Online Photography Lessons & Seminars by The inLIGHTin Workshop » Workflow

We Have a New Sponsor: BaLens

Michael Alan Bielat — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:11:30 +0000

Hello all,

Long time no see huh? Well thanks for hanging in there everyone and thanks for your patience!
I am just writing to say that I didn’t forget about you all. I have been knee deep in wedding photography this year. I do have a lot of great shots to show you all and discuss so look for more posts soon.

So great news on the Sponsorship front… The inLIGHTin Workshop is now sponsored by BRNO, maker of the BaLens white balance accessories. I have been using these for a while now and have even written a post about it way back when. Check it my article on how to Get Accurate Colors in Camera to read more.

Anyways, they are great people with a great product so show your support and check them out. If you want to pick a couple up then you can visit their ordering site here: http://www.balens.ca

Their website is www.balens.ca.

Thanks for stopping by!
~Mike

FILM VS. DIGITAL (circa 2002)

Michael Alan Bielat — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:00:37 +0000

Haha. Remember those discussions way back when??? Man those never got old…

This one is all you guys and gals. I am posting two shots from the same portrait session. One is film and one is digital. comment below and tell me which one do you like better and why? You can be super technical and go into detail about it or even from a basic outsider’s point of view.

IMAGE #1

IMAGE #2

I am looking forward to your comments!

Thanks!
~Mike

The “True” Cost of Shooting Film

Michael Alan Bielat — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:30:27 +0000

You may or may not know that I am a really huge fan of film photography. By really I mean REALLY into film. I am still rocking my film cameras to this day and even have a special film only portrait session that I offer to my clients as well which has actually been a big hit.

Now, I am always online and researching and learning. One of the things I keep hearing over and over is how “it’s sooooo expensive to shoot film” so I just have to set the record straight about this… I think it will surprise you!

THE CAMERAS:
First off, film cameras can be bought for pennies on the dollar and they aren’t going anywhere! With film cameras, you don’t have to worry about your camera being obsolete when a new model comes out, new sensors, new models with more bells and whistles, memory cards crashing or bugs in the system.

I am shooting primarily with a Nikon F100 film body with a MB-15 Battery Pack. All in all, this cost me no more than $350 back a couple years back. Ebay has these on sale now for $150-$250. Now my Nikon D700 ran me about $3,000 when it came out and that is pretty nuts! AT that price, you could rock a Hasselblad, Mamiya or Contax 645 medium format film camera for that price and STILL have money left over! And guess what? Film cameras are FULL FRAME! No crop factor so your lenses are actually going to be seen the way they should. Imagine that.
The lens costs are basically the same if you shoot film or digital so that should be considered Even-Steven. Props to you if you have a film and digial camera model from the same company because you can most likely use your lenses with both cameras.

So given all this, I think it’s safe to assume that shooting film requires A LOT less of an upfront investment in your equipment, yes?

THE FILM:
You must be thinking to yourself that this is where the money goes! Well, sorry to burst your bubble but not really… Sure a role of film can run anywhere from $5 to $10 a roll but buying in bulk saves and I do. You can even save more if you purchase expired film that has been well cared for and properly stored. My Kodak 400VC and BW400CN film runs like $7-8 each for 36 exposures if I buy single rolls… My portrait clients, only receive roughly 30-40 final images from their shoot. On average I toss out about half the pics that I shoot so that is a 50% hit ratio. Given this, all I really need are 2 rolls of film. Let’s throw another two rolls in there for good measure because I may shoot different films or may want some B&W images as well. So we are looking at a film cost of around $30 per portrait session. Given these numbers, I would have to shoot 100 portrait sessions in order for my film costs to equal what I would pay for a $3,000 Nikon D700 or 175 sessions to equal a new $5,200 Nikon D3s DSLR!!!

With digital, you start off in debt before you even take a single job and have to shoot 100 sessions in order break even.

Now, if I shot 175 portraits in a year at a very modest $150 a session then that would equal a gross annual salary of $26,250. Deduct the film costs of $5,200 and I am at around $21,050. That is just to just show up and shoot! Nothing else.

Granted, that $21k would be about the same if you were only shooting digital after buying one Nikon D3s. The only difference here is that being a film shooter doesn’t have you start off in debt and you NEED those 175 sessions to break even and get out of the red. Maybe you threw that D3s on a credit card so add up some nice little late fees, service charges or whatever your interest rate is that you may endure while you are trying to track down those 175 clients. Debt adds up people!

