Lessons

Lesson Info

Retouching Images in Photoshop

Now we're going to just switch gears a little bit and I'm going to just go through and show you just a few really really simple techniques that I like to employ for re touching my my subjects and the pictures that I take of clients I'm going to preface it by saying to you to me that retouching images is a lot like applying makeup to me in that you know, I figure if the bar needs painting, you pain it ok? And sometimes our bar needs a little bit more paint I know mine does, and so I think her that this is you know you're not going to go to hell for retouching a picture and I'm sorry, but especially for women my age, I'm going to I'm going to soften lines on the face I'm going tio cleanup the eyes a little bit, I'm going to just work this file just a little bit I'm not going to try to make that woman looks like she's twenty five years old, but I'm just gonna make her look a little bit better and so I thought, who could I use to demonstrate this technique on? And I thought no one could re...

ally show pictures of except myself, so I had uncle john earlier today take a picture of me and this is what we're going to do so first of all I'm zooming in way too tight on my face for you to see the first thing I want to see it in the overall picture, the areas that I just want to soften, I may want to soften just a tiny that the lines underneath my eyes right here, maybe this little wrinkle right here not I don't need to go crazy on this stuff because a lot of it was done in camera. Do you see how the camera really filled in a lot of the cracks on my face or the lighting did rather, and so I'm going to try to get it as right as I can with the light first and then go from there take to getting it better. So the first thing I'm going to do, I'm going to make a couple of copies of this file, so we're not working on the original it's a command j with the mac it's control j with the pc, let me pull up my layers palette. By the way, I'll tell you how I learned but learned photoshopped. This is really hilarious. I got to tell you, um, I don't learn very well from a book, as you guys have already figured out by now, and so I basically, when I wanted to learn photo shop, I didn't want to learn the history of the universe, okay? I didn't care, I'm not a commercial, a commercial artist and and I didn't want to learn cork and all of those other things I wanted to learn application, which my whole philosophy in photography has learned application of a concept, and then you're home free and so the same concept kant learning conceptually in my photography, that's exactly the same way that I wanted to learn photo shop so basically, I just said, I want to know what the buttons do on the left hand side one of those tools do I don't want to be a hit the perfect retouch of the universe I just want to know some simple techniques, and so I hired a kid to come in for fifty dollars an hour, and I just said, show me what the buttons do. He showed me the marching and he showed me all of the tools, including the clone stamp tool, and then I said, teach me a trick teach me a little technique about using that particular tool, and then I can learn to apply it so I would take and learn that trick from him I would work it five times so that I could remember what that technique wass and then it just helped me to be able tio to be able to talk, to put something into practical as a practical application so when I look at the picture of myself, I'm going to go in and I'm just going to soften these little areas underneath my eyes I'm going to use a capacity of one hundred percent you can use any opacity want I like to start with the extreme and then back off it's just the way I feel comfortable doing it, you can do these things anyway you want to there's no absolute way to do this and I'm sure there's a million people out there who could probably show me a faster, easier, quicker way to do whatever I'm doing, but this is just the way that I currently do it I want a paintbrush that's about the size of the area that I want to work, so I want a paintbrush that's probably in this case maybe about that size I wanted to have a soft edge so it's going to be a a brush that has a soft edge to it? I don't want to use a hard edge on the brush. The next thing I'm going to do is I want I'm going to use the clone stamp tool in the light and mode now the light mode for a very specific reason what happens when you use the light mode? Is it on ly effects the dark pixels and you can apply this concept to anything it's not just used for the face. If you had a light background and you had something dark and if that was bothering you, you could go in and use the clone stamp children remove that, and it will only when you have it in the lightened mode, it only affects the dark pixels, so I'm going to use the option kian mac and the control key for windows I work in both, and that is going to go through and just going to erase it, as you can tell it's really obvious and kind of tell I'm I'm kind of getting carried away here and just real fast down and jury, I want real, real quick, real, real, quick working cause I don't I want to make it very, very fast, okay, so I did that, and if you could tell it looks real obvious, doesn't it? But hang on, it won't in that I'm gonna go in soft in this line, right here and especially around my mouth, I want to get rid of that and maybe just soften it just a little bit here, get rid of that right there and you see that bright spot right there that highlight if you go into the dark and mode now. Guess