I’ve been asked so many times what would be a good gift for Jasper for his birthday and I’m kind of lost.. I always say books are great, and he needs some new bath toys. I think I want to get him the little tykes basketball set, but that’s all I’ve got!
One thing I know he would love is some sort of play (soft and light – nerf?) helmet, he’s OBSESSED with helmets (see above). It’s funny too because he knows which activities require one: baseball, football, motorcycle. Whenever he plays one of these things he runs to get that yellow “helmet” which is actually a construction hat that came with another toy and is giant on his head and falls off every time he moves! Other things he likes are boats & airplanes.. I got really excited when I saw the Lego City airplane toy on TV but then realized it said for 6+ :(
What are you getting your two year old f or what DID you get (or someone else get) your two year old for their birthday that they loved??
So the only downside to killing the sneak peeks on my photography website is that I can’t come and share them here as soon as they are done :)
Luckily, since my last session was a gift for dear friends I can share it here!
Despite my general lack of enthusiasm for the Canon 24-70 Lens, I was DETERMINED to use it for this session. . I was very conscious about not dropping my shutterspeed below 200, which seemed to be ok for this shoot. Probably would have bumped it up to at least 250 for kids. This meant I had to use some high-ish ISOs at times, but now that LR3 has great noise removal, I don’t worry so much anymore. I still LOVE noiseware, but some images I prefer to edit in LR only if possible, so it’s nice to have that option even with high ISO images.
The other thing that I haven’t talked about here that I discovered with my previous maternity session with Janaki is using directional rather than flat lighting.. I used to set up my paper so that it was parallel to my main light source (sliding glass door) but lately I’ve been setting it up so that it’s at 90 degrees. Then I have the subject at about 45 degrees to me, which gives nice shadowing and contour. This is particularly flattering for maternity, not that Jen needs any help in the beauty department (as you are about to see!)
As far as editing, these were EASY. For most I just ran portraiture at about 40% and did some slight curves adjustments. For the ones on the black background I use the quick selection tool to select the backdrop and then do an selective color adjustment layer and choose “black” from the drop down. Then I move the light dark slider at the bottom significantly towards dark. Even after that adjustment I still sometimes have to burn the black using the burn tool set to “shadows.” It’s kind of a PITA, but the black backdrop is the only one I have that is wider than 53″ as it is a fabric drop from Denny Manufacturing. (Photo black). For the other images on the colored paper I had to stretch parts of the image to fill out the frame with the color, 53″ is just too small in most cases. I dream of owning a studio one day with 103″ rolls of paper.. until then, I have to rely on photoshop!
Here are a few of my favorites from the day, I posted a bunch more where you can see them larger too on my photography website.
Though I don’t consider it a specialty of mine, I must say that working with models who are capable of understanding you and following direction is a nice break once in a while! Particularly when the camera loves them as much as it loves Jen.. isn’t she GORGEOUS?
Oh, and in case anyone wants to know, the blue wrap was some kind of poly blend with a lot of stretch that I picked up at at the fabric store. I believe it was about 2.5 yards. The sheer fabric is something called “tricot” which is really soft and sheer, I believe it’s commonly used in lingerie! This was about 3 yards.
So, now we know that the client hasn’t seen the images yet and has no idea what to expect so there is naturally a lot of happy anticipation, both for the client to see the images and for you to see their reaction!
But first you need to prepare everything on your end to make sure things go as smoothly as possible during the ordering session. Here’s what I did, which is by no means perfect, I just want to share with you my process.
When I first started thinking about in person ordering I initially had dreams of hooking up my laptop to the clients’ flat screen TV and everyone enjoying a giant larger than life gallery. To do this you need an HDMI cord to go from your laptop to the flat screen (and a big one at that) which run at least $50. My dad had one for his Roku so I borrowed that to test it out. I realized that our flat screen’s HDMI input is at the back of the TV and really difficult if not impossible to reach and it got me thinking that this isn’t the most reliable plan because a) not all clients even HAVE a flat screen or, like us, only have one in their bedroom which would be an awkward place for the viewing and b) there are all sorts of technical and logistical things that can come up.
