Yesterday saw a long live Q&A session that went a bit emotional when my surprise delivery arrived – I can’t thank you all enough. Notices in here at the start include an introduction to Sirley, an update on The Newborn and Portrait Show, our new workshop details and the MTog meetup details for this week.
The next Q&A will be in April and is available for registration via the Q&A page.
Here’s Sirley’s abbreviated questions, also added to the video as timestamps:
- 9:20 – When’s good to submit critiques? Is it best to leave til next week if you are busy at the convention?
- 9:46 Are you doing any presentations in London
- 10:26 – More importantly, what did Dan buy you for your birthday
- 14:32 Going through with businesses in the local area – blogging on small business products
- 16:55 – printing – on your video that you put out on Facebook about preparing to print and having proofs in front of you and matching them with prints on the screen. Are you not using any of the lab’s print profiles at all?
- 22:19 – lights bar – do you have that on whilst you do your editing? When do you use yours?
- 23:06 – digitalabs- glass? do you have that?
- 23:48 – should my products to clients be in a 2×3 ratio
- 27:10 shooting vertical on my sony – you cant get the spirit level to come up as opposed to shooting horizontal.
- 27:42 – following on from the previous question
- 29:17 – is it worth the extra money for it?
- 29:53 societies awards? What’s it like?
- 49: 32 society awards suitable clothing
- 51:18 Lightroom and photoshop editing – if i am working directly off the nas drive will the speed be significantly impacted
- 52:55 follow-up question – is there somewhere in the resources a talk on organising
- 58:34 is it quite easy to rename things and to reorganise things?
- 59:24 about including print credits or not – does that look like a con to the customer?
- 1:05:43 Lightroom- catalogues, do you start a new catalogue each year.
- 1:07:25 – Is it too late to start a new catalogue for 2023?
- 1:09:46 – Monthly print competition, entered three images. Paid for a judge review. Depth of field falling off…i’m wondering if there is a trend toward not doing that?
- 1:18:45 (1:20:00)- lightroom – is there a way to save from photoshop back to Lightroom?
- 1: 25:13 rights to graphics and …? Making images in canva with bought images (is it advertising)
- 1:28:00 – My Logo- having trouble with the text part of it. Can I do this with someone else’s work? Is that ethical?
- 1:32:33 – judging categories? Is there any way of knowing of the times?
- 1:37:55 – would they be sequential?
- 1:47:41 – Attending events, i sell a lot of prints. I dont know whether i should have a label or a sticker to stick on the back of the print?
- 1:50:00 – I’ve been running boosted posts on FB as per business bootcamp. And I keep getting lots of engagement from people way outside of London, even though that’s where I set my location to. Like, not even in the continent levels of engagement. Could I be missing something? Also, not many people who like the post follow me when I invite them to, is there anything else I can do to encourage those people to check me out further? When building Theo’s Instagram before, I know that engagement is key on both sides to growing an account but not sure how to do that on Facebook, because all I can think to do is to send a message to those that dropped a like to thank them for doing so but I feel like that would be spammy and unwarranted?
- 1:51:22 – I asked in the group but just wondered what your opinion is on how to handle people who don’t want to continue a conversation past “how much does it cost?” Because I shoot portraits, social media content, and events/brands I try to engage potential clients in conversation so that I can give them an accurate price, but they don’t want to talk to me. Sad face. I am starting to realise that targeting the crowd that I have been in London is not working out for me, because I’m finding that most people that have an Instagram for their dogs (I mention Instagram because this is where I keep hitting this pricing conversation wall) are doing it because they want and expect free stuff for said dogs. So now I am targeting Londoners in general who has a dog rather than dog accounts in London if that makes sense. Anyway, just wondered if you had any input or whether I should just send over my full investment guide to these people and assume they aren’t going to move forward for now.
- 1:53:39 – HEY! Happy birthday, Jess! I hope your day is delightful.
