Ask A Photographer Podcast Mike Biblino: Photographer and Blogger

Cropping your photos for printing is easy once you know the size you want to print them at.  If you don’t crop your photos to the correct size they will print out with white space around your photo.







This is the issue that Melissa had and sent in a question to the podcast. She says when she took her photos to get printed at a photo kiosk, she was told to crop them to the correct size to avoid the extra white space at the top and bottom of her photos. Melissa had already cropped her photos to social media, but when printing them the photos had white bars or parts of the photos were missing.







No right or wrong to crop your photos







In general there is no right or wrong way to crop a photo.







Photography being a creative medium, you can crop any which way you want. But the advice I would give in this case, is to crop for the end result. So, your end result being that you’re trying to print your photos.







Generally, if you’re printing, say, to an 8in x 10in, and you haven’t cropped the photo, or it’s not resized in the correct size, you’re going to get the white space at the top and bottom of your uncropped photos







Cropping for printing







Cropping for the end result makes life a lot easier. Generally, what I would do is use the aspect ratio of the camera sensor, which is 2:3 for almost all digital cameras.  3 being the long side on the bottom, and the short side being 2. 







The aspect ratio of an 8 x 10 photo is, I think, four by five, which is close to a square.  3 x 2, , which is what most people’s sensors are, is a rectangle, which would explain why you’re getting those white bars.







RESIZE YOUR PHOTOS IN LIGHTROOM FOR PRINTING







When you don’t resize or crop your photos to the correct size. The printer is likely going to offer you 2 options that will not be ideal. 







* You’re going to get the white bars top and bottom of the photos for an 8 x 10in photo, because it shrinks the photo to the paper size. 







* It tries to fill the paper size with the photo. Because your photos start off as a rectangle, and it’s trying to fit it more into a square shape, you’re going to lose the two sides, or the top and bottom. So, you’re going to lose some of your photo as it will get cut off.







Generally not good if you’re printing portrait photos, because you’re going to chop heads off in the photo. So, that’s why you need to crop your photos for the output or end result.







What I would do, in lightroom, I would set the cropping tool to the aspect ratio of two by three, which is what my sensor is, and crop the photo in such a way that it’s pleasing to the eye.







Now generally, when you’re taking photos, you’d want to pre-visualize what your photo’s going to look like, how the cropping’s going to be done if at all, and how you’re going to edit it later on.







If you can pre-visualize, say, the cropping and what you could do is either crop in camera, meaning that you use your feet if you’re using a prime lens or use the zoom to zoom in. That’s how you crop in camera.







And when it comes time to print, you print to a print size that is suited for camera / photo aspect ratio, which would be a 4 x 6,  8 x 12, 16 x 24 inch, and 20 inch x 30 inch.  These sizes are 2:3 ratio prints that you won’t have to crop your photo if you don’t want to. Simply print them off,

Neil sent me an email asking for help to sort through thousands of photos. He said he took a one week holiday to France with the family and ended up taking over 25,000 photos. He made the mistake of leaving his camera in burst mode. Now he has multiple photos of every photo he took on holiday.







He uses a Mac and Lightroom for editing. What is the best way to sort through a large amount of photos?







The quick & easy way to organize your holiday photos







Neil, if you don’t mind me saying mate, that’s a bucket load of photos for one holiday. All right. To sort through thousands of photos is easy to do, and here is how to do it.







I know you mentioned you have Adobe Lightroom but, for this instance, the best thing to do would be to cull your photos outside of Lightroom and then import the photos you want to edit into Lightroom.







Because if you were to import 25,000 photos into Lightroom in one go, it would take a very long time. Then you would need to work out which of your holiday photos you wanted to edit, which would be quite overwhelming because of so many photos in one area. Then of course, you should remove all the photos that you don’t plan on editing to free up space, and because of that it can get quite confusing.







I would recommend three things.







1. Set up a simple file structure to hold your photos for the purpose of culling and also editing.







2. Using an application called Photo Mechanic to cull your holiday photos







3. Import into Lightroom only the photos you want to edit. 







Photo Mechanic is a photo browser. It’s used by professional photographers in sports photography or editorial photographers. It’s super fast to open photos at full screen, even raw files. It’s really really cool.







I’ve been using it for many years and I actually use it for small amounts of photos, not just for a large amount of photos.







I can go through 2,000 to 3,000 photos in 40 minutes to an hour from a wedding when I’m culling and I’ll go through 3 – 4 memory cards in one culling session, it’s super fast.







Downloading & Organizing your photos







It’s going to take a long time. Get yourself a beverage and make yourself comfortable. I would grab all your memory cards, have them ready because we’re going to create a simple file structure so you can separate your photos to make the process more manageable.







I should note that for the culling and organisation of photos, I’ve written an in-depth article that takes you step-by-step on how to do this. But for you, I’ll briefly go over it giving you the information you need to cull and organise your holiday photos.







How to cull your photos







How to organize your photos







Let’s start at the beginning. 







* Create a folder called France 2016. * Within the France 2016 folder, create a folder for every memory card and label it; Card 1, Card 2 , Card 3, so on and so forth until you’ve gone through all your memory cards.







