Day 3 of the Imaging USA and it’s the final day. It was the final day yesterday, we got in pretty late yesterday night and I was too tired to write anything. There was an awards ceremony for some people that was between 7pm and 8pm and the dinner they offered presented by Kodak was at 8:30 so we waited around for an hour and a half to get the free food. It was actually pretty nice, the first dinner on the first day had a theme, it was “under the Phoenix skies” of which we had Mexican type food. It was ok, can’t say no to free. But last night’s dinner theme was “next stop, Nashville” which is where the next imaging USA will be. And they had some good food there, all county type food like pulled pork, mashed potatoes inside potato skins, corn bread, you get the idea. That was last night and so we got in late, but let me back up and tell you about the day.
We started day with only some 4 hours of sleep and we were both pretty exhausted. Olga and I could fall asleep the night before, we had just had a great day of classes then had dinner with Autumn and Allen, and we chatted at the Olive Garden till they almost kicked us out, we were the last customers in there. The first class we had was “the Joy of Pricing” with Sarah Petty as the speaker, and wouldn’t you know it, she started us off with a slideshow of her work. We felt that this class would be a good one, because if you ask any photographer in this business, you tend to struggle with this one a lot and its what makes a great photographer. If you charge too little you end up, working too hard for too little money to support you and the business, and clients become unhappy and it spirals out of control. You end up burnt out and looking for a new job somewhere. If you charge too much and you have no justification for that high price rate, you don’t attract any clients, you sit around wondering what’s wrong, soon the rent is due, electric gets turn off, and you don’t have money for gas to go anywhere and you just fall apart. And so to find that happy medium is what we want to strive for, something that both you and the customer and agree to. One of the points she made that I had come to understand well is to not do discounts, in this line of work, the money you charge, every dollar of that goes to something, so when you take any of that away you will wobble, and the best alternative is to add value instead. Offering additional hours, extra prints, maybe even an album, and so if you aren’t already contemplating that, think about it. She too also talked about having a strong brand, with a logo and constant look and feel to everything.
Following this class, the order of the day was different then the days before. First two days was 3 classes, Expo, class then a final event, this time it was one class, expo, and 3 more classes and then final event. We did the expo thing, walking around talking to vendor, they had awesome deals, like custom backdrops, for only $100 and Wacom tablets 6x8 normally $350 for $280. And with the last day many vendors were offering deals and what not, like four 4x6 albums for $20 and the like. What is great about this expo is you get to see what new products that are out there, like the Radio popper, these pretty awesome Wacom tablets with a built in screen, cool awesome software, and the great thing is you get to pick up and touch and feel everything. So if you saw a company’s website on backdrops for example not you get to really see how big they really are.
When it comes to software, they have live demonstrations on what it can do. Normally you’d see an ad for say Success ware or Studio plus, and maybe you can download a demo from their site, but chances are you don’t know how to work it and so you dismiss it. But here at the expo, at their booth they have a big screen TV hooked up to a computer and they are demonstrating it for you.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the main eating area there, and at the rate the line was moving I knew we were going to be late for our next class, “photoshop Automation Tricks”. And can you imagine who the speaker was going to be, the main man Kevin Kubota, no less. Now I’ve used his photoshop shop actions before, and knew the name “Kubota” but to put a name to the face of the guy who came up with this concept was awesome. It’s like being into science and meeting Ben Franklin or something. Well as luck would have it, I was walking into his class late, and he’s up on the stage, and throwing what looked like fresbies, but he was giving away some of this disks and mouse pads, as I was walking by was able to try and catch one and it bounced off my hand and into some guy’s lap, I kept walking. The second time, boom it hit my hand and landed at the feet of this woman, and I was like no, that one is mine. Well when I took my seat and got settled, I was kind of too far away to see what he was doing so I had to move forward, knocking down a few people as I went. Not on purpose! He took us through what it takes to make an action of which I knew but it was a good refresher, but later he got into making droplets and scripts that I thought was awesome. And as he’s telling us, he’s like “Hold on, I know what you’re thinking, it’s not that hard, I know you can do this”. He was also quite comical and had a great personality.
