Lessons

Lesson Info

1:45 pm - Editing Questions and Answers

lots and lots of questions about noise reduction. Both shooting on high. I s O Okay, um, how do you balance noise reduction and sharpness settings in between? Like when you're shooting eso 200 versus eso 6400. Sure. Um Well, when you're shooting and I also 200 I wouldn't really find it hardly ever necessary to worry about noise reduction. But when it comes to an image that is shot at a very high I s O. Which, you know, we could probably go into the library and actually filter here by I S O was not correct. We go in here and hit. Do you both generally shoot the same I s o during a winning? No, not necessarily. Just always changes by, based on, you know, whatever is going on. So we'll go ahead and select out these air. The 6400 images actually hold on one second, I'm going to go back Teoh the originals holder, and then we'll do the same things. Meta data and we'll do 6400 and we have a bunch to pick from here and we'll see which ones are like under exposed and going to be graining. So we...

're gonna find one of the harder images to your lies. Um, all right, Well, heck, why not? So this image here, we may not even use it, cause it's pretty weird and a little bit out, but we're going to go ahead and see what we can dio to bring it up to an acceptable level. It's green. So we're gonna go ahead and check our color calibration. You can see is totally it is grainy. You know, it's definitely got that going on. We're gonna bring this up to a level that I think the skin tones look pretty decent in. That is an extreme example. So bear with me. All right, let's take a look at it from out here. We're gonna do a little bit of a vignette just cause I want to be ableto Well, we're gonna bring that down a little. Okay? To what? I s always this take. This was 6400 eso and this is with the cannon mark 35 D mark three. So we do have some grain and we can go ahead and try out some noise reduction on it. Actually, that looks pretty good to begin with. Um, I went to 23. You know, the further you go, obviously the funnier It's going to start looking. If you go way too far, they just look like they've been created with crayons. Um, so we wanted, like, you say, balance out the sharpening with the noise that we're finding to be unacceptable for a printable image. You can go a little bit further with the noise reduction if you bring up the sharpening to kind of balance it out. And it's also kind of just trial by error. I usually try and find that nice area in between where, Yes, sure, there's a little bit of grain, but we're not getting that strange effect of too much noise reduction. So I probably would stick it round here, and you can see before and after by clicking this so this completely. This is actually sorry. So this is it without any noise reduction at all, and the cameras air defaulted to set it up with a certain amount of the color noise reduction. So you can see without color noise reduction. You can see all the little ditty dots in here that are red and weird and awkward colors purple and green. And it's just wild. Um, and you can change that specifically with this color one. And I'm pretty sure almost all cameras come with this. Or at least all light room presets. Come with this as part of it that this is already sat at the 25%. So I bring it all the way down, you'll start to see these colors come back in, and it looks really awkward. So that's a good tool to know. If you ever see that happening, you can always bring this up higher. Um, and it doesn't usually make it look too weird. Even if you bring that up higher. This one, however, the luminous is the one where it can start to get too far. So, you know, it's about finding that spot that you're comfortable with giving the client and that they're gonna not hate or mine too much. Um, this image still needs to go a little bit further in order to make it kind of even worth giving to them. So we're gonna go ahead and paint in a little bit of light in here, and we're gonna have to also check again. After we've painted in some light, we're going to check the grain, cause them where you bring up the exposure of the grain. Of the more adjustments you make in general, it typically becomes more and more obvious. The digital nature of the shot bring down here and it's kind of too much bring it up here and we're probably in good shape. So there's an example of it anyway, um, and yeah, you can go back and forth between noise reduction and sharpness to kind of find that and it's just play with it. I would just play with it until it's to a point where you're like, OK, I could hand this in and they could print this, You know, at least with this image, they could print it. Eight by 10 or by 15 will be OK when my if they want to go any bigger than either you say Well, maybe shouldn't or you can say, Well, okay, let me like, give it another look over and you can really get even more intense with it. But for the most part, I think this looks pretty good. Um, Sue. Now I'm going Teoh, go ahead with this one. And we're going to see what happens when I turn on this little boosting action and we'll see what happens here. Give him a little dream effect question about clients. Did they ever specifically request certain types of retouching from you over? Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, there are certain things that I'll easily let go and they want. Well, you know, this one side of my face has this one thing, and we really wanted to be gone in every single picture that we're using for the book. Can you do that? Absolutely, it's not. There's no question about taking the request and going ahead with it. Um, so, yeah, we got a lot of people and, you know, even what we're shooting there, people who will say, How are you going to try to get me from this side as opposed to the other side, and, you know, we accommodate as best we can. If there's a moment that's happening, that's not from that side. I'm still totally taking the picture. It's just gonna happen. But, um, you know, you just buy a client by client basis, you try and, uh, deal with their requests and keep people happy. And for the most part, it all works out. But yeah, for sure we get specific. West's absolutely question from pro photographer wondering, How do you handle scars or imperfections on a client's face? How do you know what to retouch and what to leave alone? And also probably because it's a wedding. There's many, many guests there. And what if you have a lovely portrait of a guest and you don't know their name and you can't ask them directly? That's right. That's right. Well, with scars, you do have to be sensitive because if you get rid of it entirely, they're gonna know right away they're going to like what I mean, you know, is that something I should be concerned about? I just put myself in their foot in their I try and think about it from my perspective. If I have a scar, then no, I wouldn't want it gone completely. Um, if it's acne, then sure, it's temporary, and for the most part it's temporary. So I would say Get rid of it if you have the moment to Dio and just go ahead and take care of it for them because, you know, it's just a temporary part of what was going on. But if it's a permanent scar that I would leave it and you know, if they request later, either that client, where the clients friend once a print. And they say, Hey, listen, can you ask the photographer for that to be removed? No problem, of course, but yeah, permanent stuff. We leave, we just It's I don't want to insult anybody by saying, Hey, your scar is awkward. I'm getting rid of it. You know, it's it could be a point of pride for somebody. So, yeah, you got to be really sensitive about that kind of thing. And that's that's actually something that I had to deal with a lot when I was doing head shots for actors as well, like a scar on an actor. They're trying to sell themselves to agents and casting writers, and you can't get rid of it. If it's something that makeup can take care of, then there's a different kind of thing, like of its acne, or if it's something that's just a light scar and they would probably have it done by makeup, then you talk to them and say Hey, by the way So that's the difference between that. Like a business portrait ever doing. Portrait's for business people like a headshot for a business client. You retouch the heck out of him. No problem. I mean, even scars. Whatever. You can still ask him and try and be sensitive, but they're gonna want more retouching because they're not trying to represent you know what they're gonna look like on camera or anything? They're trying to look really good in a photograph. So you know, it zits, something you have to kind of go by base by client by client. But for the most part, it's just how would you feel if it was done? You know, do you ever get a chance to have toe do glasses, glare and glasses? Yeah, for sure. I don't think there really any good examples in here that I could do, but you know when you're shooting, if it's a portrait of somebody and they're wearing glasses, you know, usually tilting heads down a little bit can help just a little bit of a tilt down and maybe pull the glasses in a little bit closer their face because typically, if you're like outside or something, the sky is gonna be what's reflecting. So tilt the head down a little bit. It's also kind of a flattering angle. You don't want people being too much like Yo, what's up, anyway? But, um, yeah, and then sometimes I'll ask the client, like if we're doing, um, the formals or a really good close up, I asked them, Sometimes do you always wear glasses? If they look like somebody who just has readers on, I'll ask you, Do you always wear glasses or do you wanna have them off for the shot? And sometimes it would be like I always wear them. Okay, well, then let's get Mark. But if if they're temporary thing and they're just readers or you know something they put on every now and then, sometimes I'll be like, Oh, you're right. I totally don't want these in the shot because you know I want to be fresh faced or whatever without the glasses. So So yeah, as far as retouching the glare, if you have to retouch it, it could be really tough. It can definitely be really tough, because if it's going in front of their I or their pupil than then. I mean, you can spend a lot of time retouching it and just making it look right. But then everyone super sensitive eyes when they're looking at photographs. So if it looks a little weird, it can get really uncanny really quickly. But yeah, there are ways to do it. You can burn it in using the burn tool and highlights mode. Right? So you go in here to the burn tool and change the range to highlights. And this will only dio, um let me see how I can show you guys on his shirt. It's only do obviously the highlights the really bright parts of the outfit. Uh, and it will burn those in and obviously does a little bit of a graying effect. But if these were glasses and there was a reflection, maybe that's what you want to dio in this case, I don't want to do that, cause now is sure it looks totally bonkers. But yeah, you can change it, the highlights, and hopefully it will be able to knock it out a little bit. No. So I think I've finished with this image for the most part, actually was going to leave this layer. Um, the other thing with laptops is another reason why you