want to end it with my finger on the keypad so much easier when you're using the tablet. So if you don't have one of those pick one up, I think they've got them all in sizes from super portable ones for two hundred bucks all the way up to the pro ones. And now they haven't that they're actual monitors. You can actually add it right on the actual monitor. So I definitely have gear envy when I see that, but that's thousands of thousands of dollars to pull that off. All right, so what you're seeing here, let's, make these thumbnails a little bigger. And so this is ahh shoot we did in new york city just last week. This was a style I shoot. And so we got our hands on a cab, and we wanted to go with the fifty steamed, uh, looking feel this was such a fun shoot, right? So we wanted greece, a modern version of greece, so had a make up artist. Come in and do the hair and makeup for us we had a beautiful wedding dress and this was at one of our destinations workshops and so those workshops are all about building your portfolio that's what it's all about and this is a really cool cab that we got our hands on in new york so this facility were in this old warehouse on this is where they had filmed or they just shot vogue italia recently and then the taxi cab was used in men in black three and then it was used in anchorman two on then recently they had james franco shooting in a well commercial I guess he was in it and then lady god god was on the hood so I guess the cab comes from good pedigree but it was really, really cool. It was only like a couple of two, three hundred bucks tohave it there for a couple hours so kind of an interesting way to run a style I shoot thinks our thinking now, right? Like what could I do with my seniors? What could I do with you know, with with an engagement couple in something like that, right? It's it's not your typical engagement session right now we're getting into like style I shoot do you think a couple is going to do something like this and then not spend money on pictures now in transparency this was this was a portfolio shoot for me but what am I doing the portfolio shoot for I'm doing it so that I can show my clients some ideas here's what we can do so now when I go to my next bridal show and I'm showing something like this my clients are going to go I want to do that well great I know exactly how much it's gonna cost us to pull something like this off and it really does start doing that so really, really fun stuff when you start doing it so right I don't cover the selection process I really want to cover just kind of the postproduction process so here you got an image right let's just go through here you're picking which ones you like let's work with this okay? And so if we go into the develop mode what you're seeing here on the left, these air, these air my presets and they've been created out of necessity if nothing else and so these are all library five presets and they're all based in away on your actual work flow, right? So what I love to do is gather all numbered on the left I don't know if we can scroll in, but on the left hand side they're all number zero one, two, three, four, five because the thing that drives me nuts about presets is if you're in light room most presets are not built in a way where they layer right usually if you apply a preset one preset wipes out which you did with another preset wipes out which you did with the previous preset makes me bonkers from an editing perspective I also don't like going left right now I gotta just exposure now I gotta come back over here I'm wasting seconds times it's just taking me too much time so what we've done here is on the left hand side we've numbered them so number one is get started number two is different white bounces number three's exposure both over and under exposure number four contrast so everything's right there is I'm just scrolling down is I'm editing this image and it's building it in a sense making light room behave with layers so we just goto get started okay that's gonna be a little punch on the image uh made it a little too warm saw pride coming here just cool it off a little bit I like that cool tone but now the exposure's not right so now I'm going to come down to number three exposure let's bump it by half a stop well maybe I want to reset the exposure just hit reset let's go two point seven five right well so let's do a little I like the exposure on her face okay but let's come down quarter stop and then maybe let's hit a little bit of highlight recovery here so we can go down and hit highlight recovery little half stop record recover that so look how fast I'm moving through some of these images now I want to add a vignette so I got the built in mind yet maybe I want to go a little heavier great now this has gotten to a point where what I consider the basic at it is done that's what I'm looking to do fast easy simple this is what I'm doing on wedding days when I'm moving through slide shows super super fast they're not seeing annette images on a wedding day sideshow they're seeing this this is how quick I'm moving through it now I want to get into this creative zone here so I've got the ability to do more creative edits aiken d'oh uh creative hdr right I can undo that I can do old color I like that cool warm tone on the image it's a real popular look right now I can do ah d sat hdr I can do a d sat kula d sat warm and now notices I was applying these creative presets they're not they're not adjusting exposure they're not messing with all the other settings I'd applied previously this is what I like about this work flow in these presets super super easy to do so let's go look at I mean