* Download one card to each corresponding folder until all your holiday photos are on your hard drive. * Next create a folder called selects.







The selects folder is going to hold the photos that you want to import into Lightroom and edit. Once your photos are in Lightroom and you have edited your holida...

Today I want to talk about customer service for event and wedding photographers. In particular the first point of contact and how in general photographers are slow to call new customers back.







I had a bride contact me and say that she had been emailing and calling different wedding photographers for 2-3 days, and I was the first photographer to answer her enquiry. 







This is a worry!







I’m seeing a growing amount of new customers contacting me, saying that they’re glad I answered their enquiry, because the other photographers they contacted never got back to them, either via email or by phone.







I find that mind blowing! because we all know how hard it is to get customer leads, good quality leads that is. 







I felt very bad for this customer that called me last week. She said that she spent three days trying to contact a photographer for her wedding.







I don’t know the circumstances of the other photographers, and it could have been their day off. Maybe they could have been shooting elsewhere, who knows.







But the fact that nobody got back to her after almost three days, is just bad customer service and it gives all professional photographers a bad name.







First interaction with a client is the beginning of your photography workflow







Let’s start with the basics of customer service,  setting expectations. 







My idea of a photography workflow is from the moment you interact with a customer, to the moment you deliver the final product.







If we can just look at how customers contact us, and our websites are probably one of the most common ways that we will receive leads. 







It doesn’t have to be complex, it just needs to be repeatable regardless of your workload. This means, listing one to two ways your customers can contact you and will receive a response within 24 – 48 hrs during your hours of operation. 







Set expectations on your contact page







What I do is put a couple lines on my contact page, that says, 







“Please fill out the form below and I will be in contact within 24 hours. If you wish to speak to me sooner, you can contact me via phone.” 







This does two things. One, for the people that aren’t in a rush, they’re more than welcome to use their email and they will know that I will get back to them within 24 hours.







If it’s something a little bit more urgent, because they need to move their wedding date, which has happened many times to me, having my mobile number on the contact page is convenient for them. 







Plus I have seen a growing number of new clients that simply prefer to talk over the phone and not deal with email.







Setting the expectations of how long the client has to wait for an answer, is one area you can start to improve your customer service. That is if you don’t already list it on your website.







Using templates to streamline your customer service  workflow







Using templates, for when a prospective customer contacts you, will help to be consistent with your customer service.  It means that regardless of how busy you are, the service you provide will be the same.







If someone contacts you via email, and they’re asking about pricing or availability. There’s no reason why you can’t have a simple template on our phone to answer the question in a clear and concise way. 







I’ve had 20 templates for different parts of the customer onboarding ...

Last minute cancellations can seriously affect the cash flow in your photography business.







What’s worse is if you have multiple people wanting the same date, and if you don’t have the capacity to photograph more than one session at a time, it adds a lot of stress when someone cancels a session and you struggle to fill the spot.







You can limit client cancellations by putting in place policies that protect your business. Such as asking for a deposit for a sitting fee and putting in place a cancellation policy, where it prevents clients from cancelling at the last minute.







Here is a question I received; 







A family contacted me through my website for a family portrait session.







I spoke to the mother on the phone. I explained my process from start to finish, including how the portrait session will go. I even emailed my price list and available dates the same day.







The client emailed me back the same day, picked a date and time, and booked their session.







The morning of their photo session I got a text saying, they had a family emergency and couldn’t make it.







I tried contacting the family a week later to reschedule but they wouldn’t answer my calls or emails.







Avoiding last minute cancellations







* Explaining your product and services to your client* Talk to all the decision makers* People booking you because of fearing of missing out* Contact 3 times and move on* Asking for a Sitting fee or deposit







Yes, it is annoying and can be extremely frustrating when clients cancel at the last minute. 







You go to the trouble of explaining everything, book in a time, and set aside time to prepare for the session. Then they cancel at the last minute, or simply don’t turn up without any communication.







It’s unfortunate that this particular client may have had a family emergency, but if the client is not answering their phone calls, or emails, this most likely means they didn’t want to go ahead with the portrait session.







The reason I say that is because I’ve had similar experiences. It can be frustrating, especially if there are other people that wanted a session on that same day, or you could have booked an event that could’ve been more profitable for you. That’s the frustrating bit!







1. Explaining your product and services to clients







I like the way you explained your process from start to finish to your client.







You’ve given her a price list, you’ve explained the products, told her how the day will go. The client had some time to think about it, and booked a date and time. That’s perfect!







I don’t think there’s anything wrong you did in your phone consultation with the client.







2. Talk to all the decision makers







One of the reasons some customers book and then later cancel, could be because they didn’t consult with their spouse.







Sometimes a client will book because they have a fear of missing out. When they’ve told the family afterwards, the other family members may just go, “No, we do not want that.” That does happen. That’s why it’s, extremely, important to speak to both parents/partners or decision makers for the family.







I get a lot of clients call over the phone, and there is only one person organising the whole session. So it is very common for one person to organise a session,

Luke wants to know, Do I need Photoshop or Lightroom to edit my photos? I was having a conversation with a friend, He said you don’t need Photoshop or Lightroom as there are plenty of other packages that will do the same.