The next class was on “expanding your wedding business” and you can imagine I was all excited about, with some big photographers out of New York that have been doing this for 3 generations. We were only there for 20 minutes before we left, nothing new, kind of stale. We walked into “Subtle art of family portraiture” and as we walked in the do was singing. We were like oh no… are we going to have to walk out of here too? He was going on about “la, la, la, la, la, la” you know singing high and low notes, but we gave it a chance before leaving and glad we did. He talked about how posing a family is more like writing music, where you position the heads, much like what you would do on a music scale. And it makes for a more interesting picture. If you had a row of people and their heads where all even, you’d end up with a steady song, boring. But if you position them, staggered up and down, you have something better. The speaker’s name was Drake Busath, and the dude was interesting as he was funny. Drake got into working with children and his gets tip he gave was, don’t focus on the children. Get the kids to focus on you, when you become interesting and you are standing near or behind the camera, you take better pictures. And looking at his work that’s so true! And most of the time we kind of take two types of children photos, pictures of them smiling and then pictures of them crying, because they are done and bored. Well he gets all kinds of emotions out of them by telling them interesting stories, like if Drake was working with a little girl, he would say “oh I had a pretty dress like that when I was a little girl” and the little girl would look confused. Snap take a picture. Or he’d tell a story like “how do you like your teacher at school, do they lock you in a dungeon with snakes and scary things?” and you’d have fear, snap take a picture. He uses a puppet a lot and communicates with it as if it were alive and when he wants the kid to sit up straight, he’d get all mad at the puppet and not at the child, and the kid would see, “uh Oh, the puppet’s going to get a spanking, I’d better not do what he did” and so its so cute. Or he’d talk to the flowers or the grass the child would walk on, “ok little grass fairies, don’t you go biting the little kids toes this time ok” and the child would look down in wonder like, WOW… Snap take a picture. Great speaker and a crazy singer, but well worth.
Last one of the day was “photoshop Tricks and Tips that will blow your mind” another class with dual speakers, not what I enjoy but it worked out, we learned some cool things. It was cool to see them do things in photoshop that might take 5 minutes or something, and it would only take them seconds. I’m not going to get into all they did, but if you are into photoshop, I’d recommend checking out http://www.adventuresinphotoshop.com/.
All in all we had a good time. Three days of intense learning from some of the top masters in the field for such a small about of money, is without a doubt well worth it. We both could not take a fourth day, it’s just too much. I plan on writing another email or blog entry that would encompass all of what I think would be good, some tips, and some ideas. And one thing I could pass on now is, get that sleep when doing 12 hours a day of learning, it’s pretty important.
We started day with only some 4 hours of sleep and we were both pretty exhausted. Olga and I could fall asleep the night before, we had just had a great day of classes then had dinner with Autumn and Allen, and we chatted at the Olive Garden till they almost kicked us out, we were the last customers in there. The first class we had was “the Joy of Pricing” with Sarah Petty as the speaker, and wouldn’t you know it, she started us off with a slideshow of her work. We felt that this class would be a good one, because if you ask any photographer in this business, you tend to struggle with this one a lot and its what makes a great photographer. If you charge too little you end up, working too hard for too little money to support you and the business, and clients become unhappy and it spirals out of control. You end up burnt out and looking for a new job somewhere. If you charge too much and you have no justification for that high price rate, you don’t attract any clients, you sit around wondering what’s wrong, soon the rent is due, electric gets turn off, and you don’t have money for gas to go anywhere and you just fall apart. And so to find that happy medium is what we want to strive for, something that both you and the customer and agree to. One of the points she made that I had come to understand well is to not do discounts, in this line of work, the money you charge, every dollar of that goes to something, so when you take any of that away you will wobble, and the best alternative is to add value instead. Offering additional hours, extra prints, maybe even an album, and so if you aren’t already contemplating that, think about it. She too also talked about having a strong brand, with a logo and constant look and feel to everything.
Following this class, the order of the day was different then the days before. First two days was 3 classes, Expo, class then a final event, this time it was one class, expo, and 3 more classes and then final event. We did the expo thing, walking around talking to vendor, they had awesome deals, like custom backdrops, for only $100 and Wacom tablets 6x8 normally $350 for $280. And with the last day many vendors were offering deals and what not, like four 4x6 albums for $20 and the like. What is great about this expo is you get to see what new products that are out there, like the Radio popper, these pretty awesome Wacom tablets with a built in screen, cool awesome software, and the great thing is you get to pick up and touch and feel everything. So if you saw a company’s website on backdrops for example not you get to really see how big they really are.