really shouldn't be editing photos. Retouching, especially in laptop, is because depending on how you're looking at it, that can look way too bright or way too dark. And that's just the nature of the screen. Um, a standard monitor has a lot bigger range of movement near it that you can kind of be around. You're not going to see a big difference. But these things you never really know exactly where that center point is that you're looking at a print worthy or calibrated version of the shot. So it's just another top tip on that kind of thing. Um, all right, Are there any other questions for this kind of stuff? There's a ton of questions. Eyes is a matter of which topic are we going Teoh address right out about at the end at the end when you have expert in J Peg and do you ever do you ever edit using DMG or Proxy DMG Don't ever back up your raw to G and G at the end. I haven't done that either. No, because we could. I know that's backing up to DMG does save some space, I believe, as faras the Raw Files versus DMG. But if we have enough space at our studio, we just We have these big Drogo drives with four terabytes in each one, and whenever they get full, you can always pulled out the floor and put another four drives in. So for us, it's just we want to keep the raw files, we just keep them, and that's the safest way for us to deal with it. Um, I haven't really worked in D and G it all. I'm not really sure what the advantages would be other than maybe it helps you save a little bit of space. But I would still think that the raw images is probably the best way toe toe, you know, get the most detail out of the highlights in that kind of thing. Do you keep all the raw files or just the ones that you're using? You keep all of them every single one, all of them at first. Actually, we always we typically always just keep all of them because we can always like I said, it put in more hard drives and you know, four terabytes lasts a long time. But, I mean, we could go back. The thing is, a lot of these clients don't get to their album stuff for a couple of years. I mean, we're trying to work on that more and more by saying, Hey, there's deadlines and we want to help you with it and that kind of thing cause there's always ways to encourage Hey, let's get this done. But there are definitely some clients, celebrity clients that we have, and your money will come over to me and say, Hey, can we pull these files and I'll go? I don't know where these files are will go into the filing cabinet and they'll have the disks from when we used to burn raw files and they'll still be there. And there may be some requests like, Hey, do you have a different version of this shot? We know you proved them out that many years ago, but do you have, like, one where my eyes air looking this way instead of this way, and I can pull those disks and find that file and you know, we look better that way. It's probably at that point kind of beyond, you know, our responsibility. So be like, yeah, we got it, I mean or whatever, but it be always good toe, get the clients happy and do what we can for them. So Jamie tips on organizing your files because I think I've tried every way in the book and it's still a massive Filic. There was a bogging down on you or is it the, um, I feel like I've organized them in a good way, like naming the folders, I guess. And then it never fails. Like I always end up thinking it's this and it's really named something else that makes OK. OK, um well, here's how I can just walk you guys through the process really quick. Let's pretend, uh, let's pretend this hard drive that I've connected here is actually a flash drive. Okay, so I'll create a folder. I'm going to do this on our drove Oh, system, not on the desktop. But this will be the example. So we always go by the date first, and you kind of if you're gonna a sort by name, which is with the way the finder, and Max usually organizes things. We do the date first to a 13 09 22 would have been the other day, right? And then I go ahead and just create. And then, um how do you spell so shell? Oh, my gosh, I I know, but how do you spell Okay at a t e? You are. Thanks, guys. Okay, so there we are. There's our original file. I'll go in there, I'll create a folder called or originals. And then I'll go and create a file called Joe. And I'll go right in the same thing and called a file called Rich. And that's where we'll throw our raw, raw files. So we have a few different layers down from the original parent folder is what it's called, and so we'll go ahead. We'll find our raw files here. Oh, and drag. And we're going to open another window. Originals. There's Joe these address images happy and writing their lips. Great. Did it? I did it terribly. Let's try that one more time. Oh, what's it doing now? I don't want to put my password. So anyway, there it goes. It goes into Joe's folder and mine will go into this folder, and that's pretty much how we do it. It's very simple, but it's like a few layers down. Let's get that one in there to whatever. And then, um and then, yeah, so this is and you'll see like I don't have the main hard drive with me, but you'll see on our list, we have 2013 09 22 2013 09 31 or whatever. And I just goes down the list from date so that you could just go in. And then we'll also put when we export next to originals. Oliver full. They're called proofs, right? And then, for some weddings, this one included, there will be a folder called Private, and these are the files that no one ever gets. I usually mark that red just by going in here and labeling the thing just so no one goes in unless they're, you know, they know what they're doing. But yeah, originals, private proofs, anything