So I moved onto plan B, which was to bring my fairly impressive large glossy screen monitor to hook up to my laptop. When I tried it at home, I couldn’t get the correct resolution on the large monitor, it wasn’t using up all the space which may be as simple as needing to install a new driver? I don’t know but it was late the night before the ordering session and I didn’t have time to investigate, plus that was yet ANOTHER thing to bring to the client’s house in addition to my canvases and other samples etc.
So I decided that I could just use my laptop. Now, I’m really lucky because my laptop has a VERY large screen for a laptop – it’s a Dell Studio 1737, which has a 17″ glossy screen that looks quite impressive at least for a laptop. It certainly was more than big enough for the mom and dad to watch together without any issues. The more recent version of the laptop I have is the 1747 which starts at about $699 but has some impressive new features like a touch and zoom screen application (like an iPhone!) and much improved speakers. I love this laptop, it’s GREAT for client proofing, the downside is that the large screen adds considerable weight, so it’s not the ideal laptop for someone who travels a lot.
OK, so now that I decided on what to display it on, I had to figure out exactly what TO display!
This is where this post turns into a love letter to Lightroom 3. So let me just say first that you all know that I love Lightroom, but I hadn’t yet upgraded to the latest version because my home computer where I do all my editing was just not up to the task of upgrading.. first of all because my C drive was critically full, but also because it runs a crappy Windows Vista personal edition that limits the max RAM to 4GB. If I could have upgraded my existing computer I probably would have gone that route, but given that I would have had to upgrade operating systems which is a giant PITA because it wipes your whole system I decided to use some of the proceeds from my templates and buy myself a lean mean editing machine!
I really didn’t WANT to have to spend my money on a new computer, but it was completely hampering me. It would take so long to even open a file from LR in Photoshop that I would literally browse online and read photo forums while it was opening! And I had to keep closing and reopening LR and PS to free up more RAM.. it was a nightmare. I barely have time to edit as is, so a system that was literally crawling is just to much of an additional time suck. I crawled along with my old system for a while, but finally the lure of the amazing new LR3 features kicked me into action. The last computer only lasted me 2 YEARS because I skimped out on things like the OS, the RAM, and the hard drive, so this time I LOADED it up with the max of everything. I only mention this because I don’t want anyone to make the same mistake I did.. you want a system you can grow with, particularly for editing programs which are HUGE resource hogs. (I also used this as an excuse to get an IPS monitor, but more on that another time :) Ok, techie stuff over.
So, now you know why I waited to upgrade to LR3 – and wow, was it worth the wait!!
Unlike the somewhat questionable necessity of upgrading photoshop to CS5 (the new features aren’t ESSENTIAL IMO) the upgrade to LR3 I feel is a MASSIVE improvement. There are so many new features but I will do a separate post on that, for now I want to focus on the features that I used for the ordering session..
Like I do for any other client I make a collection with the client’s gallery which are the best 20-30 shots. Then I pop over to the new improved slideshow module which now lets me add MUSIC! Even better, it lets me export the whole slideshow as an mp4! This has so many different possible applications.. I used to have to use windows movie maker to mix images and videos or even to add music to a set of images.. no more! Now I can do it all with one click from Lightroom. Plus, it has other handy features like the ability to add your watermark, zoom the images to fill etc. etc. but what I particularly love is the “fit to music” option which will automatically time your slides to start and end with the music you’ve selected! Awesome.
I’m particularly happy about this feature because when I last redid my pricing I included in the highest package “a slideshow of all gallery images set to music in a format for sharing online.” This is an expensive package and no one has purchased it yet, but now I know that if they do, it’s going to be a piece of cake for me to create it.
OK, sorry that got to be a longer review of the slideshow module than I meant it to be for the purposes of this post, but it was the meat and bones of the client presentation so I feel it is necessary to elaborate on.
Since a picture (or video in this case) is worth a thousand words, I am posting the export of the slideshow that I presented to the client so you can see exactly what they saw:
Ok, so now we get to the fun part – the client’s reaction!
Now you will hear people on photo forums talk a lot about wanting to do in person ordering sessions to boost sales – which is part of the equation, but not the most important part IMO. The most important part to me was getting to experience the joy that my images brought to this family – the excitement that they felt seeing their beautiful girls. I’ve never gotten that kind of feedback before.
