Category: Tips

Spring cleaning

 Gavin   Digital Darkroom, Equipment, Techniques, Tips, Workflow

This is one of those little jobs that I’ve been meaning to do for ages and as yet hadn’t managed to make time until now. It’s time to spring clean my hard disks by migrating my image data to the NAS. Especially for my QTImages files. The ones for QTPortraits and QTWeddings are already backed up and the repositories are smaller but growing at an alarming rate with each photoshoot.

My QTImages repository on the other hand is a different matter. It spans more than 5 years and 10’s thousands of images. All that adds up to a lot of gigabytes to move around.

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Tip: Pleasing yourself

 Gavin   Tips

I was reminded recently of a discussion that came up on a course I took last year: that of making sure you please yourself when making your images. Doing so will keep you fresh, inspired and enthusiastic. This will reflect in your work and keep the job fun and enjoyable.

For example, for a full day’s wedding coverage it isn’t uncommon to shoot between 1500 and 2000 frames. When shooting say 20 weddings per year that’s a collosal 40000 images that need to be looked at. Allowing 3 minute per frame that’s the equivalent of about 3 months each year looking at images you don’t like. Motivation is now a major issue.

That doesn’t mean to say you can totally off piste. Don’t forget the client has hired you. You’re shooting to fulfil a brief and you need to deliver against it. Whatever else you do, make sure you get the “safe” shots in the bag but don’t be afraid to push the envelope to get the shots you want to make too. Time may not always be on your side but if it is, make sure you use it.

Taking stock of things

 Gavin   Business, Marketing, Tips

Funny business is the stock industry, and by that I mean photographic stock and not the city markets. The role of the stock library is very simple. Its a repository of images that a picture buyer can search to find and buy images for their projects. They supply an enormous range of clients and picture needs from newspapers to advertising to cards and calendars. Every time you flick through a book or a newspaper, or see an advert, card or calendar you’ll probably find the images they use were actually purchased from a stock library rather than being commissioned for the job. That isn’t true in every case but you’d be surprised how common and prolific it is.

If you’re interested in finding out a little more about this field, read on.

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A lesson in sales…

 Gavin   Business, Sales, Tips

There is a definite art to selling. There are definite DO’s and definite DON’T’s. When you come across a great salesman/saleswoman, someone who really knows what they’re doing rather than push-push-push, it’s a really great experience for BOTH parties. Sadly you don’t find these people very often which is a real shame. I touched upon this subject in a recent post, here and my change in attitude towards telesales, here. This post expands on this a little further.

This afternoon, I had a telesales call from someone at BT trying to sell me advertising on an internet directory. After initially posing as a customer I quickly established that this wasn’t in fact a enquiry but rather was going to cost me. How did I, as the prospect feel? Annoyed and feeling that this wasn’t someone I could trust. He’d already lost me. At this point I’d already made up my mind I wasn’t interested but more importantly, I wasn’t going to be parting with any money. Continue reading A lesson in sales… »

Battery power

 Gavin   Equipment, Tips

I don’t recall suffering from this in the good old days of analogue photography, but these days I’m forever charging batteries of one sort or another. The list just keeps getting longer too. For instance, these days I have to do the following prior to every photo-shoot:

  • Camera battery – 2 or 3 Canon LP-E6
  • Flash batteries – upto 24 AA batteries (3 flash guns with 2 sets of 4 batteries per unit)
  • Radio triggers – 6 AA batteries. 12 if its a long shoot and I’ll need two sets
  • Portable back-up drives – 8 AA batteries (2 drives with 4 batteries each)
  • Spare AA batteries

That little lot adds up to getting on for 40-50 AA batteries. Managing that number of batteries is not without problems.

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