The End of Summer Random Discussion for TPBM (29)

BearLeeAlive wrote in post #8620779
More truths, Dan.
Why does it scare me so when you speak in non-nonsensical terminology?

It frightens me, too.

JWright wrote in post #8620770
We all want to present ourselves in the best light to others and, at least in my case, by only putting the best work on my site you guys won't know how much I really suck...

:o Not in my case, I often put up my snapshots too as I use my galleries as temporary scrapbooks for my friends and family. *shrugs*

Dan, you narrowly avoided the fish. Just sayin.

Now I feel like the siggy police though.

BearLeeAlive wrote in post #8620779
...
Why does it scare me so when you speak in non-nonsensical terminology? ..

is non-nonsensical a real word? What about non-non-nonsensical? Would that be sensical?

Oh, and part 2 totally rocks.

cfpackerfan wrote in post #8620816
Now I feel like the siggy police though.

*Hoping mine is Catitically correct*

gjl711 wrote in post #8620820
is non-nonsensical a real word? What about non-non-nonsensical? Would that be sensical?

C'mon, get real now. Actually non-non-non-nonsensical would be back to sensical. Do the math.

Wait....sensical is not even a word.

What were we talking about again?

Permagrin wrote in post #8619743
Blurb is going to re-print my book. They asked me to upload B&W's as png's and to lighten the photos that printed too dark but they aren't going to charge me to re-print since there were obvious printer flaws.

Good to hear, Lisa. Hope it turns out much much better. Especially since you have to do extra work.

short5 wrote in post #8619987
Stop that, I want to see your pictures. I have seen what a day shooting looks like straight out of your camera and was very impressed at you 90%ish keeper rate

^^^^That. I was in shock I tell you! How many years do I need under my belt before I'm that good?

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8620206
Oh, right.

The vets (note: plural) say she looks very good. Hale got high marks all around. They're taking "pics" of her arm now, I'll pick her up around 4.

Excellent!

DDA wrote in post #8620257
First shot is in the direction of the glaciers. That's where we are heading...

Hosted photo: posted by DDA in
./showthread.php?p=862​0257&i=i120608764
forum: The Lounge

Second shows you the valley below us. So from that point, we walked for 2.5 hours to the right (right to the end of the valley), went down and walked back to the village that you can see at the far left (at the other end of the valley). The hike was a total of about 25km...

Hosted photo: posted by DDA in
./showthread.php?p=862​0257&i=i165962984
forum: The Lounge

Beautiful! I never tire of seeing your wonderful scenery.

Becky N wrote in post #8620460
Skinit finally got skins big enough for my Studio 17" laptop so I had this shot done, sent in a full resolution file and still the tree is badly pixelated, but, for what I'm using it for I really like it. What I don't like is Dell changed their laptop covers so when the lid is open whoever is in front of you can read Dell right side up and that emblem is not centered on the cover. Therefore the skin cut out is such, you have to mount the picture so it too is rightside up to the person standing infront of you. So it is upside down to me when the lid is closed. Shot works great for a laptop skin if I do say so myself, though.

Gorgeous sunset!

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8620662
OK, part two of my ramblings.

Expectations. We all have 'em. We all need 'em. Really.

More later.

*clap clap clap* I agree! Don't always remember it though.

Part Three of Random Ramblings:

OK, so you've done the shoot. Now you're home and you've downloaded your card(s). So you've got a ton of photos staring back at you.

Let's look at the numbers. Say this shoot was a wedding. You've promised the couple 250 shots. (I'm making this up, I'm not sure what Lisa promises. I think 250 is the low end of the deal) You took 1500 shots and, like a good kid, most of those shots are duplicates to give you a safety net. Sure, there are those people that will walk into a wedding venue, shoot only 500 shots and every single one of them is perfect.

Of these creeps, we shall not speak.

We have a bunch of duplicates, but that's OK. Anyway, you took 1500 shots, needing only, say, 300, giving yourself a buffer.

That means you've got 1200 to lose.

Thus, the culling of the herd begins. Again, you have to be honest with yourself and the shots you took. If the shot is really bad, like Grandma is unrecognizable or you totally blew out the exposure, sure, ditch it. But if you're just grumpy because you're hungry, take a break so that you can look at the shots afresh.

The first culling is simple. Blurry, really, really bad exposure, flash failing to fire (say that three times fast...), nothing in focus, etc. The second culling is a bit more challenging. Remember how it was said that it's important to take 3-5 shots of every pose and/or composition? Take those shots, and choose the two, or the one best of the group.

You keep doing this until you have just a little more than you promised.

Here's the trick to culling: Be brutal. Think in terms of time.

As was mentioned earlier, time is money. The more time you spend processing, the less time you have for other stuff.

Say you're just starting out in the photog biz. You only have one wedding scheduled for all of the Summer. So you shoot it and you have, literally, MONTHS to finish it, right?

No, wrong.

Think of where you want to be in five years. Do you want to be doing that wild and crazy photog business where you're shooting 30+ weddings every year on top of Senior portraits and other such stuff? Then, realistically, you have, maybe, a week to process ALL the shots of the wedding. More like three days.

Why three days? You shoot the wedding on Saturday. You process Sunday-Tuesday. Wednesday you do meetings with prospective clients and show the newlyweds their proofs. Thursday, maybe a day off. Friday you do more meetings and meet with the next wedding couple at the rehearsal and get ready for Saturday's wedding. See?

If you set up your speedy workflow NOW, even if you don't have that large scale of a business, then you won't be overwhelmed when that time comes.