Sure I’ve gotten the requisite “we loved them” email from a client after seeing their gallery online, but let me tell you that there is NO comparison to being there, watching them literally gasp as every picture comes on the screen. That alone is worth doing the in person ordering session!! But of course that motivation is a bit selfish, so let me move into the next and probably MOST important reason that in person ordering rocks: customer service.
I know that seems odd, but let me explain. Actually, let me continue to tell you about what happened AFTER we viewed the slideshow and I think it will become perfectly clear why this is a positive experience for the client as much as for the photographer.
So after the slideshow was over, I switched from the Slideshow module back to the develop module and let the mom scroll though each image using the left and right arrow keys. She was able to rate the ones she liked from 1-5 using the numeric keypay (i.e. press 4 for 4 starts etc) and using this method we were EASILY able to narrow down her selections. She actually just gave her favorites 4 stars, so what I did when she was done was go to the “filter” feature and select 4 stars so we were able to JUST see the ones she’d picked (you can filter in all sorts of ways, so if she had rated 1-5 we could have just seen the 5s, or “all rated” images etc).
The way you do this is go to the area just above the filmstrip on the right and choose “custom filter”. Then you can just click on the star rating that you want (so I clicked on the 4th star to see all the ones she’d marked as 4 stars) :
So at first pass, she had about 14 images chosen. We then started talking about if she wanted to order a package or not and if so, which one.
When I first asked, they both said they were going to just order a la carte. I think even though it’s spelled out how much savings is offered in a package they don’t REALLY understand the savings built in over ordering a la carte. So this family wanted to create a thank you card for their daughter’s Christening, so they knew they needed at least ONE digital file. My second package up comes with 1 digital file, but I also showed them that they could just get the lowest package that includes 10 gift prints and add the digital file on a la carte, but for less than $100 more they could get the next package which includes a 16×20 gallery wrap.
At first the mom mentioned that “they didn’t need anything big” because it’s not a FAMILY picture. At this point, I was able to show her my 16×20 sample in my photographer’s wall display guides above the couch, but also, because I was in her HOME I was able to bring my sample to her living room and put it above the mantle and show her how NOT big a 16×20 actually is! I also walked around the first floor a bit and showed her where I thought it would look great (the big empty wall in the foyer) and she got completely on board. I don’t consider this a “hard sell” tactic, in fact, I’m probably the least pushy WORST salesperson in the world. But I didn’t feel weird or awkward “convincing” her to go with the next package up because 1) it represents a better value for her and fits her needs better and 2) I know she will CHERISH that gorgeous 16×20 gallery wrap because she absolutely fell in love with the image.
I don’t have a problem “talking someone into” something I know they will have zero regrets about, I want her to love and enjoy that image every day, not have it tucked away in some drawer somewhere. Not because I want to make money off of her, but because I believe in the beauty of children’s portraiture and the joy that images of children bring their parents. Period.
I went into so much detail about the package selection because it really showed me how as much as we post our prices on our websites, or email them to our client and even have them SIGN off on them first, they don’t really seem to be able to understand which package is best for what they want. Again, this is customer service. You are helping them choose what’s best for them. Not forcing, coercing, just showing them the different options and together coming up with the best plan.
Ok, so now that she had chosen a package, she had to decide which images to order as 5×7 vs. 8×10 etc. I sell my 5×7s and 8×10s at the same price, so it was a matter of personal choice for her. But, because I was there with her and had LR and her final image selections, we were able to go right into the crop panel and see the actual effect that cropping to those different sizes would have. I LOVED this! We can explain all we want that different crop sizes result in different amounts of image being lost, but nothing explains it like showing it!
Here’s an example. The mom knew she wanted to order this image and was considering between a 5×7 and an 8×10. But once I showed her the 8×10 crop she knew immediately that she wanted the 5×7 to preserve more of the negative space on the left of the image:
5×7
8×10
I was also able to show her what any given image might look like in black and white by applying a preset with one click. I didn’t do this with all of them by any means, there was just one in particular she was debating so I was able to help make up her mind. Again, good customer service.
