lngroller

<p>I just saw this, I was gonna ask if this was Schrodingers Crayon.</p>

 

<p>everyone I know of offers an 8x10. If you are using a good lab for volume work you will probably be buying your printing by the sheet also so even if you give a 5x7 most likely you will be buying a sheet of 2 so more work for you cutting them and same cost.<br>

That said, this is your gig and if you want to offer a 5x7 you can and just because everyone else uses 8x10's doesn't mean you have to. I would (and do) give 8x10's. are you thinking the cost difference? or is there another reason why you are thinking 5x7? It may hurt you as you try to sell it to the churches. you giving less then everyone else.<br>

Are you in the USA? Where in the country are you? </p>

<p>Thank you all for the responses. I see I have not gone far enough in the sample galleries to find the crop feature. It seems I have also been going about this backwards as I thought they would FTP to a lab. Now I am finding most partner with labs. When they offer self fulfillment it adds more work. I need to see if my lab partners with anyone then see if their software does what I need. Should have talked to them first... DUH!</p>

<p>I think the OP meant a light tent? since the second sentence says in part "should be able to be shot in a soft light box"</p>

<p>Thank You all. very helpful. It looks like you have to use Smugmug's lab? I'll be checking for best match for me now. SmugMug and Zenfolio both look nice. Guess I'll start with my lab and see who they work with.</p>

<p>Thank You, I have never gone all the way to checkout. How do you let clients know this? I would think when they are looking at their images they may disregard some because they don't like the cropping centering etc.<br>

Sorry if this is really newbie stuff but if I didn't realize it, I would think many of my clients wouldn't either.</p>

<p>I just did their preview of the site and I don't see anyway for clients to crop their images.</p>

<p>If you start with medium you can add light to brighten it or control the spill on it making it darker. Remember, if you aren't lighting your background separately and are only lighting for your subject then the spill will be lower on your background and it will appear darker then it's true tone. Mow much so depends on your lighting set up. Make sense? </p>

<p>Ryan, lots of good advice here. I only want to add as you get better at seeing what's going on through the lens you will also learn not to release the shutter if they aren't looking in the right place. That may sound like a "hey newbie don't you know anything " type comment, but it is actually a difficult thing to achieve. You have so much going on, you are watching how the light is falling on your subject, maybe waiting for that perfect graceful movement of an arm or leg. you get so caught up in some details you may miss others entirely. It will come with practice and experience.</p>

<p>I am starting to look for someone to upload my images from High volume family portraits for online sales. My problem is I don't see any that let the customer crop and center the way they want it., and very few who show the crop difference between a 5x7 and 8x10 proportion.<br>

Because this is high volume (low profit per sitting) the 30% or there abouts that PhotoReflect gets is out of the question (I think) I have been doing this work for 30 years and suddenly raising prices to cover another 30% in costs won't sit well.<br>

Am I just not seeing where to go to do cropping etc? Suggestions? advice!</p>

<p>In case you are still checking for updates here I wanted to add a very important detail not mentioned before. I am shooting a fundraiser this weekend (same as directory type photography but no books printed) and it occurred to me I failed to mention one thing that will kill sales quickly... Making people wait. They don't mind waiting a little to view but be on time with photography if they have to wait 15-30 mins. or more to be photographed they start having negative feelings towards the whole thing and it shows in sales. BE ON SCHEDULE. Generally this isn't their first choice for a weekend activity and you don't want to give them any excuse for negative feeling about this. <br>

I had a difficult family yesterday with 14mo. old twins, a 3 yr old and a 5 & 8 yr old. as we pushed it to the end of the scheduled time I settled for good enough so I wouldn't keep the other families waiting. The family with the twins loved their shots although I knew I could have gotten better, and the next family raved about not having to wait and they knew the previous family and was just certain I would keep them waiting. They made a very good purchase and no doubt a lot of that was just the good feeling they had about how smoothly everything went.</p>

<p>Subtract another $120.00 from the above costs, I forgot to include costs for 15% overrun on the books.</p>

<p>Depends on the size of the congregation. Usually a Fri eve Sat and Sunday with make up days a week or two later. Of course a small church can be done in one weekend. Some churches may take a month of shooting. Again usually, at least in the beginning you can shoot starting at 2-3pm on weekdays and get the retired couples and singles in then.<br>

