My website front page gallery, now hosted by Showit Sites, is looking pretty slick. I created it from scratch using Showit Site's photoshop-esque web design application, and slowly evolved it to represent what I think my "brand" should be. Let me know what you think!
Take care!
=Matt=
(Blogging four days in a row, wow!)
Have you ever come home from a photo shoot and not even had enough room on your computer to download your new photos? NOT GOOD! I've been there, and that is a CODE RED situation that any experienced photographer should never encounter.
While we're telling stories, once or twice I've literally fallen asleep at my computer and dreamed about editing photos, only to wake up and find that nope, nothing got done. That's probably the scarier nightmare, but equally alarming is the opposite- I've also woken up in the morning and photos have edited themselves without me remembering it at all!
But those are just the funny, slightly scary facts about my history as a photographer struggling to stay on top of the thousands of photos he takes every year.... The REALITY is very serious. You come really close to burning out, living that kind of life. I can vividly remember just LOATHING photoshop, and the pile of photos I needed to edit before I could go to sleep. I felt like I had no social life whatsoever, (hey, no comments from the peanut gallery, okay?) ...and I felt like I couldn't possibly catch up.
Hopefully most people don't let it get that serious before they tackle workflow. But I think you know who you are. The ones who shoot thousands of photos each month, or each week. (I shoot and sort out an average of 2,000-3,000 photos EVERY WEEK!) You might be an amateur / hobbyist photographers who just has a passion for shooting, or you might be professionals or aspiring professionals who has just gotten into wedding / portrait photography and are already buried with your first few jobs... Either way, I want to help you get your life back.
The WORKFLOWSHOP is going to cover everything from in-camera capture, (getting good photos in the first place = 50%+ of the battle!) ...memory cards and downloading, backup and storage systems, sorting, editing, (doesn't matter if you use Bridge, Lightroom, or Aperture!) and uploading / blogging / printing / selling & profiting...
I also want to admit / caveat / disclaim that I am no saint. I have not achieved "workflow nirvana". I can still get behind on my personal photography, and sometimes friends pester me to get photos I took. HOWEVER, I at least have the tools to tackle those problems easily, without stress, without getting burnt out. I don't loathe photoshop anymore. And I have free time to be with my WIFE, or go shoot random photos with my friends....guilt-free!
And while we're disclaiming things, I'll also mention: I don't discriminate between silly things like Nikon or Canon, RAW or JPG, Mac or PC. Yes, I'm highly opinionated, but my *highest* opinion is that people should do whatever works for them.
Anyways, here's the web page where you can get the full spiel:
www.matthewsaville.com/workflowshop
The first ten seats are $225 each, but those aren't going to last much longer since the 1st date is August 30th. Then seats 11-20 are going to be $275. (Quite honestly, I like a classroom of TEN. I'm just offering 20 seats in case some people feel they MUST get a jump on their workflow, asap. I know that some people are probably already buried up to their neck in this summer's jobs, events, photo shoots, etc...)
Anyways, I guess I'm done plugging this now. Normal blogging will resume tomorrow.
Take care!
=Matt=
By the way, THIS VIDEO is an example of taking WAY too long to edit a photo, in case you didn't figure that out. The video is sped up 2x or 3x, which means I actually spent 2-3 minutes editing this ONE image. Good grief! I made the video two or three years ago, just because I really liked the image and the transformation was indeed dramatic, from start to finish. But what I want to teach people is, how to make their images look almost like that final image right out of the camera, and barely require 5-10 seconds of a glance to be "deliverable" in Bridge / Lightroom / Aperture... Sound good?
The DAY BEFORE our massive, 50-person SoCal Photog Shootout, the [b] school had it's own bimonthly get-together, known as Joe Photo's Day Trip...
And by bimonthly, I mean every two months, not twice a month. I looked up the word, thinking that there would be two different words for the clearly different situations, but no, bimonthly means both, one or the other. What gives, people? We have this ridiculously complicated language, with crazy words like verbose, loquacious, and logorrheic that all mean practically the SAME thing. Oh well. I'm over it. Sort of.
Anyways. Pictures!
Hanssie and Becker, two wedding photograhper friends of mine... I think she just gave him a thank-you gift of some kind...
Michelle, sporting her henna "tattoo"
I do believe that is Joe Photo in the background...
=Matt=
Still going backwards in time... Skipping a couple private jobs that I won't be blogging, we come to an AMAZING event that I was so honored to be a part of.
A 50 photographer shootout in San Juan Capistrano. We shot models, we shot each other. I shot Jasmine Star!
No, we didn't kill anyone. Nobody got hurt. Just cameras!
I'll blog a few more photos soon, but I couldn't wait to blog just these few favorites...
=Matt=
... A Laguna Beach engagement session would be the first item that I blog. Enjoy!
(Okay, I really do owe you all an explanation as to why I've been absent from my blog recently. It's quite simple, really- I just got married, and plus it is the height of wedding season right now. Or has been for the past few months. So, I am exercising my time management skills and opting to get work done and pay attention to my new wife, instead of "wasting time" blogging. But seeing as I've had two weekends in a row without new weddings to shoot, I'm getting pretty caught up on all my work! Phew!)
Where was I? Oh, engagement photos...
(Good example of one thing I talked about at last week's PHOTOG SHOOTOUT:
RIM LIGHT, not generic "back light" is what to look for. If there were open sky
behind my subjects it still would have been "back light", but it would not have
made the RIM LIGHT *pop* the way it does... Oh, and keep sun off their faces!)
(I love, love, LOVE shooting at sunset, but I hardly ever actually point my camera AT the sun...)
=Matt=
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