Contrast this with my last web gallery ordered session where the mom “didn’t realize” that her 11×14 print wouldn’t be a close up like the promo card I made up using a closer crop (I left it at daycare where she had seen it). In fact, the number of client issues that can come up during the ordering process is DRASTICALLY reduced when you are showing the client exactly what they will be getting before hand. No unpleasant surprises = fewer headaches for you down the line. Yep, I’ll say it again: good customer service!
One other thing I want to mention is that I think it’s really nice for the clients to get to ordering out of the way. I think so many of them drag their feet because they are confused about the exact issues we just discussed: What size print, black and white or color, what package etc. In one hour, I was able to help the client with ALL of her questions and leave there with everything completely taken care of, paid for, done. No follow up emails for me to tell her that her gallery is about to expire, no “task” hanging over her head.
So, by now I hope you have a pretty good idea why I’m so enthusiastic about this new strategy. I’m going to work it into my contracts and use it as a way to differentiate myself from my competition and explain it as what it is: a natural extension of the “custom photography experience.” After all, the picture people aren’t going to come to your home and tell you exactly where they think you should hang a gallery wrap, or whether or not B&W or Color is going to match your hallway wallpaper better!
I’ll say it one final time: Good. Customer.Service.
Let me know if you have any questions!!
PS: that may very well be my longest post EVER. Anyone still with me? :)
Sorry, I know – two posts in one day, are you sick of me yet?
I’m just really thrilled that Elizabeth Halford who has an awesome behind the photography biz scenes blog featured my wall display guides today. And totally brilliantly : “Picture your Picture” is a stroke of marketing genius. Thank god she said I could steal it!
Oh, and I totally did not pay that first commenter Cathy who said they have helped her sales tremendously.. but I couldn’t ask for a better testimonial then that ;)
Now, here’ something for the non photographer readers (are there any of you left? You must be few and far between anymore – I apologize for the abandonment!) here is an iphone photo Jasper’s daycare teacher snapped for me…
I recently decided to change things up from what I’d been doing and I want to share my experiences here because I’m really excited about the change and what I learned along the way..
To sum up, I HAD been doing online proofing galleries and this week I did my first in person ordering session and it was AMAZING. I’m never going back to online galleries except for maybe shoots where the client lives farther away.
But before the really long post that is coming on how I prepared and executed the ordering session I want to talk about the other change I made that allowed it to be such a positive experience: the death of the sneak peek.
A week or two ago there was a HUGE thread on clickimoms about why someone stopped doing sneak peaks on their blog. It got my attention because it was something I’d been mulling over as well..
The sneak peek, while totally embraced by what seems like all photographers is kind of like seeing a bad movie preview. You know the ones I mean – the “comedies” that have like 5 funny jokes and you realize when you see the movie that you already saw all of the funny jokes during the preview and wish you’d saved yourself the $11 and the 2 hours of your life! Ok, so our photos aren’t bad movies, but you get the idea.. why show the BEST 5 images to the client before they are even in the mind frame of ordering? It’s guaranteed to dilute the client’s emotional reaction when they see their full gallery because they’ve already seen the highlights.
Furthermore, they’ve probably sent the URL of the sneak peek to all of their friends, or posted it on facebook and gotten the requisite oohs and ahs and the initial “high” of sharing their awesome photos with the world. So their incentive and emotional investment in “needing to have” these images takes yet another hit and so will your order.
So I knew I wanted to kill the sneak peak and I also knew I wanted to try in person ordering. It only fit naturally that to make the ordering session even more exiting of an “event” that the client hadn’t seen a THING before I came to their house for their ordering session. I think this played a huge part in why the session was as successful as it was and so I’m definitely not going back to sneak peeks!
After the ordering session I will blog my favorite images so that my site stays active and I will also create an online gallery so the client can share them with remote relatives lik grandparents etc who might want to place an order. This isn’t something I’ll advertise though, it will just be a nice extra that I send after the ordering session is over.
So that’s part I, coming up next is How I prepared for the session, what I brought with me and how I used LR3 to make the whole process easy and effective.
In the meantime, I’m curious to hear how you all feel about the sneak peek and if you’ve tried with it and without it and any difference you’ve noticed with orders!
One of the best things about photoshop is that you are ALWAYS discovering new little shortcuts and techniques, sometimes completely by accident!
