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Dog Days Q&A

We have any questions in the audience we want to start with us um if you were going to do a shoot not necessarily in a studio like if he found maybe a vet or somebody to do the dog days kind of thing at their students are at their face, what would you do for like the couch would because it kind of hard to bring, like several couches or option for backdrop and that's where, you know, I think, you know, each case you'd have each case, you'd have to just look at it differently and, you know, it's really even no different than what I'm doing here like I don't have my thirty couches here, but I'm gonna be able to do some great things like you just, uh, like I would talk to him, I mean, I would assume they'd have some furniture there, it probably wouldn't be as pretty or neat, but, you know, the few challenges what I would tell somebody to look at, you're gonna run into working with other vendors. I think it's very viable impossible, you're going to need to be a little flexible on scheduling...

because you're I'm assuming you're gonna have to hold it at a time that they're not normally seen clients like that to me would be too chaotic, so it may even be a sunday event or a saturday afternoon event I would think you'd have better luck like because otherwise if they said you could do it while they were open it would be kind of chaotic for you I wouldn't do that plus that's not mr good for them and I think if they were closed you could do a few more things you could probably bring a few more couches but I would focus more on some of I think we'll be clarified when you see me shooting focus more on changing things up by other things that don't take up a lot of space and our more portable so like I've got some of my white house backdrops that don't wrinkle and literally we shot with him the other day because two people just held him out and stretched him out like just to get the shot. So so what if all the dogs are on the same chair couch or the same two chairs the couch? You can easily change some things around with the rug with the fabric enough to give variety or there is nothing there is nothing wrong with having like a cool set up the people she was like when we do our like vintage santa set it's like a sad like everybody gets photographed in the same thing like that would be an easy and easier entry level way to do dog days for somebody to try it out would be just, you know just set something up says something up keep it simple on yourself and just have a few things you can change out maybe a chair, maybe a rug but don't try to go like totally crazy your clients are still going to love it like they're not going to know the difference of how I did this and how you did it. I mean, as long as the images are still like that's when we go back to the importance of the relationship and you're working well with them and with their animals that's what's gonna think stand out and then it could transition into something maura bigger next time but that would be a good way to get your feet wet. We do like a saturday afternoon and don't try to go too crazy with, you know, the backgrounds and stuff he just answered most of my questions. How many d how many do you usually have, though for yours hominy sets or backgrounds? Or do you just wing it? I don't know I don't have anything pre set up so literally and that's for all my sessions that when I used to do limited editions, which we'll talk more about tomorrow um my limited editions used to be sets so like a fairy set like intense set up the whole day before a day to take down, everybody shot in the same thing I completely transition away from all of that and I realized like I really just want good lighting and so I set up my lighting and things where I want it and I just bring the things in as I need it so it's like it's really not very different from this I've gotta light wood floor alight wall sometimes that's all I use sometimes I might just lie to cochin with us sometimes somebody's holding the rug but all my other stuff is just kind of shoved to the side and I could just like pick and grab what I want so I don't have I tried to do this that thing and it just didn't work for me like it was hard for me to shoot that way because this set might be somewhere where I wasn't like set up you know the way I have my lighting setup I just you know, if I was trying to my window light even there's like one certain area where I really like that so to set up something here I was sacrificing what I wanted with my lighting and just, you know, space wise in my studio where the way it's long it's just like where I'm most comfortable like news my seventy two hundred you know, lands if I start changing that up I can't do all that do usually stick with one type of lens when you're doing the little addition so quick I've taken some creative liberty I think it was two years ago I was like, I'm not gonna use the seventy two hundred I'm only going to use my wider england's and so like some of these images in there that we're a little like funnier and up close like I didn't do mall like that it was zoom wide angle lens but it was more just I wanted because that was mostly yes it was the seventy of two hundred but then I had my tilt shift and I had uh, my wider angle for dog days I don't tend to do a lot of len switching um for a normal session I would still say mostly it's my seventy two hundred but then I'll try to make something in there to do a creative shot with the exception of did you see me shooting through the big ring light so that's ah larsson that's from larson enterprises who also do my soft boxes we don't have one here to shoot but that's why I'm glad you could see that and I have a slide later I can show you it's just this massive huge ring light that would be crazy to try to get over here but it's good for two reasons it's really cool like it works and it's great when you have like dark dogs and you want all that detail that's that's good, but it's actually great for your clients who come in, who are gearheads and they're like, oh, yeah, I've got this, I've got this, and then they're like, what's that like, they don't even know what it is and it's cool just because it's like this big piece of equipment. Um, but I don't remember what your question was and why I even started going off on that tangent. Teo, you answered it a question from the internet while mom ten has another good question, how do you handle a late pet client when you are on such a fast pace during these days, do schedule a couple of slow spots to