there, any others, like if we have a coordinator folder like, I'll make that and then we'll upload those to a website for them to grab them you know, because the coordinator needs their images to and they give us a lot of referrals. So gonna take care of your coordinators. Always, Always, Always, Always, Always. Yes. What about light room catalogue organization? Okay, that's a good question. So, like, room catalogs, I always save to the pictures folder on the main hard drive of the computer because you wanted to be the fastest hard drive available for your catalog. And the previews will go right there, too. So I think in this particular version, it should be in here somewhere. I thought I put it in here. He I did. Okay, So Creativelive was the catalog I created for this weekend for this week. And there's the catalog right there on the main hard drive. Um, the catalogs. Now, those can take up some space over the course of some time, So you keep the raw files, you keep your proofs catalogs, you don't necessarily need to keep him forever. So you I could go back and start to leading catalogues. If I have, like, 100 of these catalogs from all these different find clients and all these different things, Then there are ways to go back and say, Well, all right, I don't need this catalog anymore. They've obviously got all their proves and I'll always have the proofs as well. So the adjustments have been done and they have been J. Peg. Do you use a new catalogue for each wedding? No, actually, no. We do one big catalog for our We do it. I think by the year we'll have 2013 Catalog 2014 catalog. The reason we do that is we do a lot of switching around between the gigs, depending on what's requested of us at that moment. And then the other would be because sometimes we'll have our second shooter if they want to conduce um, retouching at home. And then they bring their raw files and they bring a catalogue. And we can just import that catalogue into that bigger catalog with all the gigs in it. And it's a lot easier to kind of mess everything together. So, yeah, we do one master catalogue per year, and we have, like a portfolio catalog for only Joes like super awesome images over the years. That's a separate catalog, so we'll create a duplicate of those images thrown in a folder. And then those were the only images that go into that light room catalogue areas. Portfolio staff. So something really quickly, Joe, it's Joe. You miss me? No, I would not. With this guy around, he's pretty awesome. So just really straight up. I don't know what he's talking about. Nothing. I haven't. I can. I don't know blah, Zy and ger from a girl a lot. I have no idea if we can pull up that fireworks shot because I think your eyes watching you. We didn't talk about the initial capture of that, which was with the millimeters. That's right, and that what you showed as a final to start working on was a crop. That's a good idea. So so that's the final. That's the final. There's the original image. So that's the shot. Seeing the lining on that was correct. That that is from Kate. That's the phrase, because I needed to be able to focus. So is merely toe light them up, give them a little light to begin with. But for me, crucially and for more on the most important thing for me to be able to focus them in the dark before that thing burst, right? So I had complete black sky and I camera can't see anything. So I told Kate hit it. The other thing was, Is that all around that van, Our cars and I had a very short space. The work in the ultimate way I would have shot this. Well, clearly, it's actually the way I shot it, but, um, another way, with a meeting with a long lens and further away right, because that compresses everything would have been great. However, remember, I'm hand holding and 70 to 200 at 200 compressed like that at 2.8 at 1/4 2nd Forget about it. Right? So 14 millimeter this close, at two point 8/4 of a second chances are one of the movie sharp. And again, I had multiple shots. Oh yeah, with different burst, and not all of them were shocked. It's like watching a little movie, right? Not all of them were sharp. And then that's that's exactly right. So then we find the one that is sharp and boom. We zoom in on it when it's like that, and there is your shot. So you have to remember how much of this is actually a crop. And that's why I also it's grainy besides the fact that it is not just Crop that type 6400. So I've amplified everything by virtue of cropping it that much. That's all I wanted to say did He's back? I'm out. He's rock star in a on my interview. It was like a complete cameo job using cameo on the job using workshop. Cool. Keep the questions coming. I really like this. Get my guess and grab an image or two and run through, Like if you're going to export your proofs like foul size. Oh, sure, Yeah. I can tell you how to export. All right, so let's go. Let me go back to a folder that we've kind of retouched, right? So we did these earlier these ceremony shots. So we'll go down to where I finished just cause those are the ones we want to export right around here somewhere. So I select the images, Um, go ahead and hit export. This way you can do it down here as well. Just click export. This will bring up your well. There are a few things, obviously, that you can pay attention to in here when you're creating standard size full J pegs, there's not actually too much to worry about. Um, I have presets back home and I'm gonna add one right now that's going to show you what I do. So I call us on Sequenced. So this will be sequenced by file name because depending on what I've done here, let me cancel, say, there's an image that's kind of it's sure it's