Start thinking of how much time you want to spend processing the shots. If you have only three days (say, ten hour days) to process 300 shots, that equals that you process ten photos an hour.

One photo every six minutes. That's so that you can keep your head above water.

So, look at your photos. Think, "Can I process that in six minutes?"

Here's something else to consider when culling. Not every shot is going to be a stellar, "Great Knees of Ramses" shot. When you look over your shots, 90-95% of them will be processed simply. A quick and dirty processing to that makes it stand out. We'll talk about processing in the next post. But the vast majority of the shots will be just a couple of tweaks, a tonal curve or a bump in saturation.

I can hear the collective gasps now. "NO! Every shot must be portfolio perfect!"

Here's the problem with that. One: You don't have the time. You don't. Remember, six minutes. Two: The client doesn't care. Three: You're gonna kill yourself doing it. Really. I'd give you three weddings processing that way and you'll be so sick of photography that you'll quit.

On point Two: The client doesn't care. I've seen brides look at shots that were almost tossed and they fall in love with them. They were blurry or something, but they love 'em. Here's why: When we, as photographers, look at a photo, we look at the Art of the photo. When they look at the photo, they look at the Emotion or the Memory of the photo. We see narrow DOF, they see Grandma smiling at their wedding.

Case in point. Zane and Leyla just lost Jinx, may she RIP. The pain and sorrow we feel is just a fraction of what they feel. Lately, Zane posted up some shots of Jinx. Like this one:

OK, who's the one that looked at this shot and said, "Wow, it's crooked, the darks are too muddy, it's too centered and what's with that shadow?" I know I didn't. I was all, "Aww" and sniffles, right? Because the emotion was complete.

I'm not saying that this is a license to get sloppy with the shots, but we need to remember that a photo is a combination of technical correctness and decisive moment. Brain and heart.

OK, so 90-95% of the shots, you do straight processing. But for the other 5-10%, you blow their socks off! As you're culling the massive herd, you start looking for those shots that really stand out. REALLY stand out. Those are the ones that you take some time with. You really pretty them up. So that the bride will look at the proofs and go, "Nice, nice, nice, WOW!"

Be brutal while culling. Not because the shots are bad, but because you have to think in terms of time.

And your time is worth something!

One more, then I'm done.

Hi again folks ..I'm cooking and such Shocking .

cfpackerfan wrote in post #8620816
Dan, you narrowly avoided the fish. Just sayin.

Now I feel like the siggy police though.

Flatfoot. Copper. Siggy Fink.

Becky N wrote in post #8620748
Excellent, Dan and Jon is right in putting these words of wisdom into their own gallery.

So I have to ask, because I love you and consider you a good enough friend that you know this is coming from my heart. May I quote the above when we remind you how good you are as a cartoonist and photographer?

That^

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8620963
Case in point. Zane and Leyla just lost Jinx, may she RIP. The pain and sorrow we feel is just a fraction of what they feel. Lately, Zane posted up some shots of Jinx. Like this one:

OK, who's the one that looked at this shot and said, "Wow, it's crooked, the darks are too muddy, it's too centered and what's with that shadow?" I know I didn't. I was all, "Aww" and sniffles, right? Because the emotion was complete.

I did after I said aww and sniffled. Becoming a photographer has damaged my ability to look at pictures.
Great wisdom Dan.

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8621002
Flatfoot. Copper. Siggy Fink.

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8620963
Here's the trick to culling: Be brutal. Think in terms of time.

OK, who's the one that looked at this shot and said, "Wow, it's crooked, the darks are too muddy, it's too centered and what's with that shadow?" I know I didn't. I was all, "Aww" and sniffles, right? Because the emotion was complete.

I completely agree on the culling of photos. This is one aspect I do fairly good at. I know MANY refuse to do it, and you can see in some galleries where there are a dozen VERY similar photos, it really makes it tiresome to peruse through.

Not I, the story combined with the photo evoked emotion, as picky as I can be about prose and photography, I never noticed anything amiss. I have many of these type photos, most of which I would never post though.

Part Four, and I'm done.

Processing, in the arena of the six minute rule, is vastly important. Again, I'm not against Photoshop or Lightroom or whatever system you use. I just think that we get lost in the velvety morass of the digital darkroom. I tend to get all mesmerized by all the presets and actions. Seriously, I have a TON of actions and presets. I have no idea what 80% of them do. I mean, is this guy's B/W action better than this girl's B/W preset?

Here's how to survive this labyrinth. When you have some time, go through all your actions and presets. Take a normal photo and apply the day away! As you do, write down the actions presets that you really like. Find different kinds and styles. A really nice smooth B/W. Something gritty. Contrasty. Bumped saturation. Etc. Collect about 10-15 presets/actions. These are your "GoTo" processing points.

Now, when you're doing that fast and furious processing for that 90-95%, you don't have to hunt and peck for a Sepia processing; you know that you have one that is ready to rock and roll.

Every 4-6 months, review this GoTo list. Is there a preset that you use A LOT? Is there an action that you seem to use over and over? Maybe give it a rest for a cycle. I don't know about you, but it's not uncommon for me to overuse a preset. When I look at a gallery and they all have that v300 preset look... I know I've gone too far.

Anyway, with straight processing or with a predetermined presets/actions list, you can blow through a LOT of the shots in a hurry.

OK, all done. Thanks for letting me ramble. I'll shut up now.

Dan, wow. Just wow on your last post. Definitely something I needed to read while processing my last shoot.

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8621002
Flatfoot. Copper. Siggy Fink.

ROFLMaO! That cracked me up!!!