The End of Summer Random Discussion for TPBM (29)

Permagrin wrote in post #8621515
NFL season starts right now. WOO HOO

Permagrin wrote in post #8621536
oooh just got word on Hale! good news

Permagrin wrote in post #8621607
GAH! Kerry Collins is the titans quarterback?? I can't stand him. (goes waaay back to his white supremest stance)

Woolburr wrote in post #8621671
WHOA! That is categorically untrue. The alleged incident happened when he was with the Panthers and was seriously blown out of proportion by the media....even after the Panthers and all the parties involved explained the situation and the fact there was nothing tied to white supremacy or racism involved. The whole episode hinged on the use of the "n" word....which numerous players...both white and black used liberally in the locker room. One player, Muhsin Muhammad, took offense to Collins and Julius Peppers constantly using the term and raised a stink.

BearLeeAlive wrote in post #8620779
C'mon, be real. You expect me to believe they had cameras when you were that age, let alone in colour?

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8620963
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.

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8621075
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.

Becky N wrote in post #8621118
Speaking of fish slaps, try as I might, I could not get a good shot of these kids batting each other, I was laughing out loud when I got close enough to see what they were using:

BearLeeAlive wrote in post #8621174
A cute joke I got in an email.

9 months later!!!

John decided to go skiing with his buddy, Keith. So they loaded up John's minivan and headed north.

After driving for a few hours, they got caught in a terrible blizzard. So they pulled into a nearby farm and asked the attractive lady who answered the door if they could spend the night.

'I realize it's terrible weather out there and I have this huge house all to myself, but I'm recently widowed,' she explained. 'I'm afraid the neighbors will talk if I let you stay in my house.'

'Don't worry,' John said. 'We'll be happy to sleep in the barn. And if the weather breaks, we'll be gone at first light.' The lady agreed, and the two=2 men found their way to the barn and settled in for the night.

Come morning, the weather had cleared, and they got on their way.
They enjoyed a great weekend of skiing.

But about nine months later, John got an unexpected letter from an attorney. It took him a few minutes to figure it out, but he finally determined that it was from the attorney of that attractive widow he had met on the ski weekend.

He dropped in on his friend Keith and asked, 'Keith, do you remember that good-looking widow from the farm we stayed at on our ski holiday up north about 9 months ago?'

'Yes, I do.' Said Keith.

'Did you, err, happen to get up in the middle of the night, go up to the house and pay her a visit?'

'Well, um, yes!,' Keith said, a little embarrassed about being found out, 'I have to admit that I did.'

'And did you happen to give her my name instead of telling her your name?'

Keith's face turned beet red and he said,
'Yeah, look, I'm sorry, buddy. I'm afraid I did.' 'Why do you ask?'

'She just died and left me everything.'


(And you thought the ending would be different, didn't you?... you know you smiled...now keep that smile for the rest of the day!)

puddlepirate44 wrote in post #8621184
It's Bernice from the cosmetics counter at Nordstrom's.

Permagrin wrote in post #8621542
she looks good! Next two weeks of light duty (no playing) but not stuck in the crate all the time. Then two weeks of easing her into playing. So she's on the "best" side of the odds they gave us when she had surgery. I'll find out more when he gets home.

gjl711 wrote in post #8619949
I have two photos in my office that even I cringe when I look at them. They were taken with my very first digital Nikon at a whopping 1mp. But both pics have a lot of meaning to me so I like pooking at them even though they are total carp.

Woolburr wrote in post #8621781
I should have fact checked the dates...it appears the other party involved was Tshimanga Biakabutuka.

Permagrin wrote in post #8621542
she looks good! Next two weeks of light duty (no playing) but not stuck in the crate all the time. Then two weeks of easing her into playing. So she's on the "best" side of the odds they gave us when she had surgery. I'll find out more when he gets home.

JWright wrote in post #8621761
Yeah, believe it or not... They'd even gotten beyond glass plates by then.

BearLeeAlive wrote in post #8621897
Well then, it might seem that dirt is in fact older than you.