Web Tool For Photographers

Big Brother Is Watching You!

As a wedding photographer, our young brides seem to be getting more and more tech-savy by the day. These brides are more comfortable sending a text message or an e-mail asking about our prices than they are with picking up the phone. Like it or not, it’s just the direction these younger brides seem to be headed in and as business owners we need to keep pace with them if we want to succeed.

This blog entry describes a great service that gives your tech-savy clients a new way to reach you and provides you as a business owner a chance to convert leads into sales. (And so much more!)

Details:

• http://www.providesupport.com/
• $10 / month (10 day free trial)
• Mac & PC Version Available
• Requires low level html understanding or a web developers help.

NOTICE: I have no affiliation with this company, I just love the service. Having this service on my website has allowed me to convert more leads to sales and better understand what parts of my website need more attention. I hope you agree!

CLIENT BENEFIT:

This service has a small program that lives on my studio computer. When I have the program turned on, it activates a “chat” button on my website automatically. When I have the program turned off, the chat button on my site disappears. If you visit either of my websites you are going to see one of these two icons.

RPG WEBSITE SCREEN SHOT:

RILEY PHOTOGRAPHIC SCREEN SHOT:

Since installing these icons on the website we have noticed that clients almost never use our contact form as they want instant answers using our live chat feature.

When the web visitor clicks on either of the buttons they are able to send me a question. On my end, the computer rings like a phone, and I am able to have a typed conversation with a potential client or help a past client. If I am busy, I can ignore the call just like sending a cell phone call to voice mail and the person’s message will get emailed to me with their contact info so I can reply to them when it’s convenient.

STUDIO BENEFIT:

Warning, this is addictive and can eat hours and hours of your day! Use this tool to benefit your business and don’t get addicted the way I have.

As I mentioned above, this service has a small program that lives on my studio computer. One of the features of this program is that it lets you watch these visitors in real time. This is why the blog entry title refers to “big brother” because any website that has this service can actually see you surf their site in real time.

Who Cares? When I am not out shooting, I am at a computer editing or emailing. I have two computer screens so the live chat program has its own screen. It just does its thing while I work and I can keep an eye on it.

• It shows me what advertising I have that is working or what wedding photos people are reviewing.
• I can see when someone has trouble placing and order and offer to help.
• It shows me what pages of my website people are spending the most time on.
• It shows me the geographical location (country and state) the visitor is from, their IP, and what type of web browser they use.

Each piece of information is rather trivial, but together they paint a picture of my website visitors’ behavior that in turn helps me know what I can do to make the site better in order to make more sales and be more helpful overall.

The red arrow below points to a web visitor on the RPG KEY website from Medway, Kentucky. I watched them surf the website, view a few demos and then place an order for the RPG KEYS. Other than being a little creepy, it’s a blast to watch someone placing an order on your site.

If I see a web visitor who is having trouble with an order, I am also about to ask them if they need help. Mostly it just scares people so I don’t suggest you use this feature too often, but it is nice to have!

Conclusions

I think Google offers a similar live chat program but I don’t know much about it. Perhaps others could share their experience with the Google talk program by responding to this blog post. http://www.google.com/talk/

That’s it for this weeks post. I hope you learned something new that will help you with your business, turning those leads into sales and better understanding what pages on your website could use attention. As I look back at my 2007 sales, I can directly link over $20k in sales to the additional of the live chat to my website. Seems like a good investment to me.

Speed Up Lightroom (Free!)

SPEED UP LIGHTROOM AND YOUR WORKFLOW
Without spending a penny!

While talking with people about Lightroom it has come to my attention that some of the most seasoned users are asking me questions that seem obvious to me. This article is intended to help ALL Lightroom users with a few basic concepts that will save you time and speed up Lightroom.


Step #1. Hard Drive Space:
Make sure your primary hard drive is at least 50% available. I don’t know why, but when we use Lightroom on a computer that has a full or almost full primary working hard drive, Lightroom seems to slow down considerably.

Step #2. File Location:
Hard drives have different speeds. Basically, a hard drives’ ability to respond to your requests is a function of how fast it can spin and whether it is an internal drive directly connected to your computer or an external drive connected by a USB or Fire Wire cord. While you are actively editing a group of photographs, we suggest that you house them on your fastest hard drive that is directly connected to your computer. (AKA: not an external drive) On a PC we use the “c” drive. On a MAC we use our desktop.

Step #3. Lightroom Catalog:
While Lightroom “can” manage large volumes of photographs, it tends to get slowed when you place too many images in any one catalog.