what? You can get rid of those light areas, this putting your clone stamp tool in the darkened mode to get rid of light things. This works awesome if you have a subject, that's got a shiny, sweaty face, so if you have a client who's sweated, you know, they've got sweat on debt, looks unattractive, it is so easy to go in and just wipe across their face and get rid of those highlights, that sweaty area by using the darkened mode and not the light mint. So this is let me go in here real fast and just soften this limited I'm gonna pull from this area right here from mike owning so up, saying I got carried away here. Um, let's see where's, my, uh, my history and in the second year and be back off that, okay, now one have got I've worked one layer, you'll notice that it's only on the top layer here's before and after k now this looks completely obvious and looks it looks unattractive, it's ugly. The idea is not to eliminate the bags, we don't want to eliminate the bags. We don't want to eliminate the crow's feet we wanted just soften them, so now I'm going to just back off over here on my my layers palette, the opacity see I'm gonna brought to bring it back just a little bit so in my case I'm just going to see I'm going back enough to about maybe twenty, twenty one percent because I don't want to get rid of them I don't think that I don't think it looks really stupid for people who want to look like I don't want to look like I'm twenty five I just want to look like arrested fifty year old so here's before and here's after so that's step number one so now that I've kind of done that that's one technique the next technique that I would like to do is I'm going to show you my favorite tool in the universe and if you tell anybody about this I'll calfed I'll kill you I want you to know I will come after every one of you all this is our secret this is all under the cone of silence between us and the twenty thousand hundred thousand people that are out there okay but it's just between us girls okay let me introduce you to my friend the liquefy tool this is my favorite tool I use it literally every day and yes I'm proud to say I use it on myself all the time though okay now there's two areas that I'm going to use it on myself the first area is to see how my eye right here is a little bit smaller right here I'm going to use it there and then I'm going to give myself a little face lift right there yes I am I'm going to give myself a little facelift I'm again I'm not going to go in and try to make myself of twenty five but I'm just going to clean myself up just a little bit um and for me the thing that's important you see where brush density is I wanted around twenty percent just somewhere in the neighborhood twenty percent brushed pressure is around twenty percent as well the reason for that is that I don't want the brush to I won't have control over this brush and it's been my experience that if I keep the brush pressure and density around twenty percent it's easy for me to maneuver the next thing I want is you see how small the circle the brushes I want a brush if I'm going to liquefy this area I want to brush that's about the same size as that area see look what happens if I try to liquefy a small area see how that doesn't work it doesn't look good so let me go over here to brush size and I'm going to increase my brush size to actual that's about the right brush size so notice what happens now I'm just like oh I'm going to use the forward warp tool which is this top two of the little finger that's pushing the forward work till and I'm just going to push this little area here and here just a little bit it's really important not to change the shape of the face and it can be very easy for you to change the shape of face so be careful not to change the face of the shape of the face so I'm going to go there and they're ok so now I've fixed that area on my face a little bit and now I'm gonna go to my eye and again notice how I changed the brush size and I'm going to just make it about the same size is my eye and I'm just going to give myself a little eye lift right there again be really careful not to change the shape of the eyes I could open my eyes a little bit if you have you know sometimes I mean you could do that for if you wanted to make them in just a little bit open this way be careful not to change the shape of the irises well I think that's really, really important and that's about as much work I might go in and just soften the skin a little bit but I'm not gonna get too carried away but let me show you the difference um you can also like for instance my lips are a little bit crooked ok here is let me grab my history palate and here is my before on that and my after okay my before and my after on that hey let me take a picture of this and I'll show you the be fair before and after on everything here's my before and my after a said I'm my goal is not to make it I don't want to take a moment sure we want to make her look like she's twenty five but I do want to soften those lines up by the way I will never ever let a client see me do that kind of work mother is going to tell you right now you never let a client so you do that ever because you saw how fast I could do that it literally takes me I mean I'm talking while I'm doing this and I'm using a mouse instead of a walking tablet and I use the welcome table with pen and I can do it literally in about a minute and a half those anything like that when the mothers of the bride I am absolutely going to soften her I'm going to you know, just just you know, clean her up just a little