adam_nance

Thanks for the response. A friend forwarded an email to me. But if the website is less than a month old, it sounds like there's a chance it's a scam. I suppose I'll wait to see if anyone else tries it and likes it before I send my hard-earned $29.95.

Thanks!

-Adam

Has anyone heard of this company or used their training videos before?

http://photoshop-teacher.com/

Thanks!

-Adam

I was just checking out this photo. i think the groom looks great!! but the bride is really not going to like it much (in my opinion). From the side she looks large from the side, her arm looks larger than it is, and she also has a double chin. I think the colors and the background are great, but the bride is only going to see her flaws. The same shot with a different angle could take this shot from good to amazing. I really like some of the other shots you have in your portfolio.

jen nance

Hi all,

I received a new (used) F100 in the mail yesterday from KEH.com and I need to find a

manual for it. Ideally, I'd like to find a free download. I tried searching Nikon.com

and the boards here, but couldn't find anything. It may be that camera manuals are

something that camera companies are strict about copyrighting and protecting, in

which case I'd be happy to pay for one, but I don't know where to look?

Thanks in advance for any helpful advice.

-Adam

Do I need a special piece of software to plug my D70 straight into my laptop and use

the laptop for preview? I'd like to be able to check exposure more carefully than I can

in the preview window on the back of the camera.

I'm currently using Windows XP, PS7, and ACDSee for my photo processing in case

any of these can help with this.

Thanks in advance!

-Adam

Are you married?

I ask because my wedding was only six months ago, so I'm still quite excited about

the memories and the photos. It was one of the best days of my life, and I think this

has been true for all of our clients so far.

Believe me, the shot of her looking in the mirror while her mom or her maid of honor

helps to fasten her necklace might look cliched to you, but when she looks at it, the

photo brings back all of the excitement and anticipation that accompanied this HUGE

day for her, and she remembers how supportive her bridemaids were and all the

hundreds of special things that happened that day. Remember, she hasn't looked at

thousands of photos like this the way we have.

That having been said, I think it's important for us to try to keep our eye fresh and to

capture the uniqueness of every ceremony. Even if it's at a Sheraton where hundreds

of people have been married in the SAME EXACT WAY, there is emotion that is unique

to every specific ceremony and reception and it's our job to capture that.

So keep up the good work. I'm certain that every wedding album you make is a

unique little treasure to the couple who ordered it.

-Adam

Answers will vary with every person, but I prefer the look and feel of non-flash

photography, and I prefer the interface with the crowd when I'm not blazing away

with my SB800 blinding people. So for me, large aperture is more important than

focal length limitations. My wife spent most of our last reception switching back and

forth between a 28mm 1.4 and an 85mm 1.4, which on the D70 of course are a

42mm and a 127mm. I think this is just about the perfect lens compliment for a

wedding.

Because she had the non-flash photography covered, I spent most of the reception

taking dance photos at f8 1/8th second with three SB800's, one on a camera bracket

and two on stands.

I'm guessing you bought the 18mm-70mm zoom with the D70? I ask because

sometimes that 18mm will be necessary for indoor big group portraits etc. As long

as you have that lens, a decent lens compliment might be something like a 35mm

f2.0 and an 85mm f1.8 (the 85mm f1.4 if you can afford it). The 28mm f1.4 we rent

for weddings is an AMAZING lens, but it also comes with an AMAZING price tag (I

think it's around $1,600 or so).

The 50mm f1.4 (which of course turns into a 75mm on the D70) is also an excellent

lens for the bride-getting-ready shots and candids at the reception.

So, in summary, I think the 35mm f2.0, the 50mm f1.4, and the 85mm f1.8 would be

a pretty killer starter kit for right around $900 new and even less used. For some

weddings, you'll want to find a place you can rent a 70-200 or 80-200 f2.8, but it

sounds like purchasing one is out of the question for you right now.

Hope that helps a little,

Adam

PS- I wrote this thinking mostly in terms of indoor weddings because it's winter and

that's what we're shooting. For outdoor weddings in the summer, you can probably

just use a 28-80mm f2.8 zoom and call it good.

Now that we've all told you that your contract is awful, I'd also like to pipe up to say

that I visited your website and your photographs are BEAUTIFUL. :)

Best wishes,

Adam

We prefer to meet our customers in person and we usually do this in cafes. I go

through the contract with all prospective customers as part of my sales pitch. I

quickly go through and summarize the contract item by item pointing out the

relevant part of the contract. I think it's important to make sure there is no

confusion, but also to keep things light and conversational.

In my opinion (and this isn't intended to offend) your contract is absurdly long and

will definitely scare away some customers. My contract fits on a double-sided piece

of paper. I'm sure you can google some high-quality concise sample contracts to

copy from.