In our studio workflow we have one Lightroom catalog for each client as well as a master catalog for each of the different types of photography we do. We first edit our images in the client catalog and once we are done we will export the images and then import them into the master catalog.

The master catalog is only used to retrieve images using key words. (Read: too slow for editing) For example, I had a reception venue call the studio yesterday and ask if I had any photos of their hall with the tables all decorated and lit with candles. A quick key word search of the master library provided me with 10 images that I was able to show the individual and make a quick sale.

Step #4. File Structure:
We have found that a set file structure makes life much easier when using Lightroom. This is just a suggestion:

Client Name
RAW
LR
EDITS

We place the folder named “Client Name” on our desk top and place three sub folders within this client name folder. “RAW” “LR” and “EDITS.” We place them on our desktop because this is our faster hard drive.

RAW: We place all of the non edited files from a shoot in this folder.

LR: We place the client specific Lightroom catalog in this folder

EDITS: When we are done editing in Lightroom we will export the files into this folder.

When we are finished editing a given client’s photos we will then move the entire file tree to an external hard drive to keep our primary working drive as free as possible. By moving the entire tree of folders together, we are making sure that Lightroom will always be able to find the original raw files. If a client asks you to re-edit an image, you will be able to open the Lightroom catalog from the external drive that it is housed in and Lightroom will still be able to see the RAW files.



Importing Photos:

Step #1 File Renaming:

The file name assigned to an image by our Canon camera has an obvious sequence to it, one that any person who has ever used a digital camera could recognize. This causes us problems because our clients then realize that we are “hiding” photos from them. To keep from ever being asked about the missing photos, we rename the files while downloading them from the memory cards.

We suggestions:

(Julian Day)_(Hours)_(Minute)_(Second)


By renaming your RAW files and keeping these files names all the way to the end product, you are saving yourself considerable headache down the road if a client asks for an image to be re-edited. If this happens you can put the file name referenced by the client into the search feature of Lightroom and the image in question will come up. This alone is why we keep the above file structure intact.

Step #2. Standard Sized Preview:

Once you have imported your images from your memory card into the RAW folder, we suggest you render a “standard size preview.” Basically this will load to your computer cashe an image of your files that is sized to match your computer screen resolution. (I think). Either way, selecting the “standard sized” preview seems to be the best option for our workflow. Selecting the 1:1 preview is asking your computer to remember more detail than is really needed: Slowing things down!


Editing:

Step #1. Full Sized photos:

We suggest editing screen sized photos rather than editing thumbnails. Just personal preference but it seems to let us look at the images more critically than is possible using thumbnails. This is critical given step #2 below.

Step #2. Only Once!

Talking with many Lightroom users we have learned that most of you like to do the whittling or culling process in one step and the editing process in another step.

We understand why you do this, but think you might be better off if you didn’t. Why not edit and whittle your images at the same time. Like it or not, it takes you about 30% more time to review your images and then go back and edit them in another round.

In our workflow we see an image on the screen for the first time, if we like it we make a few edits and we move on. We will never see that photograph again. If the next image is similar or basically the same, we will do one of two things:
Option #1: Reject the image using the reject key on the RPG KEY keyboard.
Option #2. Using a preset, we will make an alternate version of the previous image such as sepia, or BW.

Of all the concepts we have shared today, the idea of only seeing an image once is definitely the one that will shock the most people. It also happens to be the one tip that will save you the most time while editing!



Good luck and please feel free to email if you have any questions.

Cheers
Tim

tim@rpgkeys.com
www.rpgkeys.com

Free Lightroom Seminar

July 23rd, In New Milford, CT. (just over the NY state line)


Introduction:
As a studio owner I am in the business to make money. I get a sense of pride in creating art that people will pay for, but at the end of the day I am motivated by money. This lecture offers up some advice on how every wedding, event or portrait photographer can increase their print sales considerable.

Uncle Bob’s camera is almost as sophisticated as your camera and can, if used correctly take photographs that are just as good. Uncle Bob is also posting his photos on Kodak.com and offering prints to all the wedding guests for 19 cents a piece.

It is your job to get the attention of wedding guests and family before Uncle Bob steals the show! This lecture will explain our workflow that will have your entire wedding edited in 2 to 4 hours and online while the excitement of the wedding is still vivid in the memories of the family and guests.

Audience members will be LR and non LR users, so I will be starting with the basics and moving forward rather quickly to explain how it is that we edit our wedding images using LR.If you are interested in this seminar, please feel free to e-mail me at: tim (at) rpgkey.com