bit maybe give her a little bit of a face left um I'm going to do that for my any clients and I brought this picture up of myself to show you what I might do in a more full length scenario selimi just go real quickly to liquefy first um and let me go in and I'm just going to pull this in just a little bit right here right here I could give myself a perkier breast if I would like to and give myself a really screaming waistline okay right about there um I could slim down my arms this is first sometimes when you have girls that have really they have like those addresses that are off the shoulder and they have a little bit of that that chicken chicken skin right here um on older people I will drop that shoulder down a little bit because we tend to round our shoulders out as we get older um and there we go I mean, I'm I could get carried away here but I'm not going to do too much more than that and then of course right here and here and there we go so that this this may be something I might do on somebody if I have a bride I'm gonna do it and here's before and after hey, man look pretty darn loss there, huh? Really funny part is now you're going to see that you're going to see me in real life you're gonna go dad go but she's been retouching herself a lot ok from there and now I want to go and we're going to switch gears a little bit do we have any questions by the way before I go on way could get into the phone shop light room questions and you know it's hard to take this real role slow I mean just maybe one or two because we could spend sunday that's a week right right iss I had a great comment um from our friend cookie cat chick who just said as you were doing that okay that's it I'm buying the download right now I need a reason before where you go ok this up even just these little tips we had a question from scott trippler what is your quick quick breakdown of your overall work flow from camera toe deliverable for what a great question from camera to deliver a ble the first thing I do is I put everything in we import everything into light room in fact this is something my assistant does I no longer do this part on ly because I'm not good enough at it only because I dropped the ball and I forget to rename my files I forget to do all the stuff I'm supposed to do the first thing we do when we bring our files back this is the first thing we do during my wedding whenever I have a wedding I bring a laptop computer and a supportable hard drive and we download our cards while we're there I sit down personally during the reception my assistant sometimes we'll be covering some of the activities that are going out on the dance floor and I am looking at my little children sitting in their beds right there I want to look at my files and make sure there are no surprises I don't like surprises I am way too old for that so we just don't go down that path so I'd like to open them up and just look at them s o I download all the cards onto a heart a ah hard drive a portable hard drive and that way before I leave the reception I and have two things number one I have backed up my cards and number two I've checked to make sure that I don't have a problem card or a problem with it with anything that's going on and that's really important to me because you know things can happen with compact flash cards and I just feel that that's my responsibility that klein has paid me very well to be there and by george I'd better make sure that I cover my bases so while we're there I'm making sure that those cards are all backed up once we get back to the studio we take the compact flash cards and we download them my assistant downloads them onto our mainframe computer he hey renames the files and he does a rough at it he goes through polls all the blanks out anything that we know is an absolutely not sellable print he goes through because keep in losing keep losing, keep it, lose it, and we do do a rough at it from there. Then I will go back through and do another at it because I know that there's certain times that I don't want too many pictures like I don't give my clients more than about two pictures, like the formal pictures of, like the bride with the groom, the bridegroom of bride's family, bride and groom with the groom's family, that kind of thing. I don't want to give them more than about two choices of those, because if you give people too many choices, it's too hard for them to make a decision, and I want to make that decision and easy one so I picked the best the best two pictures, and then those will be the two dollar in there, and then we go through and I'll do a major edit, which will edit down to about the best six or seven hundred pictures is kind of where I'd like to go for a wedding. Her portrait session it's somewhere in the neighborhood of seven, the neighborhood of around seventy five, sixty to seventy five images, and by this time they're all renamed with the client last name and then the date. Um and then from there there in sequential order on dh then so that's how we proceed from on editing standpoint I wish I had more time to go into that particular aspect I have to stop there I just got the buzz on that but I can't I don't have too much time for that. So I hope that least getsem started on housing and I appreciate that it's it's a very long extensive questions so yeah, it is it's a weeklong class right? Okay, we'll cover some more questions in a second but what I wanted to show you in the meantime and please excuse the monitor on the screen here it is a little it's not calibrated and it's a little bit darker than it actually the