WORKFLOW AND POST-PROCESSING
The workflow for film is as follows:
1.) SHOOT
2.) Put Film in bubble mailer with instructions
3.) Mail off to Richard Photo Lab
4.) Get Negatives, Proofs and Digital scans of all images…
5.) Organize keeper proofs in one pile and throw outs in another.
6.) There is no 6
And Post-processing… umm what post processing? I have my +/-15mb scans of each file and can just toss them on my blog or put them on my online proofing site. I could even have Richards Photo Lab FTP me the digital files the second they are done while I am waiting for the proofs to ship back! Richard’s asks you what you want in your scans so you tell them and they do any little tweaks for you so you get the scans looking awesome right from the start.

With digital I have to shoot, which usually means OVER shoot, and have to cull through an easy 250+ images to make it down to around 30+ keepers. Now I shoot in RAW so now I have to take the time to edit every image that my client will see so there goes a couple hours right there. Here, I adjust white balance, contrast, saturation, sharpening, convert to black and white, touch up the skin and more… Mind you that all this time I am trying to emulate film here with my digital files! Usually, I throw some effects, vignetting, textures or graphic design elements to my images as well. Why? Because they are there and I because I can… Digital shooters tend to tweak every slider just because it is there.

Moral of the story…
TIME IS MONEY! If I spend only 3 hours per portrait session (for each of those 175 sessions) simplyediting the images then that costs me 525 hours of my life. That’s comes out to around 22 full days of non stop working sedimentary in front of a computer… BORING!!!

LAB COSTS
To develop my film it is about $20 a roll from Richard’s. Now they are the best of the best and that is why I use them. You could go elsewhere and pay less but expect to do more work on your end. This includes all that I mentioned above: developing, proofing, scanning and postage. They even do any tweaks on my scans so I don’t have to! So 4 rolls runs me about $80 for them to do… But that is without me lifting a finger! So I can now be with my family, spend time marketing myself, or even shoot more portrait session. So at $80 a session (developing 4 rolls each) I am spending roughly $14,000 annually for them to technically do all my “bitch” work for lack of a better term.

The kicker here is that I would have only “worked” for 175 hours (that’s around 1 week). Final total rolls in at about $7,050 pure profit after the film and developing costs for one weeks worth of physical “work” giving me an hourly salary of $40 per hour!

All this is great but what is even better is that I still have 51 more weeks now to market myself, book more clients and shoot, shoot shoot!

With digital, you are your lab so you do all your own post processing probably. So you still have your kitty of $21,000 since you don’t have to drop $14k on lab costs. Divide that from the 525 hours you are working and you get a total of $40 per hour that you are “earning” per hour that you are working and editing your pics yourself. Not too shabby for working a full month of your life away.

So yeah, your hourly rate is exactly the same with film and digital except for the fact that you are “working” three times less as a film shooter.

Now, these numbers do not calculate in the fact that you can charge more for having a niche market being a modern day film shooter nor does it count ANY money that you may make selling loose prints and products to your clients. Nor do they factor in the residual cost of owning digital equipment like having to keep up with newer cameras, computers, external storage, memory cards, backup disks or whatever else. All those things are in your hands and how you choose to capitalize on them.

The last thing I keep hearing is that people gripe about not knowing if the pictures turned out or not… Well, that is something someone who isn’t sure of themselves says. I think that this is the beauty of it all and solidifies your position as a PROFESSIONAL photographer. How many photographers before us made a living shooting film? I am assuming they held their own without needing an LCD to show them histograms…

Nope, they had a light meter and knew the fundamentals of photography inside and out so that they spent more time shooting and less time “chimping”. They also had a better eye for composition and made their shots count which resulted in better images. So if a roll doesn’t turn out then I would much rather lose 36 shots than a whole 16gb card that may contain ALL the images from a wedding! Plus, I am only shooting film for portrait sessions so 9 times out of 10 we could always do a re-shoot if something horrible happened.

All in all the saying “different strokes for different folks” comes to mind when talking about film vs. digital. My goal for writing this post is to just let you know that shooting film isn’t so bad… Shoot whatever you want to shoot and don’t think that I am preaching film over digital because I am not. I shoot my weddings in digital and the perks there are really great.

I would just like to add that it never fails that when I shoot film, I am like a little giddy school girl in anticipation of seeing the images for the first time. This is something that I don’t get when I am chimping or sitting behind my computer editing and can only compare it to what my clients must feel the first time they see the pics from their session in front of them.

I will leave you with some links to A-M-A-Z-I-N-G film shooters who never cease to rock my world and are worth taking a gander at:

Jonathan Canlas
Jose Villa
Elizabeth Messina

Sync Up Your Camera’s Time!

Michael Alan Bielat — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:36:08 +0000

There is nothing that I hate more than not having all my camera’s time synced together. I have had this happen to me a couple times either with myself or when working with a second shooter. Maybe I was shooting with two different camera bodies or maybe I just got one back from a repair (they reset EVERYTHING on you BTW) but whatever the case may be, it stinks! It is also something that you can easily forget in the heat of the moment.