Hope that helps a little,

Adam

Hey guys, (and girls)

Does anyone have recommendations for a good place to buy professional film in bulk

and at a discount?

Thanks in advance!

-Adam

Mary,

Thank goodness! From the initial responses people offered, I thought I must have

really been off my rocker with this idea. I agree that it's best to use the names of the

contributors and to have them available as references.

I love your testimonials page. May I make a suggestion? Why not post a photo of the

couple next to their testimonial? I think the comments about ornate doorways and

fields of daisies and carefree PJ style would be even more powerful next to a favorite

photographic example, and this would also help to make the testimonials seem

legitimate.

Thanks for your feedback. I agree that these pages can be important marketting

tools. I'd certainly interview a photographer with a testimonial page like yours.

-Adam

And Al,

On the 1,500 photo thing... Alain was working with a partner, which is 750 photos

per person. I have no idea how long Alain's wedding lasted, but some of us offer all

day packages which can easily run 12 hours noon to midnight. That averages out to

62.5 photos per hour per person.

I think it's easy to argue that a competent professional photographer can consciously

compose and shoot an average of 1 quality photo per minute on the job. Many

photographers can shoot 240 frames at a 4-hour wedding.

Not that this has anything to do with Alain's post. I'm just saying not everyone who

delivers high-volume photos is necessarily machine-gunning their way through

weddings.

-Adam

How do you know that the photos weren't written to the CF card? If there is any

possibility that you're wrong and the files were written but are unrecoverable, you

might think about taking the card to a professional data recovery company. I've seen

data recovered from hard drives that were melted by a building fire and then flooded

by firehoses to put the fire out, and I've heard stories of data being recovered from CF

cards that sat on the bottom of a lake for days. It may be expensive, but if the data

was written to the card and hasn't been written over, it is most likely recoverable.

I'm sorry this happened to you. It could happen to anyone. Best of luck!

-Adam

C Jo Gough and others on this site have testimonial pages on their

websites that are out of this world. "You were the best

photographers ever and if I weren't already married, I'd marry YOU!"

Okay, well maybe not that good. :) But you get the idea.

Does anyone ever solicit these types of comments and if so, how?

I've asked some of our happiest customers to shoot me an email with

a testimonial, but so far, none have. I'm confident that this isn't

because they're unhappy, but just because life is busy and they're

too busy looking at and loving their photos to send off an email. :)

I've thought about emailing out a survey a week or two after turning

over pictures that asks about the services they received. I figure

this can help us to improve our services and also probably get us

some choice quotes for our website.

What do you think? Anyone ever try anything like this? Obviously,

we'd get permission before quoting someone on our website.

I'm looking for feedback on this idea, so positive and negative

comments are welcome.

Thanks!

-Adam

Jpegs. Don't have the CF memory to shoot all RAW yet, but we're getting there.

Thanks, Al. :)

-Adam

Oh man! Nothing is worse than proofreading your post only to find "reducation" in your subject line!

It's a good thing that I photograph weddings rather than transcribe them...

-Adam

As a followup to Stacey's very helpful thread on sharpening below...

When in your workflow do you sharpen and when do you run noise

reduction?

I've got a bundle of photos from an indoor wedding taken at 1600

(back of church/no flash rules) that need both sharpening and noise

reduction as well as some minor color adjustments.

Is there a standard workflow here that works better than others?

Color first, then sharpen, then run noise reduction?

What's your preferred noise reduction method? I've got neatimage at

home now on trial and it seems great. Another name I've seen thrown

around is noiseninja. What's your favorite?

Thanks a lot!

-Adam

I worry that I'm going to come off like a jerk for saying this, and I'm really not a jerk. Really. But I would consider moving the central picture of the groom kissing his bride on the cheek to a less central location or ditching it altogether.

When women are shopping for photographers and preparing for weddings, I think their weight is often a major issue in their minds. Multiple dress fittings and the thousands of model-brides they see in magazines serve to reinforce this concern and some brides get downright crazy about it, with starvation diets so drastic they end up fainting at the alter. I wonder if some brides might just skip over your ad because they don't want to think of themselves as anything but a size 5 on their wedding day.

For the record, my wife would disagree with me and advise you to keep the photo in the ad because she thinks ads like this attract the less-than-model-perfect brides, and let's face it, 90% of brides fit in this category. Anyway, she's right about a lot of stuff and she may be right about this.

Beyond that, I think the layout is nice and I agree with Marc's advice above.

Hope that helps a little,

-Adam

Oh! And compatability with my SB800 flashes would be nice.