questions super easy right? Simple stuff yeah, michael precepts that you've built yourself over time they are these air all presets I've built this is something we actually sell on dso these air presets that I used both in my business editors are editors use um we used when I'm editing and working jobs on I'm using on the set on the wedding same day slide show because I am a preset junkie and so I have so I pry have everybody's presets that I've ever been made and so I'm constantly going back and forth back and forth and to get basic edits right not just corrective edits, not creative edits we understand the difference between a corrective and creative blown highlights exposure's wrong just basic tonal range when I'm doing that, I'm tired of going up and down left and right and I feel I felt like I was wasting time and so now what? I wanted this why I created them in a numbered way where I stay in that range and you can see on the left hand side just messing with exposure if I want to reset exposure now I could just reset it I can do plus one I can do minus one and it's all there on that left hand side without having to go back and forth right and just really simple and that was what it was just built out of actual necessity it was what I wanted for the way I was editing my style so that's why? And then all of a sudden I was doing a workshop teaching wasn't even selling these somebody was like, what is that? Where'd you get that and that's how we started selling it let's take it a step further so we went through okay? And so we got some beauty shots over stuff like that and we had to both of them out there. I know I'm going super fast. Hang with me, there's pride getting dizzy. Oh, this is funny. Sure, he'll appreciate we're showing us what I did is I made all the students get out there and take a picture in front of a cab, so I took a portrait and he took it a little bit too hard. John is his name uh he's been that he started getting him. He started doing john, I'm sorry I'm showing this on air, buddy, but you just now their body so he's out of hong kong, he had a great time and he was making me the of the whole time he's doing it. I haven't had a really, really a chance to look at this and I'm like, dude, be serious for a second let me get a good picture of you in front of this cab, right so a cz you can tell we have a lot of fun on our workshops. All right, so then what I did was somebody in the class it was actually yolanda had this idea. So what I love about the workshops are I want everybody to feel inspiration to be inspired, right? Because you have a cab like this, I can keep shooting. I've got my vision, but I'm surrounded by five other artists, five other photographers who start having ideas. So she starts talking about, like, shooting with these leading lines and having the headlight, you know, in the shot and then going from there. And so we started what we started messing around with was off camera flash and then we jelled it right because we wanted it to have this warm tone in the image so you'll see what we did here. Okay, so that's kind of right out right out of camera. And so what we did here for this particular shot let's, make sure yeah, that's right out of camera nothing's been done to that, so notice the cool toning around it, okay, that blue tone. So what we did here is we took a speed light, we put cto gel on it, and then we change the white balance on the camera two tungsten and that turned everything around it blue and this is what it looks like right out of camera I'm really happy with it right out of camera now how do we give it that little bit more pop that little bit more umph tohave that kind of signature at its style and feel where it's more than just what's out of camera so we go to the left and here's where I would get more involved in both a light room slash um photoshopped workflow right so let's go get started now you see what happens the minute you get we hit get started auto white balance kicks in and it wants to balance the part of the shot but it made everything orange well that's not what we wanted so here we're gonna come back we're going to bring this down to right about here where is where I want it right about three. Thirty one hundred three thousand I like what it's doing to the blue in the room the skin tone I want to be warm but that's just the beginning so now we've got y pounds where we want okay we can hit y pounds tungsten too then we can go and let's bump up exposure half stop okay I like the way that's looking let's come down let's put it to a vignette of to want it I like the way that's looking now we can start doing some things in here where we can do creative edits. So from atoning perspective, I like where this is going. It's just so everybody knows here it's this a little bit cooler on the monitor, and so we could go with a creative hdr, and that gives it that little bit of pop for that shot, right? This is matching my style all of a sudden ten seconds, five seconds. We've got this image starting to look the way we wanted to look, but now I want to put a little bit of that texture in that great on it. So now I'm going to send an image like this, okay, I'm gonna say edit in photo shop, we're gonna launch this in photo shop. Maybe when we go, okay, so now we're gonna launch this in photo shop, and now I'm gonna ply my textures. And so again, this is something that was built for me out of necessity. I wanted I wanted my own set of textures, so here we're just gonna launch this. So we're gonna bring that up when he hit continue, because now we're going it's asking us to resize it, so we're just gonna lay this over. Hit enter now it's going