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Sample Examples: live session

In this live session, I collected all the wall art samples I’ve ordered over the past 3-4 years, as well as my album and folio box and other small things, to show you what SOME options are that you might want to offer clients. 

This is NOT a definitive list. I have not ordered every product from every company, so ultimately my advice is to see something you think you would like for yourself, and that you find beautiful, and order a sample of it.

Many of the companies listed below do quite large sample discounts especially when you sign up with them for the first time, so order a sample and see if you like it. 

There is no “right or wrong” when it comes to choosing products to sell to clients. If you love a product, you’re more likely to sell it. If you only have it because you think you should… you probably won’t sell it. 

There are also endless ways to go about pricing your products, however one guideline could be:

Cost of Goods Sold (eg., the cost of the raw product) + Shipping * 1.5-3 (for Europe/UK) or up to * 5 for USA + Tax = Cost of the product for the client. 

Professional Print Labs

Keep in mind that not all of these are “professional photographers only” (like Whitewall and Saal Digital) which means your client could theoretically find out the raw price.

Keep in mind as well that this is not an exhaustive list. I’m sure there are many, many more print labs. Feel free to write a comment below of any you have used and can recommend and I’ll be sure to add them to the list.

Many of those in the UK and EU will ship to the UK or EU so don’t rule them out just because they’re located in one place or the other – however do be aware that due to Brexit, there is no longer free trade between the EU and UK so customs fees and charges will apply. I’m sure there are similar things in place for the US & Canada and potentially AUS & NZ.

Similarly, you may be able to order from Graphi, Whitewall etc to the USA, but I have no idea what happens with taxes, customs and so on. You would need to check with those individual companies as some of them have branches overseas (I know Queensbury does, for example).

UK

  • Digitalab
  • Loxely
  • 3xm
  • Nphoto

EU

  • 3XM
  • Saal
  • Nphoto
  • Whitewall
  • Gicleeart
  • Finao
  • Laminamarc

US

  • Millers
  • Bay photo
  • Frame suite
  • Visionart
  • ACI American colour imaging
  • H&H
  • Floricolor
  • Album crafters
  • WHCC
  • Midsouth

Canada

  • Pictorem
  • prolabcanada.ca
  • printpartner.ca
  • gtaimaging.com

International

  • Graphi (Italy)
  • Whitewall?
  • Queensbury (nz company)

AUS/NZ

  • Atkins in SA
  • Brilliant prints
  • Streets
  • Seldex
  • Photoking

Panorama Challenge

This challenge aims to get you into the habit of taking additional photos of the scene to build or fix composition, remove a handler, or simply have a softer, blurrier background by being closer to your subject. 

On location, take your “Main photo”/take your photos as normal. If/when you need to take EXTRA photos of the scene, move/angle your camera wherever you need the extra photos, eg lower it down, point it up, or angle it to one side. DO NOT REFOCUS. If you’re using Back Button Focus, great! Just take your thumb off the back button and don’t press it again until you’re ready to take more photos of your dogs.

If you’re using shutter half press to focus, you’ll need to switch either the focus mode, or the lens, to Manual Focus. Otherwise, as soon as you press the shutter, the camera will try and find something to focus on. Since your dog likely isn’t in the scene (or maybe just his legs are) it’s highly likely that the camera will focus somewhere else.

REMEMBER! Not every photo will NEED additional photos of the scene. But! It’s important that you recognise when a photo DOES need you to take some additional shots. For example:

  • You got too excited about taking the photo as soon as you got into position before you realised that you were way too close to the dog (happens to me ALL the time)

Classic example here. I crouched down in position, realised I was too close, but Hijinx was staying like a superstar and looking so cute, so I quickly grabbed about 4-5 photos of his top  half, then one of his legs and ground. 

  • the dog looked in an unexpected direction to what you had planned and you figure the composition might actually work ok. The dog could look to the side, or maybe even up.

What I had planned *with extra photo for the ground/foreground blur

What ended up happening…

The extra photos…

The panorama courtesy of Lightroom, and cropped to size.