Luke, thanks for your question. Yeah, your mate is right. You don’t really need Photoshop or Lightroom to do any of your photo editing, unless you have a specific reason.







Today I will be discussing, 







* Using your camera software to edit photos* Using your operating software to edit photos* Free alternative to photoshop & Lightroom * When to use Photoshop or Lightroom







Software that comes with your camera







When I first started, I was using the software that came with my Canon 20D. The EOS Solution Disc came with software called The Digital photo professional.  It was the editing software in the suite,  it allowed you to edit your Raw and jpeg photos and also offered photo management. 







I mostly used levels, contrast and crop tools to edit my photos using the software that came with my camera. 







As a freebie with the camera I was given Adobe Photoshop elements, as you know it’s the kinda cut down version of photoshop, geared towards the consumer. 







So, no you don’t need photoshop or lightroom because you will receive software with your camera to edit your photos.







Free alternatives for Photoshop & Lightroom







There’s software that comes with your computer like iPhoto, Mac photos or even the editing software that comes with Windows 10. These are free and more than capable to edit and even manage your photos.







Top free alternatives to photoshop:







* GIMP* Pixlr Editor* Photopea







Top free alternatives for Lightroom:







* darktable* RawTherapee* Irfanview







With anything that is free, there will be some drawbacks. Like the user interface might not be as refined or the feature might not be as extensive. The tech support might be limited, software updates not as frequent as their paid software equivalent. 







But to be honest, all of these drawbacks might not even count if you only use the software for very basic editing. Barely scratching the surface of what the editing package has to offer.







Then you really don’t need paid software like Lightroom or Photoshop and the free alternative will do the job nicely. 







If you do get stuck with any of the free software, simply use Youtube to find your answer.  You would be surprised how many photographers use other software other than Adobe.







When to use Photoshop or Lightroom to edit your photos







It’s not to say that any other photo editing and management software, paid or otherwise, can’t do the same thing as Adobe’s suite of software. 







They both have had their share of issues, But Adobe has had time to work on and refine both software packages, since 1990 for photoshop and 2006 for Lightroom.







Lightroom was designed for photographers. The features keep on growing and fit a specific workflow for event photographers. 







For instance, the catalog I have, an online library for all my sports images. There’s over 10,000 images of editorial and club photos for 9 years of photographing sports.







All the photos have embedded metadata and keywords.  So if you type the name of a player, game,

Let’s talk about camera bags that are suitable for amateur photographers, that are able to hold 1 – 2 camera bodies,  3 – 4 lenses and some room for your photography accessories.







Today’s question came from Oliver,  who says he has a camera system that consists of a Nikon DSLR and 3 lense, 1 flash and lots of memory cards, cable release plus batteries.







He is  looking to add another camera body when he gets the money and maybe a prime lens. He won’t always be carrying the whole camera kit when out taking photos. 







He currently uses a lowepro backpack and it holds his camera kit nicely, but is very empty when he takes a single camera body and lens setup.







He has looked online and came to the conclusion, No camera bag is going to work for every occasion.







What are your thoughts?







What is the Best camera bag for an amateur photographer?







I have to agree with you there mate, there is no camera bag that will suit every single occasion.







I must have accumulated at least 10 camera bags over the years and each bag serves a different purpose, and I assure my wife every time I buy a new one it does too.







Just like a pair of shoes, there’s no pair that suits every single occasion, but there is a pair of shoes for every occasion.







Anyway, back to camera bags. When choosing a camera backpack, it comes down to how much equipment you want to carry when you’re out photographing.







Often with new photographers, they tend to take their whole camera kit and they don’t necessarily use all of it.  Why? 







Well, it has to do with where they store all their photography equipment and not planning for the photo session ahead.







Now, you say you’ve already got a backpack and it holds your camera kit nicely. It’s only when you take one camera body and one lens, your camera backpack feels empty. 







The solution is depending on what else you want to carry with you and how long you’re out photographing.







* Camera pouch or camera bum bag  –  Holds only your camera and lens.  Perfect for short photo sessions or when you want to carry the bare minimum.* Small camera sling bag – To hold your kit and other essentials like water or a jumper. Perfect for a day out photographing with some walking.* Small camera backpack – Will hold your camera kit and a few camera accessories or water and clothes. Perfect for longer sessions, the two shoulder straps will make it easier on your back, especially if your camera kit is heavy and you’re walking a lot. 







That’s what I would recommend.







How to choose the right camera bag for the job







Now if you’re using your camera bag for storage, like a lot of us do, then having a bag that accommodates your whole photography kit in one camera bag is a good storage option.







For instance I store my event photography kit in a photography roller bag. And the rest of my camera equipment in two other photography bags. I know what I need when I go out to photograph events and have packed my bags ready to go.







So you can understand why most photographers have more than one camera bag, as your camera kit grows you need more places to store it and not everyone has shelf space to do that.







Small camera pouches / camera bum bags







The Lowepro sideline shooter bum bag is no longer sold by Lowepro.