chronologically and order by timestamp. But maybe I don't like that. It's like, for example, these two details. There is these guys right in between. And maybe I like the flow to be better with this image. And where the heck was it? The So this one here, I can pull it over and change it, and now I'm in user order. The problem is, the file names are going to be in a different order. So if I export them and keep the file names, then they're just gonna end up back in the old order when the client is looking at them sorting by name. So what I do is I'll go ahead and select all of them after I have done no man user order of drag that one over. Go to export. I'll just do it this way. No one export. So I'll hit Sequenced, which will be a preset export settings, essentially. And so let's go ahead and manipulate them right now so you can change the file name. I'm gonna add a sequence number by four digits, Then I'm gonna add to this and then you can leave the original file name there. Now, obviously, I've already changed these file names, so it's gonna look really, really weird and long, but this is you get the idea instead of saying 2689 it would say, JB 15412 or whatever Dodge a peg. So we leave sequence than dash than file name. Make sure it starts its sequence. Number one extensions or lower case is no problem. Nothing in Videophile settings. J. Peg, I'm not gonna limit the file size quality all the way up s RGB is absolutely fine. I'm not going to resize to fit anything. I'm not gonna sharpen because they've already done all the sharpening I need. I don't need the water mark these because it's for the client. I wanted to show me in the finder when that's done processing these and then I'm gonna go ahead and update this with the current settings. So now whenever I hit standard, it doesn't rename Whenever I hit sequenced. It goes into this neat renaming thing, right? So standard if I want to keep the original file name the same, whatever sequenced is for when I prove out the client's export. And then, like I was saying, you'll go in. You'll go into the folder where your originals are. You'll go ahead and say, Proofs and boom, you're going. And then this thing will just take however long it takes cause it's a laptop and I don't know if it's gonna go very quickly. Um, the other option would be if I wanted to do these for the client to see them. Unlike a flash website that we have, we called. It's called D Photo. We use for just like a little gallery. That's really easy to use for them to go and look weaken Dio a small for Web because we're gonna first off, we're gonna lock them so they don't download them Secondly, if they do down them, we don't have the big files because we want them toe, you know, know that they're not getting a large file. You want them toe, ask for the adjustments, and then we get give them the adjustments and then we send them the proofs. So in this case, you can change this and add like S M for small. Is something what I'll dio because you wanted to be a different file name when you're creating small files just so you don't replace one by accident with the other with the small version, and then you can always limits file size to like 1000. It'll be a one megabyte file or so which you know you could still print from if they wanted to do that. But it's just it's just a limited file size. They'll upload way faster that way to, um, so limit file size 2000. Sometimes it will say, Hey, this one image was too big and we couldn't bring it, so you could also do like, 1200 or something, but it will always tell you which image it was, and you could go back and do it I don't mess with this too much because I don't need to change the resolution because it's already gonna find a way to make it 1000. These do take a little bit longer to create because the file sizes being is there using some algorithm to figure out you know what would make it 1000 kilobytes. And sometimes for this you can do like a low sharpening for the small just cause they're going to be a little bit smaller files. But then you can export that and create new folder and say for a blowed. And then, you know, you get that as well, and so those will be a lot smaller files. Obviously, you can create your own watermarks, too, if you want to put like, a big job using copyright across the image, you could do that to using the export settings. Um, we don't typically need to do that, but, um, let's pretend we dio for just 1/2 2nd with my take. Hold it longer, but it might be fun. Toe toe, full it. So you got on the water marking small copyright. You could go to edit watermarks and you can kind of either pull one image that you have already of. Like Joe Signature. We have an image of someone's gonna try and steal it. But here's Jack copyright job using down here, you can choose how big you want it to be. Uh, where would that be? Where's this size? Here we go. So say, we wanted to be, like, obtrusive and obnoxious, and you put it in the middle somewhere, uh, should be a wake should be offset. But maybe we have to do this, Okay. Oh, that's the shadow. I'm being silly. I'm being silly, so we can go ahead and put it here. You can anchor it in the middle. So it's like, Dude, you guys can see it, but you're never gonna want to use it because you're going to Photoshopped his big, awkward name off of there you, because when noxious, I'm sure that's totally spelled right. Creates a lot of your obnoxious watermark. And then that's how you can water mark your images by exporting them that way. And then you could also again create a a preset for that as well. Any other questions regarding exporting or anything else for that matter? You bet you So A lot of people have been asking about