images are earlier this afternoon we photographed we went upstairs to the bathroom upstairs and this is the bathroom that we photographed and as you can see this is these air the light fixtures in the bathroom and then he pulled us up big screen so you can see with these look like I love bathrooms to photograph it it's absolutely my hobby I think it's just such a fun, fun, fun thing to do and as you can see in this bathroom there's just these white lights now in this case not all the lights are on. Some of them are are burnt out but still look at how beautiful the light is the quality of light it is just phenomenal it's an absolutely beautiful, beautiful soft light so if I were photographing any any bride, I can promise you I'd be dragging her in this bathroom and I would have to photograph you don't need tons and tons of room toe work. Look at how soft and how pretty that is and because she is the brightest part of the picture except for the light pictures. It's ok, it doesn't bother me that they're bright because it's really obvious about this subject, and then we can really concentrate on getting some beautiful, beautiful images of her. I love the wraparound light in these images. I just had her looking in the mirror. These are leaning into the mirror. Look how soft the wall is behind her. You have no idea if it weren't for the fact that I showed you the light fixtures in that bathroom, you wouldn't know where I shot it. Now look at the catch lights in her eyes. If you get close, you can see that there are three catch lights in the eyes because it said quite honestly, that would not bobby, I would not retouch those catch lights out of her eyes to me is just so not it's not worth my effort, this is probably one of my favorite images, this one and I liked a couple of these down below and what I did is I pulled a couple of pictures to show you what I might do so here's the first one and I really, really, really like this picture there are very, very few things I would do to this photograph one thing though, that I might do I like adding a bit of than getting on my pictures occasionally you can do this by the way in light room, but there's also other ways to do it if you choose to do it photo shop I personally prefer to do most of my photo shop work or my most of my artwork I like doing it in photo shop versus light room I'm not a real big fan of light room presets itjust to me like the black and whites and such they look a little bit like flat coca cola they don't they don't feel real to me so I personally just prefer photoshopped actions and I like working the file photo shop and then saving that file and then of course I can keep it in a little um it'll be recorded in light room as well I just my own preference for feathering for creating a vignette I'm going feather about two hundred fifty percent excuse me foot two hundred eighty pixels draw an area around the subject and then do a shift command I we'll go on the on the mac or control shift I on the pc and then command l we'll bring up the levels palate and then I might just bring down that outside just a touch and then andy so here is see how it's really just that bit of the netting around the edges kind of draws you right into her face so here is the before and after before and after I would recommend doing this on a layer don't do it on the original file because if you do it on the layer then you can back it off if you find it's a little bit too severe like when I did this I looked and I went you know, I wish I'd done it on a layer because there's a little bit too severe so and then the only other thing I might do after that fact is that's when I might use someone's action I like your bonds actions aside like market spells black and white as well. Um look how pretty that is it's a really but this is your bonds black and white action and there and one of the things I like about your bonds actions is that they are in layers so that if I decide I don't want it that way or if my client doesn't want it is a black and white then they can have any way they want ok, so that's that let me just say, well, I was curious to see how his how his infrared will look on this and find my actions palate here it is and let me go to hiss his films on the goat and here I've got unload it and where is it? Here we have films, and right here is his and for red, I'm curious to see how it'll look may not look good may look it that's too severe, isn't it? The cool thing is that again, because it's in a layer you come back it off that kind of looks interesting. I think that's actually kind of an interesting picture right there, so the moral of the story is you to create a variety of different looks, depending on how you want to do it, I don't use actions in their full, full capacity as a general rule, I'd like to use them in just a very specialized way, andi, especially in a very special in a very in a very subtle way. One thing, by the way, the nick filters nick color infrared let me tell you that particular filter in the nick color effects pro is awesome, especially for somebody with brown eyes. When you use that filter, use it in the color infrared on a layer and then you can paint on a gun brown I specifically it just gives those eyes a really iridescent quality that's very very beautiful it's it's a little trick I stumbled upon so if you have nick color effects privates are really really cool thing to do so any rate that's pretty much what I might dio just really short being be a photoshopped technique it's you know this that I'm this isn't a photo shop class I didn't intend it to be