Thanks again,

-Adam

Great post.

I've been daydreaming a bit about this lately, but I should really put some thoughts

on paper about goals for '05. A first draft might look something like:

4) Book 20-30 weddings.

3) Purchase the lenses and lights we're currently renting for each job.

2) End the year with a nest egg to help us ride out the slow season in '06.

...And the number 1 goal for 2005...

1) Quit our day jobs! (or at least go half time)

-Adam

I currently own two D70's and use them for wedding photography along with two

manual focus Minolta XD-11's for film.

Since I'm now investing in Nikor glass for the D70's, I'd like to move over to Nikon for

my film cameras. I'm coming from completely manual film cameras, so I will probably

never use any bells or whistles beyond aperture priority mode. I would however LOVE

a good, fast multi-area autofocus system, and the ability to shoot continuously at

2fps or faster. All of my lenses will be D and G, as these are fully functional with the

D70.

I've seen new N80 bodies for around $300, but I'd like suggestions for what I should

look for in the used market around that price or (hopefully) less.

I'm new to the world of autofocus film cameras, so if there are more pieces of

information I should be looking at and thinking about, let me know.

Thanks!

-Adam

Finding a local lab you can trust is almost certainly your best option. Shutterfly.com

does decent 4x6 proof prints for $.22. At Ritzcamera.com you can upload photos

and pic 'em up from your local Ritz. Printroom.com, shutterfly.com, and pictage.com

are just a few of the websites that offer services for professional photographers

where clients can order photos directly from websites. Make sure to tell them to turn

off their auto-color processing if you're perfecting the colors you want in photoshop.

At home, an Epson 2200 will run you $700 or so, and it's probably all the printer

you'll ever need. I've read estimates that ink costs amount to about $.40 per 4x6, so

it's more expensive than the online options discussed above, but you have ultimate

control over everything. It's also probably painfully slow if you're the type of

photographer who wants to hand over 500 4x6 proof prints. So it looks to me like a

good option if you want to do contact sheets for proofing, and a great option to

control your own enlargement processing, but probably not the best option

financially or workflow-wise for printing a pile of 4x6's.

Hopefully, that helps a little,

-Adam

Eve, in my opinion--and this is my opinion only--no one on a public message board should talk about women's titties; nor should they say things like, "get off the rag or shut up;" nor should they call people stupid, or accuse someone of penis envy; nor should they call people potty mouths, or assign "little man syndrome" to anyone.

I don't read every thread on photo.net, but so far you're the only person I've seen on this board do any of these things.

I'm in agreement with you insofar as I also find the derogatory comments in response to folks genuinely looking for help annoying and insulting. But nobody has ever won an argument on an internet message board by sinking to a lower level of discourse. It's likely that the malcontents who post nastiness will simply feed off the anger of others and post more often and more malevolently.

I suggest we kill them with kindness or ignore them altogether.

I meant no offense with my earlier post. And I certainly didn't mean to say that you have a bitter spirit. I simply meant that I saw bitterness in your post. Typing fast on a message board, our words don't always convey what we want them to.

Anyhow, that's all I have to say on the subject. I shouldn't have commented on your post in the first place because it's none of my business what you write, I was just shocked by a bitter post scolding people for bitterness, and I felt compelled to respond. Especially because it came in a thread where (to my mind) no one has attacked anyone.

Best wishes,

-Adam

Eve Adams! Did you just shame the people on the board with "bitter spirits?" I suggest you reread your own post and consider who's the one with the bitter spirits. My goodness. I sincerely hope your day gets better.

To the poster who asked about c jo gough's website, I believe this is it:

http://fp2k.redshift.com/cjogo/

To the original poster... my wife and I charge $1,800 for a full-day package with two photographers including 500 4x6 proofs, 1,200-ish 6mp digital jpegs on a DVD and all negatives. We're underpriced on this right now, and we're booking like crazy for next summer. We've been in this professionally for a couple of months and will raise prices once we've got 30 or so weddings booked for 2005. We don't offer albums yet, and I'm really not sure what to do about this. I like Errol's idea about a 16 page 8x10 album. It'd be nice to keep things simple and cheap. Folks paying $1,800 for photography are likely to scoff at a $2,000 album from Leather Craftsman.

Hope that helps a little,

Adam

Many churches have rules limiting photography during ceremonies partly for this reason. It's a bummer. I'm definitely self-conscious about the shutter noise from my D70, and I've thought about one day purchasing an 8mp EVF camera because it would be able to take silent photos during the ceremony.

On another note, I'm so sorry to hear that the day was a disaster. Hopefully your photos will be brilliant and the couple will be delighted.

Best, -Adam