While most members are not EAGER to buy extra portraits, enough will that you should be able to make $. Some churches you may not, but I have never LOST money on a church directory. You have to plan to make money though. Set up a nice display of the items you plan on offering. Talk to the directory committee (or person in charge) and explain that there will be no pressure sales but of course you are not in business to give everything away and you can only do this because you know their families will be excited enough about their portraits to want extras and to please make it very clear that the day they come in to be photographed they will be looking at their portraits and purchasing. (In other words have them bring their checkbooks and charge cards) I also find it very beneficial to give the coordinator and paster a free package. (about a $100 credit). Of course a lot depends on your quality of work and how you show the portraits, have your workflow down pat. Also make sure you display at least 20x24's, retouching, etc.</p>

<p>Think of it this way a directory will cost you about $10.00 depending on the church size. Your free 8x10 will cost you less then $1.00 so for about $11.00 a sitting you are getting a lot of potential clients. Have lots of business cards. Even if they don't purchase then when they are in the market for a photographer if you did your job well with the directory you have a good shot of getting that. To me, that's worth a lot more then $11.00 per family in costs. Not counting payroll of course.<br>

Lets say you have a bad job and only average $40.00 per sitting. If you photograph 4 per hour then on a weekend Fri, Sat, Sun 8 hours each day you shoot about 80 sittings (that gives you some no shows). 80x$29 (your $40 less $11 costs) thats $2320.00 to pay for printing the $40order and payroll. $40 in sheets would/should be less then 2 sheets) so deduct another $2.00 per sitting to print that. So $2320.00 less $160. in printing is still $2160.00. Depending on your lab and what you've sold those numbers can go up or down. (if you sold a lot of image CD's they cost you maybe .25 for a blank CD) If you paid your sales people $15 per hour figuring on 2 sales people and one photographer then you have 24hrs x$15x2=you pay them $720.00. That leaves you $1440.00. Now you will still have another 8 hours say in work in getting the directory together etc. but as you can see it should be safe to try. It's a lot of work but on good jobs and large churches you can make some very decent money. This doesn't take into account extra books the church orders (at a small profit per book) or extra activity pages they purchase which shouldn't add much to the cost of printing.<br>

The people who fail usually fail because they do mostly this and have run out of good churches and start trying to make churches do it more frequently then every 4 years, or they pressure sell and no one wants them back. Also, don't be discouraged if one day you only run a $15-20 avg. some days are just like that. What you are concerned with, and all you are concerned with is sales Avg for the whole job. Some days it seems like everyone that day got together and decided not to buy.</p>

<p>On my low volume work I created a custom brush in PS and use the eyedropper to select a color from the image so it's very subtle. I do this on 8x10 and larger. I also do this on 5x7 format separate from 8x10 format images to avoid the cutting off problem you described. <br>

On my high volume work my lab backprints and I add a phone #(which is also on my low volume work)<br>

To create a custom logo brush just open a blank canvas and add your type , or add your cut out logo on it's own layer. Then go to Edit>define brush preset</p>

<p>I own a WhiBal, Xrite colorchecker passport, a 8 1/2x11 24 patch colorchecker, and one of those white/grey/black collapsible targets. I always grab a colorchecker (you can use the passport software with any of the 24 patch targets. It's a free download from their site) Using Lightroom and a colorchecker with the software now not only can I white balance but I can create custom camera profiles for my raw conversions.<br>

I don't shoot weddings, but I would think doing a WB in the church and outside for any outside shots and again at the reception would at least give you a good starting point. although so would just setting a fixed WB in a situation like wedding where some shots in the middle of the room totally artificially lit and some by windows, not to mention stained glass windows, or different lighting altogether would be very difficult to do custom WB for every situation. <br>

Although WhiBal looks near the top in specs I have had difficulty getting a good CONSISTENT wb from it.</p>

<p>I would remove the equip. information at the bottom of all the images in slideshow mode. The only people who care are other photographers who most likely won't be a client or people who think the equip. is everything.</p>