  • You like part of the background from nearby better and think it would look prettier if it was included in your photo. FOR EXAMPLE. Sometimes I’ll take a photo where the dog will unfortunately look into a darker area due to a tree trunk in the background. Just outside of the reach of the original photo was some pretty bokeh. If I take an extra photo to the side, including that pretty bokeh, I can mask it in over the tree trunk so now the dog is looking into light, rather than into a tree trunk. You can see this in the image below.
  • You need a handler/person/hand/arm/leg in the photo as the owner needs to be close to the dog to stop him moving. In this case, it’s less of a panorama and more of kicking the owner out of the photo in order to take a photo of the scene without them in it.

Above: the original SOOC that I took, and the two extras I had to work with, both the scene without Saffy, and one frame to the right. I could have simply used the photo without Saffy…

But then I didn’t like how Fume was looking into this kind of darker area of trees, rather than into that pretty bokeh. But, by using the photo one more frame to the right, I gave her a real trail of light to look up into, and closed the right-hand side of the image with the trees. It also meant I didn’t need to try and fix that top right-corner where the extra image didn’t reach. 

How to do it

You can find more information about this technique as well as video instructions here.

Lightroom

Make sure all your photos that you’re using have the same global adjustments (white balance, etc).

In the develop module, hold ctrl/cmd and click the photos you want to use in your panorama, so they’re all selected.

Right click on the main one and select Photo Merge > Panorama.

Try different options with Perspective, Spherical, etc. Make sure your dog isn’t warped. Hit OK.

Note that sometimes LR will choose a weird photo as the subject, eg., it might be a weird expression, or out of focus, etc. The only way around this is to mask it in manually in PS.

 

Photoshop

There are multiple ways to make panoramas in Photoshop, from completely automated like Lightroom, to manually lining up the different parts of the photo and masking them in. 

Here is a part of a recent Q&A session where I demonstrate both the LR technique, and one way to do it in PS.

So now you know the how, and the why, it’s up to you to go and practise!

This technique not only allows you to save photos where the composition might be off, it means you don’t need to panic trying to move the focus point if the dog looks in a different direction, and you can expand yourself creatively by using different parts of the nearby scene to slightly change the background.

Remember to read the Challenges rules, and good luck! Can’t wait to hear how it goes for you!

Editing Toolbox: Reduce Highlights

As always, there’s about 100 ways to do things or fix problems when it comes to editing, so this toolbox goes through a few options for you.

Keep in mind that how effective these methods will be depends on how large the blown out areas are. If you have HUGE white blobs, this is going to be much harder to fix and might be something you look at fixing in camera, on location in future. Bracketing, under-exposing, or using an external light source or reflector could help.

Some options for fixing/reducing blown highlights include:

  • Lower highlights in LR and reduce clarity
  • Copy/paste some bokeh from somewhere else in the background
  • Clone stamp bokeh from somewhere else in the background
  • Using Generative Fill in Photoshop (video below)
  • Use motion blur on the bokeh
  • Use gaussian blur on the bokeh (I recommend you add noise afterwards)
  • Fill in the white spots with the brush tool in a colour from the outside of the bokeh
  • cover the bokeh with a radial gradient, or add haze in Adobe Camera Raw.

Your main goals are probably going to be to:

  • soften the edges of the blown out areas so they aren’t so sharp
  • add some colour so it isn’t so white

Keeping that in mind will help you decide what you want to do, and how to do it with the tools available to you.

Product Photography & UGC

Product photography, and more specifically, User Generated Content (UGC) is really taking off in social media right now.

Thinking about offering product photography or hooking up with brands to do UGC for them can be a GREAT way to earn some additional income by taking photos of your own dog/s. 

Product Photography or Commercial Photography is going to be photos of the product for an ecommerce website usually. Imagine you want to buy a collar or a dog bed. You go to their site, click the product, and view the photos. Someone has taken those photos, and they have a lot to do with whether you make the purchase or continue shopping. 