but I figured we'd just show you a few of the simple little techniques that I have that's really helpful people people always appreciate it they always love it so just to just to clarify did you nicole had asked so do you like to retouch before applying actions or afterwards is your great question yes I generally would do that I do the first thing that I generally do if I'm going to do retouching is I do I'll do the face lift I'll do the liquefy anything like that that I know is going toe I'll do that first then I will be the next step is to soften lines or to remove blemishes things of that nature and then lastly and that I will save that file as is and then that's the last thing will be if I'm going to do any conversions to black and white or you know any other kinds of things of that nature um leslie lee photos had asked if you she's heard of photographers refusing to give their clients the color photos. Would you ever go back and get the color original if they wanted it? I can't say never on anything because, you know, with the way I today I feel like a nut, all right might feel like, you know, not might not feel that way, so I can't say never, but generally I don't I like clients to have them the way that I that I gave that to them, you know? I want them doesn't have them like us. If we were shooting black and white film, would they have a choice, you know? And so I I personally prefer not to do that, but I can't tell you that I would that I wouldn't ever do that. So good question, quick question. I think you talked about this yesterday, but very think asked, does ban we do all of her editing for her wedding photos? Or does she outsource? We do both. We use p dvd color lab from atlanta, georgia. They do a lot of our color work and do a lot of our they'll do a lot of my might retouching and so forth, especially during the busy season, but I have a full time person that works for me. A young man who is one of my photographers who also is very, very gifted at retouching and color correcting and such so I use him for a lot of our our internal work as well sammy jo dust what is the turnaround time? Oh great question my general turnaround time for a client to see their images for the first time for portrait it's about two weeks for weddings for them to get their paper proofs is about three weeks and this is what we do for portrait sessions as when they come in for their portrait session we immediately after that portrait session we way go ahead and we scheduled their session for them to view their pictures I showed mike nice in my student we have a monitor that's this size they come in and see a slide show format for their portrait and I think this beautiful presentation we showed them a slide show of their beautiful pictures and then go through with them and help them in the sales process and everything. Of course all the retouching is done ahead of time so that they are seeing finished work it sounds like a lot of work but you see I really do believe very strongly and I want them to see me as I'm perf I don't want them to think that I make mistakes because you know I want them to see the value in what I am that if they think that you're perfect, it validates them paying a great deal of money for you, you know, it's the same reason why I would never show on my website on unattractive picture, I'm not going to show them something that's a mistake, I wouldn't do that. I want to show them on lee my very best and that's just exactly the state for the same reason that when you're working with when you're working, when when people are photographing for advertisements and magazines, you don't see them showing, you know, imperfections, they want to show everything as it should be is perfect on dh that's the same thing and just a little side note on that, and I know this is going to sound ugly, and you're probably gonna get some hate mail over it, but I'm really serious about on your website show beautiful people and middle aged women like me there's a reason why they'll never be a picture of a woman my age that will win in competition ever. Why? Because beauty is impact number one and a sad is that that sounds absolutely horrible is the words come out of my mouth? I still can't believe that I actually have the audacity to say it, but you know what, the end of the day this is our profession and and there's a reason why every fashion magazine in america and across the world, they use beautiful people's because beauty sells and it's, you know, it shows that you it makes people appear is so they're more perfect, and you know what, at the end of the day, this is my business, and I'm going put forth the absolute best foot forward that I possibly can. And so on my website, you're going to see my images are going to look perfect, they're going to have beautiful people in them, and they're going tio look like they stayed, they stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine and and sad to say, but we live in a superficial world. Well, I just really appreciate I appreciate your honesty and putting yourself out there. Well, as I said, I know I'm gonna some he's going to hate me for that, but, you know, stand in line, you know, that was going to say exactly, they're going to say, but you're not going to be happy, but, you know, at the end of the day and that goes along, that also goes along with how important it is that we show things that are different on our website then what the normal people show, people tend to show well, but that's a really pretty picture of my cousin joanne and she's such a nice girl. Well, I'm sorry, but