<p>HI Curt, to be competitive at all you will be giving each family a 8x10 and a directory. plus about a 10-15% overrun. say you shoot 100 families, you will give the church 110-115. Most churches will purchase extras and there is a small mark up on that. Also besides the family photos and roster they will want a pastors page, and activity pages. Most companies will provide some extra pages free based on how many families are photographed. With 100 it may be 4 activity pages and the church can purchase extras. This will help offset your cost to print the directories.<br /> Your money comes from the sales of extra prints, and to do this well you will have to have a real smooth workflow down to quickly and easily show them your products and make your sale. You don't want to do any pressure sales or you won't be doing this long. The most accepted way now is to do this right after photography on a computer, Some still do preprinted packages where you print a package for evaryone and go back 10 days-2 weeks later. This can cause scheduling problems with families having to make another trip back to view their portraits but it also gets children out of the way on many so you have the parents full attention. Of course this requires a lot more expense on your part and lowers profit. I don't know of anyone doing it this way any longer but in the film days this was the standard. <br /> To make it profitable the trick is to get as many families in and out as quickly as possible while doing a good job. You don't want to have a 8-10 hour day and shoot 10 sittings. You also want to shoot more then just the directory pose. Just parents, just children, any requests they have and promote doing generation shots whenever possible.<br /> For the directory, you want all the portraits on the same background, you may want to have others to offer for additional poses. Scheduling wise you should photograph a sitting about every 10-15 minutes and you will want 2 people to show and sell the portraits for each photographer. It easily takes them twice as long to choose their poses and order, make the purchase, as it does to photograph them. If I am doing both I allow 30-45 minutes per sitting. If your scheduler for the church is a go getter you can have them schedule 20 minutes for singles and couples and 30-45 minutes for families If they know someone will be doing generation shots or bringing pets etc they can allow a bit more. The above schedule may have you sitting some, but you are better off being right on schedule or waiting for families then have them waiting. After pressure sales this is the biggest complaint about the larger companies. Encourage pets (some churches won't allow it, and some will but not for the directory pose) but many will allow pets and allow them in the directory pose. They will purchase as much of their pets as they will their children, also many companies won't photograph pets. <br /> If you have further questions feel free to ask.</p>

<p> second or third the idea of shooting down. Find out about access to the roof and shoot them all outside from the roof. If you pick your angle correctly no light needed, Just make sure they aren't looking into the sun</p>

<p>whew, OK someone said it. at least the first link, I am sure must have been done by someone with no experience. Even if you want bland I wold think they were going for, and missed, a consistent background. Esp. for all the images to be grouped together on the same page. I generally charge hourly because they always want to add "just a few more" in my case $125 an hour, travel paid hourly as well but only one way. (so basically 1/2 for travel) then $85 an hour post processing. (I usually spend more time in post then I charge for but not a lot)</p>

<p>I think the test should be no more then one dish. go ahead and post process but you said travel.. If more then just across town I would expect travel expenses. All with the condition that that can not use the shot without compensation. If they balk at that, put it to them in a way they understand. Tell them you regularly have dinner parties with 20 guests and you want to do a test run to see if they can handle catering it. I think they would/should immediately understand that a small sample is all you get for free. </p>

<p>Just found this thread. If this was shot with no fill then what are the catch lights in her eyes? were they added post? If just reflection of sand in foreground I would think lower and more even. </p>

<p>For a first time client, without you having seen the products I vote for a hourly/day rate and a hourly post processing fee. As mentioned above<br>

1. You don't know how picky they will be<br>

2. They aren't photographers and simple to them may take a lot of set up/tweaking work. I once had a location shoot and I asked if anything was highly reflective in the shot and was told no, got there and most of what I shot was stainless steel on top of that the room was sprayed down with water/chlorine every 15 minutes. Point is, they don't understand complications that can and do arise. <br>

In situations like this I tell a client if they need a hard # I will give it to them but they should be aware that I am going high expecting complications.</p>

<p>everyone has made valid points. But, what do you shoot? I shoot a lot of high volume work, flashing all day 10 hours a day and NEED quick recycle. Dependability is a must for me because I am working out of town 80-100 days a year for this volume work. So looking at dependability and recycle times I went with Speedotron Black line 1205 packs 1200 WS recycle in .9 secs to full power and black lines are built like a tank. So that is what I went with for my volume work, for my studio work here and product shots, low volume portraits I use mono lights. more control over power settings (OK, Easier may be a better word) and usually less expensive. </p>

<p>I think you need to determine what's most important to you... Do you need drop dead accuracy shot to shot (both power output and color temp?) some products are better at this then others. will you be using a lot on very tall stands or boom arms? how much power? how quick recycle? decide what you need then see what best fits. I disregard the cords argument because each mono needs it's own power cord and I see no difference between running power cords to each head or pack cables to each head. Also with monos, if something breaks you essentially lost a head and a pack, with pack systems you have only lost one or the other. always have back ups and figure that into your costs.</p>

<p>Dave </p>

<p>Right or wrong I always paid when I collected it, In my mind the sale wasn't complete until monies were paid. Then a number of years ago I purchased an invoicing and accounting software. When ever I ran sales tax reports it showed sales taxes when invoiced so I started paying that way. I know this isn't a real answer but.. accounting software tells me to pay it when invoiced not after collected.</p>

<p><< I am cynical about the absurdly long duration of modern copyright, which is heavily influenced by lobbyists (particularly by Disney) and is absurdly long.>></p>

<p>Spoken like someone who hasn't spent a lifetime building up stock images so they can retire comfortably and their family and heirs can benefit from all their hard work.<br>

(I fall into that category with you but still see why it's fair)</p>