- questions: What do you suggest for people who just can’t get down on the ground? There were comments in the group before about this, and there were several that can’t. Do you have any advice or ideas for this?
- Would you consider adding this to one of your videos? Some ideas of how you’d approach it?
- 1:57:18- Next, you’ve mentioned a steeper hill doesn’t work very well. Would you say why? I didn’t really understand.
- 1:59:07 – And last, do you focus (pun intended) on getting catch lights in the dog’s eyes? I can’t really tell, but here’s why I’m asking.
- 1:59:25 – You mentioned putting the dog at one end of the log, and then the other. So if the first direction does have catchlights, then the other one won’t. How do you deal with that?
- 2:00:00 – I am trying to finalise what I offer in my packages, but am struggling to decide which size wall art to include. I offer each of my wall art pieces in three sizes, 24×16, 30×20 and 36×24. Only the middle and top packages include a wall art piece, but I cant decide whether I am best offering the 24×16 in the middle package and the 30×20 in the top package, or the 30×20 in the middle package and the 36×24 in the top package. The second option seems like it would be offering better value, but I am concerned that by offering the largest size as part of a package I am limiting my ability to upsale to larger pieces.
- 2:01:55 – Can you advise on essential paperwork that is required for photoshoots & where to find / buy examples…such as model release
- 2:07:07 – Think at a skill level where ready to start working through the full edit videos, any recommended order…difficulty level please.
- 2:10:20 – What would you say are the ‘safe/basic shots’ to make sure to include in a ps, of course along with other more exciting ones
- 2:12:05 – Can you give us a little lesson in the fab sounds you and Dan make…attention/head tilt makers
- 2: 14:11 – Ps hope Tuna is ok – did you ever look into the Arc Equine for rehab/maintenance x
- 2:18:48 – a client asked if she could post my images on pinterest (the one she got are without my logo) – I declined but wonder if that was a good decision, how would you answer that if clients love their images so much they want to post them – I doubt she would link my company though.
- 2:19:15 – This is a question about dpi. The action in ps for social media sets the images to 200 dpi, but I saw online that the standard web ready dpi is 72. Is there a specific reason that the action is set to 200? I guess is there a big difference in terms of using the images online at 72 vs 200dpi?
- 2:21:30 – Do you think I should offer reduced priced photoshoot for them if they buy images, to get my name out?
- 2:24:10 – I have recently partnered with a local dog rescue. They have offered me a place at an event they have in August and this will be be my first real event. They have said that the last person who did this for them printed on site straight after the shoot. What kind of printer would I need to be able to do this?
- 2:26:15 – Question for Jess or anyone! Back to print profiles again (yawn!) – when you save them to your custom proof set up in Photoshop, how do you delete them afterwards? Mine wont go away 🙈
- 2:27:17 – Photospeed…(Not a question but an answer for question at 2:24:10)
- 2:29:41 Can you comment a bit this years tog awards? number of entries, quality of the entries, etc, anything interesting you can already us 🙂
- 2:30:47 – Have you finished judging
- 2:31:30 I’d like to know your thoughts on using the golden ratio grid for composition as opposed to the rule of thirds
- 2:33:10 – Will you be holding a feedback session like last year Tog Awards? Or is it best to get them deep critiqued?
- 2:34:05 – Can you do a video on different ratios and type of image that suits which?
- 2:34:28 – Do you typically get judges comments from most competitions?
- 2:35:17 – Do you have to pay for the feedback in the guild?
- 2:36:10 What are you doing for dinner tonight?
- 2:37:54 – How many director spots do you have?
- 2:44:17 More premium plus spots?
- 2:50:00 – Premium+ membership question, how many Premium members would like to watch the critiques back who can’t actually submit them? How many Premium+ members would be ok for other members to see them?
- 2:56:45 – crop/prop sensor?
- 3:00:43 – I’m struggling with my photography, how can I get help?
This Q&A session was LONG.