Had my 1st official event

*palmor* · 08-21-2009, 08:10 PM

Hi everyone,
Well I had my first official event (dog agility trial) last weekend and so far so good. I just finished/posted the proofs tonight and I had orders within the hour. I may have found myself a good little niche here.

One thing that is different then I'm used to is how you go about processing a couple thousand photos from a long weekend trial. My normal workflow would not work as it would take me way to long. For this I'm doing everything in Lightroom and will only completely process photos that are ordered. I still need some improvements to quicken the process but that will come with time.

Anyway, so far so good

Here is a link to the proofs if your interested: John Woolley Photography | Wag It CPE Trial August 14-16 Union Maine

John

**Damn Brit** · 08-21-2009, 11:11 PM

Congratulations John, you've been putting a lot of effort into this and I'm glad it's paid off for you.

*Ash* · 08-22-2009, 01:52 AM

Well done mate.
It's hard work, ain't it?
Enjoy the PP process, as arduous as it can be.
The end result is worth it!

*palmor* · 08-23-2009, 04:10 PM

Thanks! Yes the PP on 1k+ photos is pretty tiresome and I struggled a little with how much PP to do. I want the photos to look good but I don't want to spend too much time PP photos that aren't going to sell. I guess it will be one of those things that I learn to refine over time

John

*jbrowning* · 08-23-2009, 06:17 PM

Congratulations Palmor. I find myself in the same situation with photographing motorcycle races and I come away with over a 1000 photos from one weekend. Congratulations again and keep up the good work and enjoying it.

Jim

kunik · 08-24-2009, 09:24 PM

Originally Posted by palmor

Thanks! Yes the PP on 1k+ photos is pretty tiresome and I struggled a little with how much PP to do. I want the photos to look good but I don't want to spend too much time PP photos that aren't going to sell. I guess it will be one of those things that I learn to refine over time

John

Are you shooting jpg? I shoot all events in jpg. When you know you have your framing and exposure correct you can even dial down the resolution. When I shoot marathons and triathlons for the big sports companies I shoot 2MP images because they don't sell anything larger than 8x10. When I shoot mountain bike events (on my own) I shoot 6MP so I have some room to crop if need be. Your workflow speeds up considerably when you are dealing with 600kb files instead of 15mb files. I also have a couple of photoshop "actions" I built to do a quick batch edit - sharpen/contrast/saturation adjustment on all the images in the directory. Some of these events will turn out 3000+ images in a day so you can't be messing with each photo individually.

*palmor* · 08-25-2009, 03:49 AM

Originally Posted by kunik

Are you shooting jpg? I shoot all events in jpg. When you know you have your framing and exposure correct you can even dial down the resolution. When I shoot marathons and triathlons for the big sports companies I shoot 2MP images because they don't sell anything larger than 8x10. When I shoot mountain bike events (on my own) I shoot 6MP so I have some room to crop if need be. Your workflow speeds up considerably when you are dealing with 600kb files instead of 15mb files. I also have a couple of photoshop "actions" I built to do a quick batch edit - sharpen/contrast/saturation adjustment on all the images in the directory. Some of these events will turn out 3000+ images in a day so you can't be messing with each photo individually.

I don't think the jpg/lower resolution would work for me although it is an interesting idea. I sell photos up to 13x19 and do quite a bit of cropping (there is always an arm/leg or some other agility obstacle to crop out). Exposure tends to be different depending on the color of the dog (white dogs underexpose slightly and black dogs can over expose quite a bit). Both of these situations are OK because I get the dog's detail and I can correct the other stuff pretty easily (nothing worse then blown highlights on a white dog or just solid black on a black dog).

Thanks for the idea though!

John

*maxwell1295* · 08-25-2009, 08:55 PM

Originally Posted by palmor

Thanks! Yes the PP on 1k+ photos is pretty tiresome and I struggled a little with how much PP to do. I want the photos to look good but I don't want to spend too much time PP photos that aren't going to sell. I guess it will be one of those things that I learn to refine over time

John

Adobe Lightroom + Free Presets = WIN

*palmor* · 08-25-2009, 09:03 PM

Originally Posted by maxwell1295

Adobe Lightroom + Free Presets = WIN

hmm, free presets? Time to start google'ing

John

*maxwell1295* · 08-26-2009, 05:57 PM

Look for the OnOne Wow! Presets for Lightroom. That's a start, but there are tons of them out there.

*ivoire* · 08-26-2009, 07:42 PM

Congrats on the shoot and sales. Liked the pics you posted... What lens did you use? As for the PP, I don't use lightroom, so I don't have any tips for that software. I shoot raw also and do most of the initial PP in CS4's raw viewer. I usually select approx 25 photos and open them, delete those that are unusable. Then I select all that match closely in lighting and use the sliders to adjust all the selected images at once. This usually gets me close to the finished image and the rest of the tweaking is done in CS4.

*palmor* · 08-26-2009, 08:02 PM

Originally Posted by maxwell1295

Look for the OnOne Wow! Presets for Lightroom. That's a start, but there are tons of them out there.

I'll check that out, thanks!

*palmor* · 08-26-2009, 08:03 PM

Well the photos have been up for 4 days or so and I've had ~50 photos ordered (plus a few magnets and key chains). I seem to be get getting 2-4 orders a day right now as people start to check the site to see if the photos are ready. I'm not sure how well that rate of sales are compared to others but I'm feeling pretty good about it so far.

Thanks
John

kerrowdown · 08-27-2009, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by kunik

I also have a couple of photoshop "actions" I built to do a quick batch edit - sharpen/contrast/saturation adjustment on all the images in the directory.

This and the develop settings in Adobe Bridge are the way forward when dealing with large numbers.

Leaving time to concentrate on just the front page images.

*hoghead* · 09-21-2009, 01:08 PM

Originally Posted by palmor

Well the photos have been up for 4 days or so and I've had ~50 photos ordered (plus a few magnets and key chains). I seem to be get getting 2-4 orders a day right now as people start to check the site to see if the photos are ready. I'm not sure how well that rate of sales are compared to others but I'm feeling pretty good about it so far.

Thanks
John

Hey John,

I had the same issues when I first started shooting horse shows. I'd end up with 1000-1500 shots and the folks are looking for the photos the next day! I shoot high quality jpegs so no raw processing. Just about the only time I don't shoot raw but just too much post processing for the time you have.