1st dog agility trial as official photog

Hi everyone,
Well I had my first official event (dog agility trial) last weekend and so far so good. I just finished/posted the proofs tonight and I had orders within the hour. I may have found myself a good little niche here. Maybe it will eventually pay for a 1d Mk III

One thing that is different then I'm used to is how you go about processing a couple thousand photos from a long weekend trial in a short time (less then a week). My normal workflow would not work as it would take me way to long. I'm doing a trimmed down process of everything in Lightroom and will only completely process photos that are ordered. I still need some improvements to quicken the process but that will come with time.

Anyway, so far so good.

Here is a link to the proofs (this is a photo sharing section after all ): http://johnwoolley.zen​folio.com/f521147336

Love the shots, some of the weaving ones are great!! I would put the copyright sign in the center of the photo as some can be copied and cropped

Congrats on getting one done, John. I hope the sales go well! A bit of critique, if you don't mind...

Firstly as you're seeing, the volume can be overwhelming. But as is plain from the photos you've posted from this weekend versus the individual posts you've made on POTN with pics, the quality has dropped. It's your sweet spot to find: do you cull more photos, allowing you to spend a bit of time on them before putting them out for sale, or do you cull nothing and publish every click taken. You've picked a spot that may be what you like, but I'd recommend keeping an eye on what you sell, and perhaps revisiting where you make that balance as you put more shoots behind you. I usually shoot around 3000 shots/day, and end up with 400 or so shots that I publish, just so you have one figure.

Actions, actions, actions. Figure out a few "one click" Photoshop actions that will help you process the photos, and that may also help convince you to do a bit more processing on them before publishing.

Lastly I note that a lot of these shots have quite a bit more DOF than the ones you've been posting before. Is that true, or am I hallucinating?

Just trying to help
Dave

tracknut wrote in post #8502428
Congrats on getting one done, John. I hope the sales go well! A bit of critique, if you don't mind...

Firstly as you're seeing, the volume can be overwhelming. But as is plain from the photos you've posted from this weekend versus the individual posts you've made on POTN with pics, the quality has dropped. It's your sweet spot to find: do you cull more photos, allowing you to spend a bit of time on them before putting them out for sale, or do you cull nothing and publish every click taken. You've picked a spot that may be what you like, but I'd recommend keeping an eye on what you sell, and perhaps revisiting where you make that balance as you put more shoots behind you. I usually shoot around 3000 shots/day, and end up with 400 or so shots that I publish, just so you have one figure.

Actions, actions, actions. Figure out a few "one click" Photoshop actions that will help you process the photos, and that may also help convince you to do a bit more processing on them before publishing.

Lastly I note that a lot of these shots have quite a bit more DOF than the ones you've been posting before. Is that true, or am I hallucinating?

Just trying to help
Dave

HI Dave,
Thanks for the feedback/critique! I was kind of hoping you'd see this thread and have some feedback You are 100% right with the "sweet spot" on how many to post and how to post process, and it is something that I struggled with. It is also something I'm going to have to figure out quickly (I hope).

I published about half the photos I took. Most of the photos I culled were ones I missed the AF on or just blew the framing so bad it wasn't worth it to try to save (and of course some where the human's got in the way ). The other reason I struggled with how many to publish is that I am always surprised by what photos non-photographers like. I'll see a photo with a dozen things wrong and people will love it. Again, striking that balance of quality vs quantity and knowing your customers (which I don't quite know well enough yet).

These were also the worst conditions I've shot dog agility in. Super bright summer sun without a cloud in the sky. In the mornings/evenings to avoid harsh shadows I limited myself to one side of the ring... in the afternoons it didn't matter as much because harsh shadows abounded. In retrospect that is something else I should have experimented with.. trying to get some better angles on shots even if it meant shooting int the sun. I'm not sure how well they would have turned out but it was probably worth a try.

It is funny you mentioned photoshop actions. I shot my 1st (and ever only) wedding a few weeks ago (most informal backyard wedding you can imagine for a friend) and I quickly found the benefits of using actions for the 1st time. I'm not sure why I didn't think of doing that for these, I guess was trying to keep the workflow as simple as possible.. even though I'm never 100% happy with what I get out of Lightroom vs when I use Photoshop. Now that I have some down time I'll start experimenting with some different processing workflows that include PS.

Anyway, thanks again for the feedback. I've got a ways to go and all the help is greatly appreciated!


John

Oh, DOF question. I pretty much always shoot right around f/4 (seems to be a good balance of DOF)... so they should be similar to others I've posted although I'll have to go back and check what f stop I used (on the posted ones). Thinking about it I did take bunch of shots well under 200mm which I normally don't do (some of the obstacles were pretty close this time) so maybe the DOF on those looks greater.

Do you use "Sync" in LightRoom. The lighting looks pretty similar so you should be able to get the first photo the way you like and sync the rest or you can break it up into hour long periods as the light does change through out the day. There isn't an action to straighten and crop though, that is just going to take time.

Dan-o wrote in post #8503358
Do you use "Sync" in LightRoom. The lighting looks pretty similar so you should be able to get the first photo the way you like and sync the rest or you can break it up into hour long periods as the light does change through out the day. There isn't an action to straighten and crop though, that is just going to take time.

I'll have to check that out.. thanks for the tip!

John

I don't have any words of wisdom here, but I definitely learned from everyone's post.

I enjoyed the pictures and wanted to say the last one of the white poodle jumping (I think on set page 10) made me laugh!! Nice work.

Well the photos have been up for 4 days or so and I've had ~50 photos ordered (plus a few magnets and key chains). I seem to be get getting 2-3 orders a day right now as people start to check the site to see if the photos are ready. I'm not sure how well that rate of sales are compared to others but I'm feeling pretty good about it so far.


Thanks
John

I have had some time playing with taking shots at agility competitions - I like your shots here, have a look at the test ones I've uploaded to flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/​agilitypics) - I'm trying to keep as little in the background as possible, and when I can focus in on the dog, which is harder than it sounds - none of these shots have been post processed, they are as they came off the card..