if we don't know her personally, we can't tell how wonderful she is because we don't know her, so all we know, people that don't know us all they know is what we show them in the literal world that's all they're going to know, so we have to show them what they want to see what they expect to see do you? Do you feel like that in any way scares people off who don't feel like they look like that? Do you feel like there are any times that potential clients look at your work and say, I'm I don't look like that? So you know, that's a really good question, and I actually get that question quite often, and my answer to that is, well, let me ask you this, if I were victorious secrets, why don't they show the average size american woman my age or any woman that's my size or bigger than me? The every size american woman is a size fourteen emphasize a why don't they show her back side wearing a thong? Tell me I mean, I'm not trying to be funny why not? Because they know they ain't gonna be selling a pair of those hundred bears anybody if they show something that's good that's that's the normal size because that's reality but that's not that's not the way to sell that product they want us to think that we're going to look like that if we buy that product when there is no way in the universe, my backside is going to look like that with you in a phone, but the whole the moral of the story is is that they're trying to sell a product and so I always say I look to fashion magazines I looked at any magazine in america in the world I say ok, show me average joe, you know, even the calvin klein ads that show the normal women do you see any cell you lied on? Those women know they have retouch them and even if they're bigger girls, they are beautiful even the lane bryant store look at the creative cropping and bar none even on the tyra show with the models. Even when she has the plus size model, all those women are giants they're like, you know they're well over six feet tall she may be a size fourteen, but heck, he would be too if you were six foot five so the moral of the story is is that even they recognize that you d beauty that beauty cells and that it will sell products so that's my answer to that you're not making the rules you're playing the game that's right? I am playing the game and as I said this is my profession and I just understand that if I want to play in this universal poll that I know what is going to put my best foot forward and showcasing my my products just like any fashion designer in the world they're there they very seldom design fashion clothes for plus size women when I lost in the last year I've lost sixty pounds in the last year and I love fashion I love it and I went into a store that sold many of the designer labels I said I'm looking for something and at the time I was a size sixteen and she goes I'm sorry but they just don't make clothes like in designer clothes for women your size and it's really maddening it made me very upset if I was not a photographer I'd want to be a designer of really high fashion clothes for larger women because it's not there and that's a whole another topic so but anyway I know we could go on about it someone's going to make a lot of money after you just say I think really that I do and make them you know with a nasty email take that idea and run with it uh oh go ahead places way okay for the wedding day I'm going to start about three hours before the wedding at the bride's home I want to be there when she's getting ready with all of her her beautiful girls and such on her bridesmaids and her family and session I want pictures of current or mom and dad and brothers and sisters and her bridesmaids from there my goal is to go over to where the ceremony is about an hour before the wedding and photograph and the groom and the groomsmen and get those images taken during the ceremony I usually keep a very low profile and photograph from the periphery or on that second road the second the aisle seat on the second row of the church or wherever the ceremony is after the ceremony I guarantee to have those people out of that church in twenty five minutes my goal do the bride's family first fall that immunity five by the groom's family and by doing big groups and whittling down to small groups you really maximize and get get all those people done immediately I mean because most of my couples choose not to see one another before the wedding and that's fine I have respect for that and that's what they choose to do that that's absolutely fine for me after that then I will after we do our family in our groups of pictures and such then we go off to where the reception is and I photographed a lot all of the people milling around the cocktail party we do our detail shots of the reception in such on dh then just enjoy the party my coverage is for the complete day so generally we stayed pretty much the end of the party I don't stay I mean I will stay until just about the end after of course the garden bouquet toss and the wedding cake and so forth so that's pretty much in a role nutshell how my day tends to go I know we had a few critiques or something that we were going to do next oh, great good. Okay, okay, so this question was from lenny linen photo can you talk a little bit about brides who are highly critical of how they look? And I'm not sure if that's before or after I'm thinking after gosh, I tell you what well I have ah, maybe not maybe before before before beforehand, but that's my job as a photographer is to make them feel beautiful and make them feel comfortable. And I am highly confident