to give us our brush so we can paint it away that is that I don't understand why if you're applying texture to an image you are leaving it on the face of your client's nobody wants to put a big print on the wall that has texture on their face what is wrong with you? Okay, so now here's the difference obviously we see the texture on their face doesn't look any good nine and a half out of ten textures that are out there on the marketplace when you paint away this texture, you paint away the toning off the taxi notice now I'm just going to pull out here the tony has not changed on that image that's how a texture should look that's why when people paint don't paint away the texture because let's say you put a warm texture over your image the whole image is warm and then you paint away the texture and now that you're seeing the toning of the image underneath because it's removing that tony it should not remove the tony it should only remove the taxpayer and so that's why we've created it this way so now I can come through here I'm removing this all over them okay? You get the gist you can remove it from the car if you want but obviously any and all skin we should be removing it from that is a ned it that I would present to my client's okay, maybe I'll clean up our skin a little bit which get the gist this was I'm sitting here teaching you and this was only five or ten minutes of my time. This is where your time should be spent one or two of these images keep it simple. Do it that way. So now I say this and this is gonna pop right back up into light room, right as it should so side by side. Now as soon as that's done saving out wants to come back in vamp right back in light room. And so now that's right there there's the two separate images I could do something else with it. Whatever I want to do before and after that's my style of editing that's where I want to see you spending your time super simple stuff, right? Let's sum let's questions about this easy, right? Simple make editing look look silly. All right, let's, look at export presets so several things I'm doing here, they're all built in a remember everything we're doing has to save time so automate anything that you're anything you find yourself doing repetitive lee create a preset for it create an action for it save yourself the hassle time is money so my favorite plugin an emoto they have a light room plug in this allows me to send any any slide show I go rightto teo an emoto so I can sit hit from here right so I can select my whatever images I'm just randomly selecting images here and now I can hit command shift e that's for exports shortcut key for export learn your shortcut keys that's gonna pop up this menu and now this animal it'll plug in I can hit export and it's going to immediately start uploading those images tanimoto what usedto have to happen was you would have to export all your images then go to an emoto then upload them right costing you more time another extra step a lot of people don't even know that there's this light room plug in that's free it's a free plug in from them okay another plug and I have I don't know if this one is free uh might be one of those sites where donation it's the photographers let me give you the right info go to photographers dash toolbox dot com if you're not already using this anybody here using this bucket you're using it rob I like you you listen thanks all right why I like this plug in is because it pushes right to my wordpress site and it does it the right way so check this out the post content see I can put the post title here so I can say smith wedding okay st louis wedding photographer all their details are entered in here then it has the ability to rename the file so remember we were talking ceo in a previous segment and renaming the files to your ceo your key words it's happening right here it's showing me the example of the file name is gonna be st louis wedding photographer underscore zero zero one so now this is automatically being done for me I don't have to sit here and renamed each individual image time is money and so now I can change it to be photography right so one time it'll be photographer the next time it'll be photography so now all my images that are being posted to my block have my key words in the image name without having to go rename each image I can control the size from here so I can say my long edges nine hundred forty pixels every websites different you got to figure out how wide your block is mine is nine hundred forty picks souls then we're gonna ply the watermark so all this is being done on export the minute I hit export this block post goes right out to southend conta dot com and it's pushed out on that side pending meet my approval then it will open up my block and let me make any last minute adjustments or changes before I publish it easy this is super simple stuff this plug in um, I don't have a deal for you to go by because I think it's one of those ones that donation or it's like ten dollars it's something like that, so ten dollars, go buy it makes sense. This is going to save you time and money. Uh, facebook this's a preset I created it's not it's, not something you're buying you created on your own. This is here. What are my sizes? So when I upload to facebook it's going to be resized to fit, you can see the image sizing long edge nine hundred forty pixels seventy two dp I do not push bigger images up there than this you're you're you're asking for massive problems if you start pushing big files up there because they're going to get stolen and part of the facebook terms and conditions, whether they do it or not, who knows? But part of the terms and