Last night I was putting the finishing touches on a client gallery and was using a layer mask to pant on my adjustment with a white brush on the mask and my finger accidentally hit the \ key.. and I saw this:
It’s my mask! And like magic, press the \ button and it disappears again. I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I DIDN’T know this one. I knew how to see your adjustment brush mask in Lightroom (press “o”) but somehow never figured it out in PS until now. Duh!
Anyway, it got me thinking of other shortcuts/tricks/tips that make editing so much faster. Here’s a list off the top of my head, please add your own!
1) To edit the text in a text layer, instead of having to choose the text tool and click inside the text to get to the options bar you can double click on the “T” icon in the layer palette.
2) Using the [ key and the ] key to make brushes bigger and smaller.
3) using the Ctrl- and Ctrl+ shortcut to zoom in and out quickly
4) To move around in an image when you are zoomed all the way in, simply press the space bar which will allow you to use your cursor like a hand to click and drag the document the left or right without effecting the layers (i.e moving them around by accident!)
5) Control+shift+F will bring up a fade dialogue so that you can fade any change you just made
6) Control+I inverts, which is particularly useful with layer masks to change them from black to white or vice versa.
7) Control +Alt+2= select highlights. This is almost completely undocumented, but I use it all the time to select the highlights and then do a control+shift+I to invert my selection so I just have midtones and shadows selected. From there I can do a curves adjustment and bring up everything but the highlights, which means no clipping!
8) Holding down the the alt key and click dragging with your mouse duplicates anything quickly. Super useful for duplicating shape or text layers quickly. It also works in the layers palette for copying effects from one layer to another. Just hold down the alt key and drag the effects icon into another layer. If you DON’T hold down the alt key it will just move your effect from one layer to another.
9) Control J will copy any part of an image that you select onto a new layer.
10) These are pretty obvious, but the simplest shortcuts make life so much easier: Control A selects all. Control D deselects. Each tool in the toolbar has it’s own one letter shortcut to select it quickly: V for the move tool, b for brush, s for clone tool, c for crop tool, e for eraser, w for the quick selection tool and so on.
Committing the keyboard shortcuts for your favorite commands to memory can really speed up your workflow.
Saturday we decided it was time for Jasper’s second haircut so that he wouldn’t look like a street urchin at his second birthday party! That morning, I decided to take some snapshots of him playing so that I could remember his golden locks.
Most of you know that I am madly in love with my Canon 70-200L f/2.8 IS II, it doesn’t leave my camera when I’m shooting outdoors. But indoors, it can be too long so I decided to use my completely neglected 24-70mmL f/2.8.
Since buying it, I actually have reached for my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 over the canon because I noticed that I seemed to have a harder time nailing focus with the Canon. But a recent session that I used the Tamron left me less than thrilled so I recommitted to “figuring out” the canon 24-70, which is why I pulled it out for these Jasper shots.
When it nails focus, it is EXCELLENT:
The key word is “when.” There were a bunch of soft shots, and I think I know why, and why many people say they need to “learn to love” the 24-70.
It’s a strange thing, to need to “learn to love” a $1000+ lens, shouldn’t it rock your world out of the box?
So, this is my theory with the lens..
Most of us that upgrade to the 24-70 are coming either from a cheaper zoom like the Tamron OR from a prime like the 50mm or 30mm. Those lenses have one thing in common: they are FEATHER light compared to the 24-70.
What that means is that you can shoot at lower shutterspeeds and not get much if any camera shake. But enter the 24-70 (known in the industry as “the beast”) and whoa, it’s heavy and my test shots show that I need to crank the shutterspeed up to at least 250 to beat the shake!
Now, that is all well and good on a full frame camera, but on a crop sensor that kind of blows because you are already battling with noise at ISOs as low as 400, if you need to use a really high shutterspeed too you will need to crank that ISO even higher and introduce even more noise!
Which is why I think if you have a crop sensor camera, you’re better off sticking with the Tamron or primes and save the 24-70 for if/when you upgrade to full frame.