how you correct tilt an angle on your shots. Is that something you do in light room? Is that something you do a lot of? Do you like that artistic angle sometimes chimes and when to use it. And when my too dark. So it is a great example. So we have are coming down the aisle shots and I'm you know, I typically do. They're coming down the shots and it's uncomfortable. You know, you're for example, I'm trying to shoot long lens and then I grabbed the other camera and shoot, you know, with a flash on camera and stuff. And so obviously this image here, it's totally a little wonky because I'm like, sweating and trying to juggle two cameras while people are coming down the aisle. So, yeah, I would like these to be a little bit straighter. And yes, I do do it in light room. The reason being because light room doesn't really nice tilt job. And if you bring in a photo shop, you can easily crop into, like in Nowheresville and you'll see what I mean. So if I crop in here and I can tilt. See the whole image. Kind of. It stays within the bounds of the image. When you do the tilting in this and you also get when you're like I was saying earlier, you get these lovely little lines that show up as you're tilting to kind of match this lineup here and kind of find that center, and then when you do it, you're like any other looks pretty straight. I like it. And, uh, you know, obviously now you got me doing this image, but yeah, it's Ah, it's something I do in my room I could do in a photo shop. But here's what happens. Let's go. Let's reset this one. Let's go down here and we'll add it This in photo shop. Come on, come on. This may take 1/2 2nd and I would do a little dance, but I haven't had enough. Well, it's doing the dance. Why don't you tell us how you got started in photography, please? Okay, Sure. Um, I went to school for theater, actually. Believe it or not, I went to Syracuse University for theatre, and I, halfway through college, got into just doing little digital point and click just for the fun of it. Um, I never really wanted to take, like, pictures of friends at parties or anything. I actually, when I got the little camera for my birthday was really interested in just doing little funny angles and close ups and just macro kind of, you know, just very abstract crap. Essentially. But it was playing. It was fun for me. I got a copy of photo shop and would just mess with it as much as I could. I would go in and be like, Wow, look at these curves. Aiken do, like crazy. Look, artsy that is like that. Like that. I would do that to be like, yeah, so and so I did a lot of that just for the fun of it. And then, um, we got the chance to go. Teoh hadn't abroad abroad program went to London, And during that program, there was a photography class. I had a lady five millimeter or not 85 35 millimeter black and white camera. And I brought it out there, and I figure I'm in London anyway, I'm gonna be taking a lot of pictures anyway, so I might as well take this class. It was black and white development, black and white film, all the old school dodging and burning everything. I really enjoyed it. I got invited into Ah, higher end. When I got back to Syracuse, I got invited to take some classes at New House, which is there's kind of school communications kind of world renowned for for being like the whole another level. And so I got invited in to do some classes there had a great great teacher, Doc Mason. He was awesome, and he helped me out with fashion photography, editorial stuff. It was mostly based on communications, though, So a lot of it was photojournalism teaching. And some of it was like fashion photography, which is funny, cause now I'm not doing either of those, although wedding photography is kind of the best because it has, like a ton of different kinds of photography in 18 hour event. So anyway, I was looking for somebody who did head shots. I was doing head shots for my actor friends and just portrait's just for fun and to make a little bit of extra cash a little bit of the end of the my senior year, and I was like, Well, I could do head shots and be an actor at the same time in L. A. So why don't I go out to L. A. And he was like And when I went out there, I looked up a few people who were doing headshot photography, and I saw this one. Guys work. My friend Donald Norris and I met up with him. He had great advice for me. He was already working with job, you sink. He was braving about this master photography was getting to work with, and he picked me up just doing like, little bar mitzvahs and maybe second shooting here at a wedding. And And I was bad. I was not very good. Like, really, it was I had, like a Pentax some terrible lens, just the kit lens. You know, it started just pretty much where a lot of digital photographers have started. And probably a lot of photographers in general just start with whatever camera they haven't just do. And so eventually he introduced me to Joe and Joe brought me under his wing, is assistant carrying his bags, and I was shooting this whole time, getting more involved with doing second shooting work and having a few other photographers hired me here and there. And eventually he had me starting to do retouching on his computer. And he needed somebody to replace his old assistant. So he saw I was good with computers and quick And so I got in there and did that. I have been working with photo shop in some light room here and there just as a hobby and for my own business and stuff too. So, um yeah, then he started. Just bring me under his wing And he's a great teacher. So I've learned a lot from him. Working on his images has influenced me in such a huge way, and, um and yeah, that's kind of the story.