conditions is they own your your images in there basically so always put watermarked on facebook so you don't have to worry about it being used somewhere it's not supposed to, uh, and always make sure it's size that seventy two dpr there's no reason to size bigger jonathan middle of the photograph for on the bottom, or do you have them in different spots based on where they're going? No that is why I look so first of all good question but that is why I love the plug in used to be when you used to do this in photo shop you had to put I don't know if anybody remembers when you would put logo's on in photo shop if you export it the logo would end up in one spot if it was a horizontal picture and another spot of who's a vertical so you had to actually do two different exports you had to do one export for your watermark on all your vertical images and another export for all the horizontal god bless light room so light room you don't have to do any of that you can control where your watermark goes so they have a watermark editor here and what you're seeing is my water mark is in the bottom right hand corner I can put text so I could just put c right copyright salvador's and qatar or I can put my logo I've chosen to put my logo and I put it in the bottom right hand corner through this editor I can now put this right pretty much wherever I want in the picture and it'll anchor so I can say I always wanted to be dead center which is not what we would ever do I can always wanted to be bottom left hand corner so no matter whether the images horizontal or vertical it will always be in the same spot bottom left hand corner in the same ratio away from each corner that makes sense what would stop somebody from just cropping it out and then using the foot off literally nothing you are going to get ripped off get used to it it's gonna happen so we post online just accepted that we're going to get ripped off which is why I tend to not post online until they have bought pictures from us now I might push out a teaser that's totally okay, but if you've spent two thousand dollars in my studio and you want to go rip me off and steal this how about it there's nothing I can do uh but you see what's what's going to end up happening it's a seventy two dp I file right it's nine hundred forty pixels I mean, so unless they're printing for bunch of four by six is even then it's going to fall apart on him, eh? So I'm okay with it at that point is a short answer but yeah it's gonna get cropped out you're gonna get robbed, you're going we're gonna get uh just make sure you get paid but super easy here and so that preset is being applied uh here right in that in that export any questions about this work flow? You know, the uh I tend to be very much a uh minimalist when it comes to doing some of this stuff, I just really want to keep things simple. Early on my career, I used to just obsess about every single image that came through. I mean, I wish to add it in least I did before there was light for the recital room. You're either working in bridge or you're working within photo shops, adobe camera ross, you had to edit each individual image uh, just that raw engine was horrible. It was a horrible way to have to work and do postproduction, and so I tend to be more of a minimalist. I want it, I want to keep the image is simple. I want them to be clean. I want a handful of images that are just edgy, gritty texture, things like that on so that's where that's, what you're seeing in that work falsify oversimplified it. I think that's a good thing, so hopefully you're looking at this and realising he doesn't spend a whole lot of time doing this, and nor should you, it doesn't matter with you outsource our insource this stuff can't consume your life. Yeah, when do you have what I imagine you do? But what is your specific workflow for your prince that you're using for advertising competition, stuff like that that's a lot more involved that's a really good question so the question is what is my work flow for stuff I'm using for prints and on dh competition and things like that ah competition print that comes from me will probably be edited anywhere in the neighborhood from an hour and a half to three and a half hours off work on a single image that makes sense I'm submitting it to a competition um if I have if I have a clock you gotta understand as many of you probably do when you're committing to competition they're looking at things that are clients and you never ever, ever going going to look at right and so that's where you got to figure out when you're spending spending your time but let's come back to more of ah practical real world scenario now my client goes you know hey, we want this picture twenty by thirty okay? I'm gonna obsess about that one image I've been obsess about the images they're going big if they're going to be a bunch of four by six is removes its I'm gonna do stuff like that but I'm not getting in and doing true beauty at it's I'm not dodging and burning on their face and enhancing their eyes and all this stuff that's you save that for the big prints that's where it makes sense because you're also getting paid big money for those big print so it makes sense to spend that to spend that time doing doing it they're uh same for competition prints that's where I'm going to spend a lot lot more time and energy you know the cover of this month's um shutter magazine I edited that picture so I sat there and this is where I tell you it's therapeutic I was setting up the studio one night it was like eleven thirty and I'm just sitting down and I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna do this and crank it out and