When it comes to software, they have live demonstrations on what it can do. Normally you’d see an ad for say Success ware or Studio plus, and maybe you can download a demo from their site, but chances are you don’t know how to work it and so you dismiss it. But here at the expo, at their booth they have a big screen TV hooked up to a computer and they are demonstrating it for you.
We grabbed a quick lunch in the main eating area there, and at the rate the line was moving I knew we were going to be late for our next class, “photoshop Automation Tricks”. And can you imagine who the speaker was going to be, the main man Kevin Kubota, no less. Now I’ve used his photoshop shop actions before, and knew the name “Kubota” but to put a name to the face of the guy who came up with this concept was awesome. It’s like being into science and meeting Ben Franklin or something. Well as luck would have it, I was walking into his class late, and he’s up on the stage, and throwing what looked like fresbies, but he was giving away some of this disks and mouse pads, as I was walking by was able to try and catch one and it bounced off my hand and into some guy’s lap, I kept walking. The second time, boom it hit my hand and landed at the feet of this woman, and I was like no, that one is mine. Well when I took my seat and got settled, I was kind of too far away to see what he was doing so I had to move forward, knocking down a few people as I went. Not on purpose! He took us through what it takes to make an action of which I knew but it was a good refresher, but later he got into making droplets and scripts that I thought was awesome. And as he’s telling us, he’s like “Hold on, I know what you’re thinking, it’s not that hard, I know you can do this”. He was also quite comical and had a great personality.
The next class was on “expanding your wedding business” and you can imagine I was all excited about, with some big photographers out of New York that have been doing this for 3 generations. We were only there for 20 minutes before we left, nothing new, kind of stale. We walked into “Subtle art of family portraiture” and as we walked in the do was singing. We were like oh no… are we going to have to walk out of here too? He was going on about “la, la, la, la, la, la” you know singing high and low notes, but we gave it a chance before leaving and glad we did. He talked about how posing a family is more like writing music, where you position the heads, much like what you would do on a music scale. And it makes for a more interesting picture. If you had a row of people and their heads where all even, you’d end up with a steady song, boring. But if you position them, staggered up and down, you have something better. The speaker’s name was Drake Busath, and the dude was interesting as he was funny. Drake got into working with children and his gets tip he gave was, don’t focus on the children. Get the kids to focus on you, when you become interesting and you are standing near or behind the camera, you take better pictures. And looking at his work that’s so true! And most of the time we kind of take two types of children photos, pictures of them smiling and then pictures of them crying, because they are done and bored. Well he gets all kinds of emotions out of them by telling them interesting stories, like if Drake was working with a little girl, he would say “oh I had a pretty dress like that when I was a little girl” and the little girl would look confused. Snap take a picture. Or he’d tell a story like “how do you like your teacher at school, do they lock you in a dungeon with snakes and scary things?” and you’d have fear, snap take a picture. He uses a puppet a lot and communicates with it as if it were alive and when he wants the kid to sit up straight, he’d get all mad at the puppet and not at the child, and the kid would see, “uh Oh, the puppet’s going to get a spanking, I’d better not do what he did” and so its so cute. Or he’d talk to the flowers or the grass the child would walk on, “ok little grass fairies, don’t you go biting the little kids toes this time ok” and the child would look down in wonder like, WOW… Snap take a picture. Great speaker and a crazy singer, but well worth.
Last one of the day was “photoshop Tricks and Tips that will blow your mind” another class with dual speakers, not what I enjoy but it worked out, we learned some cool things. It was cool to see them do things in photoshop that might take 5 minutes or something, and it would only take them seconds. I’m not going to get into all they did, but if you are into photoshop, I’d recommend checking out http://www.adventuresinphotoshop.com/.
All in all we had a good time. Three days of intense learning from some of the top masters in the field for such a small about of money, is without a doubt well worth it. We both could not take a fourth day, it’s just too much. I plan on writing another email or blog entry that would encompass all of what I think would be good, some tips, and some ideas. And one thing I could pass on now is, get that sleep when doing 12 hours a day of learning, it’s pretty important.
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