Now the 70-200 is so heavy it makes the 24-70 feel like a cream puff, but the difference is that the 70-200 is stabilized and I almost NEVER miss focus with it. Rumor has it that canon will be introducing a stabilized version II of the 24-70 and I think THAT would be a lens worth owning on a crop or a full frame body!
As usual, these are merely my opinions based on my experiences with these different pieces of glass, if you have any opinions, thoughts or questions I’d love to hear them!
Oh, and here is a shot of Jasper after his haircut:
Yep- missed focus with that one! More importantly, I miss his curls!! :(
The way it works is you just post any question you have in a comment and other readers can comment with an answer to your question or post one of their own..it can be about parenting, photography, or just whatever you feel like throwing out there!
So, what’s on your mind?
*************
I’ll start.. look at these CRAZY adorable photoprops I found on Etsy, I’m going to use these in addition to some cowboy hats and other cheap western style stuff I’m going to grab at Party City or something and do a little “photobooth” at Jasper’s party:
My question is 1) am I CRAZY for taking this on? I’m sure I’ll be too busy to do all the pictures, but the perfectionist in me won’t want to let anyone else do it LOL. 2) Do you think a white backdrop is fine or I was thinking of having Jeff illustrate a western backdrop but then I have to pay to get it printed large when I already have a white backdrop (though I have no idea where I’d set it up, maybe on the porch?)
Thought some of you might like to enter. The grand prize is $2500 cash, and three other prizes of $500 towards Sigma gear could come in REALLY handy to get the 30 mm 1.4 (first lens I ever fell in love with) or to put towards the highly anticipated 70-200 OS coming this August!
This topic has been on my mind since.. well, a long time.
I’ve always been one of those people that tries to live in happy denial: stretchmarks? I won’t get them. Smaller saggy breasts? Won’t happen to me! And yet, of course it did. All of it.
The stretchmarks, thankfully, have faded to be silvery and pretty much invisible on my translucent/white skin. But the tummy/breast situation is really disconcerting.
First of all, I’ve never been particularly busty, in fact, quite the opposite. Which means that the time that I was breastfeeding Jasper was the first time in my life that I actually got to experience what it was like to have normal sized breasts. And I LIKED it. Not even in a “these make me look sexy” sort of way, but in an “I’m finally proportional and clothes fit me right” sort of way.
Which makes it even MORE cruel that after finally, for once in my life being happy with that part of my body that not only do they, um, deflate, but that they look worse now than they did before!
Even THAT wouldn’t be so bad if my stomach was flat like it used to be, but pregnancy put SUCH a strain/stretch on my transverse abdominals that if I’m not consciously correcting/flexing those transverse abdominals my stomach will stick out farther than my breasts!
I don’t think I’m talking about the “need to do more situps” abs, this is something that needs to be corrected with specialized exercises, ones that I’ve been putting off researching/doing because frankly, who has the time?
I find myself covertly sizing up other mommy’s tummies at the town pool, wondering how the ones that look like they never carried a baby recovered like they did.. were they just younger? better genetics? carried differently? Or did they WORK at getting those core muscles back in shape?
I still remember exactly what it felt like standing up for the first time after giving birth: like someone in a cartoon had blown a canon through my middle and if I turned to the front you’d see a giant hole! I felt like I had rubber in between my shoulders and my knees, like a giant gumby. No core muscles at all!
Sometimes I wonder if the damage that was done to my body is more than just normal postpartum wear and tear and if I should get the muscle weaknesses evaluated.. but I’m not even sure what type of dr. to go to for that (OB?, Physical therapist?)
So talk to me about how you all feel about your postpartum body and what, if anything, you’ve done to change it?
Ariana (aka becoming-mom) is a 30 something self admitted helicopter mom with a habit of blurting out everything about infertility, pregnancy, birth, parenting and just about anything else to anyone who will listen. (read more...)
@nycscout have you ever been to merestead mansion in westchester? Was there this weekend.. Beautiful but the county has kind of let it go.. in reply to nycscout2010-08-03
I think #dell lost my new system. I don't why I never learn my lesson, they always manage to screw me somehow! 2010-08-03
Just saw a mom hit her kid and call him a f'n ahole :( 2010-07-15
Jasper put his pj pants on all by himself! They were backwards and inside out but still he got both legs in... So proud!! 2010-06-17