I was like practicing new techniques I was learning for dodging and burning on the face and enhancing the skin and so next thing I know I look up it's two and a half hours later you know when I'm still in the middle of editing his picture is that probably you know taylor and eliza would probably have something to say about that being the smartest use of my time because it's not it's not the smartest use of my time but at some point we all need a mental break that's not what I'm worried about. I'm not worried about when you get sucked into that I'm worried about when you get into the real world of production you're shooting one wedding every week you're backed up you're sitting out there at home and you're backed up on jobs on you have no way there's no light at the end of the tunnel if there's no light at the end of the tunnel something's gotta give you got to figure out what you're doing and where it makes sense to spend your time export scripts we showed you this blogger facebook negatives full resolution j paige's all of that is built in right to the right to the actual our exports right? So I'm doing that I'm simplifying and streamline everything we do, eh? So I suggest you do that as well every anything you find yourself doing over and over and over again create a preset for credit script for it's going to save you a lot of time over the course of a year a lot of time over the course of fifty jobs a hundred jobs uh, you know instagrams one of those things instagram the pictures or square and so now I've got my logo on normal facebook posting logo's in the bottom right hand corner well when I go to instagram it's cropping it square right when I pushed that out so what I have to do is it's a two step process I've gotta export for facebook then I got to take those five images that I want to push up to instagram crop them square re export them out so I have a different export script for instagram and so everything you're doing you've got to find a way tio automated it's it's really, really straightforward all right, we're going to wrap up this section before we do I want to get into the spirit of a signature again I don't care whether you do it yourself he outsource that it's really not the point but this is the stuff that you're going to sell to your clients so this is we were in prague, okay? And I believe this is the opera hall or the opera center in progress saw this building just absolutely beautiful this is what you call a plate shot ok, this particular building it looks like there's some people around there but trust me there's not normally when you step up in front of this opera hall there are just hundreds of people walking around in this area and so I want to shut there's a shot I want I've got ah model here building my portfolio I wanted to do something dramatic with this building and so I knew I needed the plate shot I needed to get as much of this building without people in it as I could. So when we got back into post production I'm not sitting there trying to edit one person out of the time I needed the building where we had nobody there so this is the before notice the cemetery here if you're looking at home this is a big mistake I see when we when signature right it's come in architecture the worst thing you can do when you're shooting architecture and you want to put people in front of it and shoot it skewed okay, it looks like crap that's not what you're supposed to be doing you won't want to shoot it at an angle you want to get straight onto that that building is shot straight on I am dead center there's little to no skew I've got a wide angle lens on it, so you've got to make sure you do that so that's the that's the plate shot that we were working with that's the shot when we added our model to it that's killer in it that's how you're gonna book business that's how you're going to get people to turn on the lights we dropped in a dramatic sky our model was standing there and we moved out moved out people who were in the shot right by going back to that plate shot to replace it I saw the shot in my head before I ever click the camera I knew what I wanted to do I wanted to build a composite shot that's the goal that we're trying to accomplish now I show this out of bridal show people are going to go crazy for it okay that's what I'm looking to dio here's a shot we took this was online I think we posted it into the shutter fast group the story behind it is actually entertaining. I told it earlier on the on the show we were getting yelled at because we're getting told this was a very dangerous thing we were doing and highly illegal. When I asked the person what was illegal about it, she said, I could tell you what it's illegal in ways I don't have to tell you that was her quote to me, I just started laughing at her. It was this probably, like seventy year old lady who worked at the courthouse in san francisco. I couldn't help but laugh. I really thought she was joking with me, but she wasn't. She got pissed off and walked away. This was the before that's the after that's the difference before I suck after I'm really good, yeah, that's how it works. All right, so you got to be able to take these got to be able to take these pictures on really, really see the vision when you take the shot, right? So when I'm doing this and I'm setting up this shot, I know what I'm capable of in post production, I know it. Every photographer in the world knows it, whether they won't admit they're doing post production on their work or not that's a whole other conversation. But I'm always willing to show you guys the shots that come out of camera, I could care less what you you know how I get judged