So here is what I do:
Go to www.time.gov and use that time to sync up your cameras… Yes all of them. Simply set the time on your cameras to the same thing and then hit the OK button when the time.gov website matches your cameras. Done!

When I am working with a second shooter on-location I just treat my camera like the time.gov site and have them sync up to my time. It’s very simple yet often overlooked.

If you have more than two cameras then have a friend help you our or do a couple at a time.

Now there are EXIF modifier programs out there but it can be a hassle. Do it right the first time and save yourself the headache!

Thanks for stopping by,
~Mike

The inLIGHTin Workshop Is Back In Business!

Michael Alan Bielat — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:00:03 +0000

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones.
Mike here just letting everyone know that The inLIGHTin Workshop is back in business after a little hiatus so I could spend some much needed time with the family. It was hard being a new father to be running my photography business and doing the daily blog posts over here.

But I have things prioritized better. Time is now also more on my side (outsourcing work is a beautiful thing!) so I can get back into full swing with The inLIGHTin Workshop and doing something that I love.

I haven’t been slacking off though. Take a look at what I have been up to.

Here’s what is in the works:
- I have an eBook on how to get into the business of photography. It is my little crash course to awesomeness. That will be available for sale at the storefront by Summer.
- I plan on finishing up that workshop DVD which has been in limbo for a while.
- I plan on holding some group inLIGHTin Workshops around Buffalo and am accepting invites to give workshops in your hometown. Contact me at mike at inlightinworkshop dot com if you are interested.

Thanks for you patience everyone! I know there have been a lot of new mailing list subscriptions over the past couple months so expect some nice newsletters soon with some cool freebies and fun stuff like that!

Take care,
~Mike

Catalog Your Photos!

Michael Alan Bielat — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 12:00:21 +0000

For those who shoot in RAW mode, you will want to utilize a program such as Lightroom or Apple Aperture to ensure that you can catalog your images. There are other amazing apps out there like Bridge, Capture One and or Photo Mechanic to name a few but the global favorite is Lightroom. Any program that enables cataloging and, more importantly utilize the “meta tag” feature is okay in my book. You know the saying, “different strokes for different folks”.

Meta tags essentially add text data to each of your images. Say you took a trip to Alaska. You can batch tag all the images from that trip using special keywords from which you can search upon later. Typical keywords I would use would be : Alaska, Vacation, Landscape, and so on. If I took pictures of moose, bear or waterfalls then I would tag those appropriately. You may think that this is a very cumbersome process but there is a handy “batch” feature that enables you to type something once and then it applies to all your selected images; A VERY handy feature.

Now I do a lot of speaking engagements and workshops so I need to have all my images at my finger tips. If I am doing a speech or article on off-camera lighting for example then I can do a quick search and all images that I tagged as such and they will all show up for me. That really makes it easy for me to compile some favorite images that I can use for my workshop. For those who focus more on shooting, I cannot imagine having a lifetime of work that gets lost on a hard drive. For that reason alone, I cannot think of any better way than to catalog your work so that you can access your images when needed.
If you would like to see all your vacation photos then all you have to do is type “vacation” and they will appear. To be more specific you can type “Alaska” Now this only really works if you have one uber-catalog and then a bunch of sub-folders containing each day’s shoot.

For those who have a photography business, I would also suggest tagging your client’s names and photo shoot date as well. This makes things really handy if you ever need to access them.
Another awesome feature that these apps have is rating your images. You can flag images as well as give them a star rating (typically 0 to 5 stars). In my case, I tend to flag images that are my oh la la shots and are ones that I will most likely find myself displaying on my blog, website and so on. If I have client images from a portrait session or wedding then I give the images a star rating. My rating is really based upon keepers or tossers so all I need to do is give my images zero or one star. Now It isn’t uncommon for me to shoot over 15gb of images during a wedding so those zero star images that will NEVER get used are just taking up space on my hard drive. These crappy images can add up over a year or more so I make sure to delete these images after a 6 month grace period. To do this, all I do is search a particular sub-folder in my main catalog and do a global delete to the images that have zero stars and “poof” all gone.

That about does it for today’s tip. Enjoy and be inLIGHTin’ed.

2010 Workshop Price Increase

Michael Alan Bielat — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:52:04 +0000

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones,

Man, I never expected my workshops to go so well last year. The feedback has been so great and I got to meet a ton of amazing up and coming photographers. It is always great being able to share knowledge with others and I know that I have learned so much since 2009 and how I can better “inLIGHTin” future students of mine.

The only downside is that these workshops have really had me booked solid without any breathing room. My workshops and my photo business (www.ParamourPhoto.com) made it so that I really had no free time with my wife and child. I still love doing what I do but the photo business is my main priority. The only way to really make things work is for me to raise my workshop prices for 2010. Prices last year were VERY affordable and you got years of knowledge in a 6 hour seminar. Now, prices will remain on the affordable side, unlike other workshops, with only a $100 price increase for my one-on-one workshops.