accommodate for them that's a great question, because I didn't see it so typically like, so I would tell somebody if you're going to try to do this every ten minutes in your computer, actually look at every fifteen so your client again, this is under promise over deliver your building in a cushion, so he started to run later they ran later the tire for runs late you're okay, but then I would say, like, if you were shooting nine to five five shooting nine to five, I would schedule, like, pretend mint, session our schedule every fifteen minutes, and I would price schedule like one a fifteen minute break in there so like shoot from ninety ten fifteen, ten thirty put a break so again I could catch up if I got behind or go to the bathroom get something to eat or whatever and then definitely take a lunch break and then same thing in the afternoon so similar actually like we're doing for creative life, I'd have like four segments of you know, an hour and a half perfect another question from michael p in the on the internet who asked as faras ah successful photography markets go where would you put pet photography? I've always heard that it was like in the top three after weddings and yeah and I've heard over the same statistic that it's it's number three you know? I mean, I think like for me, if you ask me that question five years ago I would have not so much thought into it I mean, it was so little of like what I was doing um so now and I don't know if this is the question he's asking like, how much like percentage wise I'm doing in my studio or just I think it depends like we're where you're at like if you said okay, central illinois five years ago is that like a big market and say no central illinois now it's definitely a bigger market, so I think that markets growing I think, um like you would come to a place like seattle, my perspective would be this is a super dog friendly town like I think you could have it. I think you could somebody could pry jump right in today and have a huge, successful pet retired, like that's all they did because there's that many more people to draw from and there's already all these boutiques, like people are spending money on their pets, so I think you're not creating the market the market already created. So for me, it was about creating the market, whereas people in other markets like seattle it's already created so it's now, how do you tap into that market? And that goes back to, I think, just building that relationship. So, um, yeah, I don't know, like, I mean, different areas country, I'm sure it's just different, you know, depending, but that's what I say, I think it could be anywhere, I think that's the beautiful thing is that it's not, you know, if you don't have that market, you, you create it. So, uh, toto central from wichita, kansas, is wondering about cats, and they're a couple of people in the chat rooms wondered about the whole dog cat scenario. You know families who have a dog, a cat that get along what about on the days where it's a dog only household or cat only household? How would you maneuver that day? You know, with your time slot so that dogs don't get upset and the cats are calm so you're saying that if if they're back to back like this session with a dog the session with carrie you're saying the same session has a counter dog if the dog's probably if they're different sessions okay my overlap yeah, you know, I just look at it like everything that's where the organization is important because it's not just for me it's not just that it's also like the two pound dog in the two hundred pound dog like you could have all kinds of scenarios and that's why I have my volunteers there literally like, oh, I didn't mention this because this was like, I don't know why I didn't have this epiphany until like two years ago, but we would haul of the dog food in the studio and then we'd have to like call it all out to the shelter so now we just parked the truck by the entrance of the studio and when I have one of my volunteers waiting outside because that's good for my client's help him in the door help him out for the dog food in the truck it's gone to the shelter that day when we're done so my thought process for the dog cat thing though is if you're organized and you have these helpers like it really is a nonissue because you know it's not ever going to just be a client leaving in a client coming and there's nobody there to help control that like they might say to the client with the cat and most of the cat people I mean, they bring him in carriers I don't think anyone brought cats not carriers where's the dogs were unleashes so when we're in the studio where contained doors are shut there is no cross over it's not like I'm shooting a cat and the next dog is watching so I think that's kind of important if you can control that aspect of it um and then by the time they're would cross the cross over the cats in some sort of a carrier or so okay, we'll ask one more question before we go to lunch uh free minder from l a california asked since pets don't change very much what are the possibilities possibilities of having repeat clients? Um great and I wouldn't have said that normally but I literally some of the slides I just showed you our clients that like just came in a couple weeks ago and they came in I'm trying think my handful of clients that are repeat like that a couple from where every year more of um might go every two years so um yeah no I think because it's no different than once kids hit a certain age a lot of times they don't change a whole lot either so it's more what else can you do different with a client and I actually like to pre sell to my clients when I'm already shooting their session that I'm currently west so that's so like for example I'm photographing you and your pet today while I'm shooting you I'm saying cash you know, last year or two years ago we did something in the fields and this year we do this cool black and white studio session I think next year we should do the warehouse so like I'm already like tough like I'm not even saying when we do it or if you do it I mean I'm not saying if we do it I'm basis and when we do it this is what we need to dio so I'm not just for my pet clients but for all clients just you plant seeds think about everything you're doing whether it's the consultation during the session pre selling whether it's pre selling the next type of session you're going to do with them next year yeah, I don't I don't think it's really all that different from from kids especially if the families in it too you can do some more variety