that I am absolutely confident that I know how to make them look their best that I can I know I know how to do and so I really believe that and I understand that because I know we all have this days when we're just feeling vulnerable we just don't feel like we look all that great and we're just we just feel icky so and you know there's just there's just part of human you know, human nature is that there's times where we don't feel well we don't feel our best so I just think validation I'm going to do my very best to make them look their best and isis said part of that goes into the experience if they enjoy the experience it's been my experience that they'll probably like their pictures as well awesome ok um anymore questions before we move on to this um ok another question from chuck nineteen oh six was when doing event photography do you sell your prince via web site or give the client a disk of your images? I'm finding that people don't want to buy prints from events when people are used to tagging photos on facebook so maybe that's not something that you do what are your thoughts on that? Well, you know this is my thought on that because I don't do we don't sell prints at the events of such I believe that if your role poor if you're very well paid to do your job to be there do you really care if they buy a five by seven? I don't so I say especially nowadays when everybody many people do give their disks and such I say you've got to make sure you charge enough to show up and this is how I came up with my pricing and I'm not going to talk in specifics because it wouldn't be appropriate, but what I will talk in is in terms of how to come up with some sort of concept I would say first of all, sit down and mathematically calculate how much it costs you to do the job physical in terms of exact costs like how much does it cost you to use the right album that you want to use? How much does it cost to have an assistant to come with you? How much does it cost to have proofing done if you want to do proofing and how much does it cost the sales tax that you're going to have to charge for? That I include in my cost of goods is every stupid thing I could possibly think of and more? I mean, I have every including the retouching after the fact anything that I want to do in connection with that event, I have a ballpark figure that is my nut, that is what it's going to cost me tio to do that job. And then I say, how much is it worth me to get my butt out of bed on a saturday morning when I have the flu when I've got the flu? Because wedding photographers are not like any other beast because even when we're sick we don't feel good. We still got to be there, don't we? Many of us feel we do. And so I mean, I have photographed a wedding when I was very ill and I got through it and I did it. By the way, if you do have the flu and you get when you're getting on a dizzy at a wedding, let me tell you a little trick about that. If you have little sweet tarts are awesome, they're awesome because they give you they kind of balance your electrolytes. Trust me. I know it's only for the voice of experience. Any right? So these little babies of information, I'm giving you any rate. The moral of the story is you sit down and catholic what it might be worth to you when you're not feeling well because that's, when you really go oh, my goodness. I have to actually get up today and photograph. And for me, I knew it was going to be a large chunk. And so I tacked on a very big profit on top of that, for my for my talent, for my my talent now it's all part of my service so that you know, when a client you know when they buy my wedding coverage it includes their beautiful album and it includes my my being there all day long and of course if you want to discuss me here's your disco prince your guts out I don't care I want them to have that that's fine and that way I'm well paid to be there I'm well paid for my talent but but and they can have what they want but it's not at my expense and I think that we just can't rely any longer upon selling an eight by ten verified by seven because it's just too easy for people to copy our work and they wanted for the flicker and for the facebook and all that stuff and I think that's fine we have to I think we have to reinvent the way that we do business if we are using that old model that old school model of selling a five by seven print for x amount of dollars it's just not practical in my opinion in this era and do you think beginning photographers can do that? And if so how do you talking about absolutely different when you photographer can? Because it's not how much do you charge it's what you get to keep and even if you're charging a relatively modest amount for your community just remember sit down, calculate what it cost you to do that job and then and then put on a very big profit for you, for your your skill level, or for your time and effort and such, and that way it is worth it for you to be there. And as I said, I think one of the reasons that that photo industries in the problem that it's in these days is because we don't appreciate our own value. We have. We don't. If we don't think we're worth anything, how in the world can we expect anybody else to pay us anything? So you can't put a price on somebody's artistry? And I say, you know, if you if you can afford yourself, I'll tell you, right now, you are too cheap. If you can afford to hire yourself, you're too inexpensive, so that's going to be really that that's. What long course, I tell you, I just feel so strong about that. I'm hard trying to hold back.