UGC is generally more for social media, and might show you/your dog using or interacting with the product in a way that feels natural. “Look at my great new harness!”: This content is usually posted on the COMPANY’S social media, and NOT yours. It’s different to a brand partnership or sponsored post arrangement, as you might not have anything further to do with the brand beyond creating content for them. Therefore, it doesn’t matter how many followers you have or if you’re even ON social media, you can create UGC.

The two types are super closely linked so often if you’re taking product photos or videos, you’re also making UGC, depending on the terms of your arrangement and how the content will be used.

For me, I am set up on Fiverr, and have put together a media kit for any companies who contact me through social media, that explains my rates for both sponsored posts on MY channels, as well as UGC. 

I’m not going to go into what to charge in this post! 

But in this interview I did with Erin for Pet Biz Creatives that she’s kindly letting me share with you all, I talk a lot about product photography both from an ecommerce business side, and from a photographer’s side.

If you want more thoughts and info on this option as a revenue stream please let me know on Inspawration Connect and I’ll be happy to share more of my experiences. 

Some of my recent product photos

“Joy” Challenge

The “Joy Challenge” is all about capturing the essence of joy in your pet photography. Even the most serious dog can show joy in the right circumstances, and there’s nothing better than looking back on joyful photos.

Here are some guidelines to get you started:

  1. Focus on the dog’s expression: The key to capturing joy in a pet photo is to focus on the dog’s expression. Look for moments when the dog is relaxed and happy, with an open mouth, raised ears, and bright eyes.

  2. Choose a bright and happy location: To enhance the joyful mood, choose a bright and happy location for your photo shoot. Beaches, flowers, and plenty of bokeh can all create the feeling of joy. Avoid deep dark forests, solid backgrounds and places that feel a bit “closed in”. 

  3. Interaction can create joy! Get your dog moving! Interact with your dog or have your owner interact. Prompt them to cuddle, play and be silly. Be natural with your dog and muck around. These will create genuine moments of laughter and joy together. 
  4. Use a fast shutter speed if you’re working with more candid moments and movement: To capture your dog in motion and to avoid blurry images, use a fast shutter speed, over 1/1250 sec. This will help to freeze the moment and capture the essence of joy in your pet’s expression.

  5. Edit for brightness and color: In post-processing, edit your photos for brightness and color. By going dark and moody, you likely won’t be supporting that bright, joyful mood you want to create. Remember as well that warmth has more of a feeling of joy than cooler temperatures.

Get to it! Make sure you check out the Challenges rules before you get started. Can’t wait to see your joyful photos!

Layers Flowchart

I’ve been asked a couple of times whether there are lessons or resources on layers, specifically:

  • when to group and hide layers
  • where in the process to do clone/healing layers
  • what the hell is going on with smooshed layers

The problem was, the answer always begins with: “It depends.”

After all, whether or not you turn off layers depends what you have, and what type of layers are there. Where you do your clone stamp depends on what you’ve done already. 

So I made this flow-chart. I’ve tried to cover as many possible editing scenarios as I can think of, and of course some scenarios will have more than one “thing” that you’ve already done or WANT to do.

The important thing is to understand why it might be important to do things in a certain order, so you can make smart decisions about your workflow. I’ve tried to include some explanations as to why I would do things certain ways. 

As this is a Canva whiteboard, I can add or change whatever is there easily, so if you think I’ve missed something, haven’t explained something well, or want something added, let me know in the comments box at the bottom of this lesson. 

You do not need a Canva account to view it, and you can zoom in and out and navigate around. You can also download a .pdf version but it might be more difficult to read and can’t be updated if anything changes – unless you download a new version.

Snow Behind the Scenes

In this 2.5 part series (because the third part is a YouTube video… there IS more footage from this particular day for you guys but it will have to wait until I have time to edit!), my boys and I head out into the woods during a snowy week here in Germany.

I talk about all thing snow related:

  • exposing for highlights
  • what to do with twigs and sticks or having nothing in the foreground
  • snow eyes
  • rules to break when it’s snowy

As well as a TON of general location scouting and shooting advice:

  • how I check a location before my dogs get involved
  • what I’m looking for in a background, foreground, visual interest
  • why some locations work, and some don’t
  • even thoughts on mental health and not feeling like every location needs to be SPECTACULAR – even if I’m cynical and jaded!
So even if you don’t have snow ever, or you’re watching this in the middle of summer, I highly recommend you still watch. I can almost guarantee you’ll enjoy it and learn a thing or two. And if not, you know where the comments box is. 😉

Part 1

Part 2

YouTube Snow Video

Editing Toolbox: Add Snow

In this editing toolbox, we’re going to add snow to the green parts of our image. You can of course add this to any coloured area of your image, it doesn’t have to be green. 

We won’t be adding falling snow. You can learn how to do that in the “Add a snow overlay” lesson here. 

You’re going to need a pretty decent understanding of Photoshop to follow this tutorial.

Note that it DOES take some playing around, experimenting, and redoing the layers and effects to get it to look how you want it to look. Don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work immdiately. Use the many tools you have in your toolbox to fix the issues you might have.

For example, in the video, you’ll notice I say that I don’t like the dark corner in the lower right. I later fix this with a curves layer, simply pulling up the curve to lighten that section so it isn’t darker than the rest of the snowy foreground. 

If problems pop up, ask yourself: what tools do I have to fix this?

How to do it:

In this particular case, I started by already separating the yellows and greens with the HSL panel in Lightroom so I could just work on greens. It didn’t really help. 

On an image layer, go to Select > Colour Range.

Use the eyedropper tool to select the colour of the ground/foreground/whatever you want covered in snow. Hold shift and click to add more colours, or click the eyedropper with the + next to it. 

Adjust the fuzziness to soften the edges of your snow and make it less harsh.

Hit ok when you’re happy. Be prepared to revisit this screen. 

Go to the adjustment layers panel (lower right hand corner, where you make curves layers etc), and click “Solid Colour”. Select white. Boom! Snow! 

Let’s make it more natural.

Double click the layer (not the thumbnail) to bring up the blend options.

Move the shadows/blacks arrow of the “Underlying Layer” toward the middle. You may want to split this arrow to better/more gradually blend the effect. To do so, hold option/alt and click the arrow. 

Now, your snow should be looking reasonably good. If not, you might want to make a new selection and try again. 

What you do from here is really up to you!

You might want to make your snow a more blue tint, or you might still have some green that you don’t want there.

Some options to colour the snow include:

  • hue/saturation layer, either very specifically isolate the green tones and desaturate them, or possibly even use the hue slider to shift it toward blue. 
  • gradient map. Make the shadows a more deep blue/purple, and the highlights a pale blue.
  • colour balance: add blues/purples as you want
  • gradient: try making a gradient from one colour to another. In my final image I used one going from a kind of  orange, to pink tone in the top right, to deeper purple.

Affirmation Journal

Our amazing student Robin created this affirmation journal as a way to record the amazing things happening in life, and to give you daily positive affirmations.

She has graciously shared the .pdf with us which you can download below, but as there are 190 pages I highly recommend you pick up a hard copy for yourself from Amazon (and you’re supporting one of your fellow students in the process, woo hoo!)

The Perfect Trap: How Perfectionism hurts Performance: Guest Speaker Kai Simmonds

The Perfect Trap: How Perfectionism hurts Performance: Learn more about  Perfectionism and how it harms more than it helps. We’ll dive through the effects of Perfectionism as well as it roots and some ways to overcome it.

 

Kai Simmonds Bio:

Kai is Certified Corporate Wellbeing Coach who has spent the last 2.5 years supporting over 100+ clients with anxiety, stress and burnout. She is a Certified Life Purpose Coach, Yoga and Meditation Teacher and Sound Healing and with her combined knowledge is able to help ambitious professionals achieve big goals without burning themselves out. Her mission is to help others learn to live a balanced life full of purpose and joy.

Please help Kai out by leaving her some feedback on this form, once you’ve watched the recording! Not only does this help her improve her workshops, but it can support her business with testimonials, and I’m so grateful that she came in to talk with us, it’s the least we can do. https://forms.gle/25z419ZV7tz85e48A