in the world. I know that this is what it looks like out of all our cameras, okay, this is what's possible when you get and understand what what you can do with it saying for this I showed you this one before this was right out of camera. This is pretty good out of camera. I'm happy with it, the skies there, we didn't lose the sky because we were using off camera flash. The only thing at this point that's removed his elicits hand, her hand was right here, but so this is a pretty solid shot out of camera, but it doesn't have that right. If I put this up on the screen and somebody walks into my studio, they're going to say it's, good it's ok, I've seen it, but then you do that and it's like bam now, we've created drama in this shot, right were darkening that skye we're getting down to the couple, we turn on the lights in the background and we just create something for them that they're going to say over and over again, I've never seen that a shot like that. That's got to be the ultimate goal this is where I want to see you spend your time so if you want to think about spending your time on imagery this is where I want to see you spend your time not color correct that that doesn't makes no logical sense whatsoever this is where you want to learn uh how to spend your time if you're even interested in it some people just look at this and they go I want nothing to do with cloning and dodging and burning it's it's greek to me I just want to be done and give it to my client's yeah john what do you do this? I'm surprised that you're not charging extra for that, isn't it product yeah you know, for your package for your package that you're putting in high end package I get that but if they say I just love that one scratch the rest of him yeah, you selma sixteen twenty four off your regular price list I could happen. Yes, somebody could come into my studio and just say we want nothing else um we just want this in a sixteen by twenty four and we'll be gone that could happen there's nothing in my priceless that would stop that from happening except there's more value in the package, then the allah card right? Don't forget you're assuming they're not going to want any type portrait's off themselves or or things like that right any head shots or any family pictures and so I can tell you right looking right at you ninety percent of the time that has never had prying ninety five percent of the time that doesn't happen they come in the cedars and they want this and then they want all the other ancillary shots that are around you but I think out of every event you produce you've got to come up with something one something like this because man let's go back to like what was that the first second seems like was months ago that we talked about the client right and we're talking about that client and attracting the right client so when I have this up right I have bridal shows coming up in january this shot will be center in my booth this is gonna be a powerful image do you think there's any other photographer in there that's gonna have an image like this now they're not either they don't know how to do the editing like it or they don't have access to the field to do something like that so now this image is sitting there you were in cardinal nation write st louis st louis cardinals number two team behind the yankees with the most world series one you're talking about fanatics in st louis people get married on the field I can't process that but they do so that being said when this images up sitting there don't you think this is gonna be a stopper people going to stop and check that out they're going to be like that's a really cool so becomes a conversation piece that's what you want to do in your booth you wanna have that conversation piece think about where you live where you what city you're in wherever you are anywhere in the country anywhere in the world what shot could you put up that would get people talking I'm sure in paris ride would be the eiffel tower as cliches that place may be it's still it's still signify something right what would it be in london what could you do if you were in london what could you do if you're up in new york what would you do if you're in indianapolis right where what what are the landmarks that you can show your take on that landmark one of the most famous shots we have famous to our brides is a shot of the st louis arch they just want that they love that shot they recognize us from that shot so what becomes your signature shot in your local market you've got to figure that out that's what it's all about all right hopefully uh every thought that was a good segment and like I said if I over simplified things that's the goal I want to keep things simple for you we don't post production does not have to be complicated, whether you do it yourself or your outsources, you've got to find a rhythm. That's gonna help you meet client deadlines, right? Isn't that what it's all about? Get the images to your clients two weeks while them show them something textures, great hdr, whatever your thing is, get it there. Get that image, erin. All right, next up, we're talking about wedding albums were talking about their importance, which we've been doing. We're gonna look at some more albums, but more importantly, we're gonna talk about the show, some designs of the albums and just think things like that. How are we going with our album workflow? I'm gonna show you how our client's order the albums, how they submit images to us, how we track all that stuff so it's not overly complicated once again, but that whole album process, I hope to be able to dismiss the, uh de mystify should say for everyone.