I would really like to do more group workshops. This will be another way for me to get you all the most bang for your buck. I can keep prices lower when multiple people attend and I can reach more people in one day as opposed to individual sessions so it is a big win-win situation.

I also want to branch out past Buffalo, NY so if you aren’t a Buffalo native and would like to host a workshop in your town then be sure to get in touch with me and to set something up. Those who host a workshop get a lot of perks such as a free admission, complimentary phone consultation and other special goodies.

Thank you all for such a great 2009. I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2010 and hope to see you all very soon at one of my workshops.
~Michael

Assigning Actions to Buttons in Photoshop

Michael Alan Bielat — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 11:00:22 +0000

Here is a quick little video that I put together showing you how to assign your favorite Photoshop actions to Function keyboard keys.

The faster you can get your images to do what you want them to, the better! When you have less clicking and moving around then you are optimizing your time to the fullest.

Thanks for watching and enjoy!

The Future of The inLIGHTin Workshops | Buffalo NY Photography Seminars

Michael Alan Bielat — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:37:23 +0000

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones!

Long time no see. How has everyone been lately?

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am always thinking and brainstorming… For example, I should be editing a wedding right now. Instead, I have finally came up with where I want to direct my inLIGHTin Workshops. Before I get going, these are all good things! I am in no way, shape or form stopping these workshops so you can let out that sigh of relief now haha ;P

Now in my head I always seen a ‘loop-hole’ in my workshops so to speak… I basically held up a sign that said, “come to me if you want to know anything and everything about photography…” That was ideally what my one-on-one workshops did. You came to me with what you wanted to learn and I taught it. However, in my 5 year plan, I planned on doing more speaking engagements, group workshops and team learning (both locally and on a national level)… How can I get to that point when I only affect one photographer at a time? Also, do I want to be known as the guy who is like the Bob Villa of photography or do I want to be known for being an expert in my strengths and passions? Why give you an overall general knowledge base of things when I can hone into the nitty gritty and provide you with more concentrated content. These are the questions that I have been racking my brain on and here is my answer!

I have a new direction for the inLIGHTin Workshops which will be effective immediately:
All future inLIGHTin Workshops will be conducted in a group environment and the topics of these workshops are now divided into four categories: Lighting, Post-Processing/Workflow, Photography 101 and Nature/Landscape Photography. These are the disciplines that I am most passionate about and love to teach. My lighting workshops cater to my passion for portrait photography. The nature/landscape workshops combine my love for traveling, sight seeing and fine art landscapes. Post-processing and workflow lets out the inner geek in myself and the photography 101 courses will be my way of giving back to the industry. We all started off somewhere so these Photography 101 workshops will get my students more comfortable with their cameras and hopefully help them to acquire a new found love and passion for photography.

Take a look at the following link for more information on what these workshops entail: http://www.inlightinworkshop.com/about/

I will most definitely still offer one-on-one workshops but they will come at a premium and on a more limited basis. Please contact me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com for more information.

I also hope to start taping these workshops and am looking to partner up with a videographer to help this vision become a reality. If you miss the workshop then you can always have access to it via these videos.

All in all, I have big, big plans for The inLIGHTin Workshop and I thank you for being on-board! If you are interested in hosting an inLIGHTin Workshop in your neck of the woods then please email me at Mike(at)inLIGHTinWorkshop dot com .

These workshops have always and will still be 110% about YOU. Therefore, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments so please comment on the blog below and let me know your feedback.

Thanks for reading and for all your support!
Michael

inLIGHTin’ed Lightroom Presets

Michael Alan Bielat — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:28:02 +0000

I have a video talking about the benefits of Lightroom’s Develop Presets. They are helpful to anyone’s workflow whether you use mine or even just make your own. Check it out:

You can pick them up over at the inLIGHTin’ed Storefront: HERE

Or you can try a couple out in the Freebies section: HERE

Online Photography Lessons & Seminars by The inLIGHTin Workshop » Workflow

We Have a New Sponsor: BaLens

Related Posts:

FILM VS. DIGITAL (circa 2002)

Related Posts:

The “True” Cost of Shooting Film

Related Posts:

Sync Up Your Camera’s Time!

Related Posts:

The inLIGHTin Workshop Is Back In Business!

Related Posts:

Catalog Your Photos!

Related Posts:

2010 Workshop Price Increase

Related Posts:

Assigning Actions to Buttons in Photoshop

Related Posts:

The Future of The inLIGHTin Workshops | Buffalo NY Photography Seminars

Related Posts:

inLIGHTin’ed Lightroom Presets

Related Posts: