A new opportunity presents itself

Got a call from one of our country club contacts who we do DJ/Lighting/Photobooth for. They apparently have some kind of fall event for the kiddies in the morning. The family takes a photo in front of a hay bale backdrop, then the kid picks out a pumpkin. They can then move onto the petting zoo and a few other things. The long-time vendor who has done the photos apparently got diagnosed with some kind of terrible disease and cannot do the shoot........which starts at 8:30am tomorrow morning (runs until 10:30a).

The guy has been taking a shot then prints a 5X7 or wallets or burns the image to thumbdrive. He charges $15-$25. No edits, just churn and burn. They have 25 families scheduled. The club doesn't make anything off the photo but obviously, they've scheduled the event and now their photographer has bailed. I've already spoken with wifey and she's in. I'm going to try and hookup one of my dye sub printers to be able to get an on-the-spot copy but I'm thinking we're going to do 3 shots, instant print (if possible) then take them home and photoshop then email the hi-res image to the club member. We'll have them fill out a form with their name/contact info and we'll shoot that with them in the pic as a test shot (something to identify the persons) followed by the 3 poses. I'm thinking $25, either cash or use Square for credit cards. The fun part is I'll have to leave the house by 7am, get home by noon, then leave immediately to do a 10 uplight setup downtown, then travel 30 minutes to setup for my DJ+Lighting gig at a country club tomorrow night. Oh yea, we have 3 other weddings running tomorrow as well.

Sounds like fun, right?

Okay, this is starting to come together. I bought Sparkbooth (been using BreezeSys on my photobooths) for DSLR. It works with my Canon 6d full-frame. I'm taking a 30" TV monitor for them to see. Spark has some nice layout templates, much easier than Breeze, and I'm using my photobooth's dye sub printer to print a nice 4X6 on the spot. We have the guest fill out a form with their name, phone, and email and pay $20 (cash, check or CC). I have spark print 2 copies; 1 goes to the guest and 1 clips onto the order form. We get it back home, edit the shots, then put them up and email the clients. This country club already does several events per year that are like this one and I'm guessing the rest of the clubs are doing the same. The full-frame and lighting kit should produce something nice for kid events, but I'm also seeing possibility to use this at adult or club events where the attendees would pay and get a pro-quality headshot that they could use for their websites, facebook, biz cards, etc. and for $20 instead of $100 to do an individual session. I'm seeing all kinds of prospects for proms, business conferences, etc. The club has 25 confirmed sessions for tomorrow which puts us at $250/hour or $500 for something that takes up our morning only.

Anybody else's wheels turning on this?

steve149 said:

Mix has his partners .. Rick has his "opportunities" ...

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Ya hurt me!

steve149 said:

You on gig 3 of 4 now?

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We have 4 weddings running right now. I did the photoshoot with the wifey this morning. It didn't make as much cash as I hoped but it was a success. The club mgr already said "You're booked for next year."

Well, here is the big "opportunity"



"Pumpkin Patch Pics" at a country club on the south end of town. There weren't as many sessions as the club mgr led me to believe (what a surprise) but it was an interesting experience, not to mention being able to pull it all together within 18 hours was a task (especially considering I had 4 weddings to oversee). Learned a few things about lighting during daylight hours (we need another Alien Bees light) and the club manager was beyond pleased as I bailed him out of a very tight spot, so I think we got some brownie points which should net us some more DJ/Photography jobs there. I do think this concept could work, outside of a club setting. We did 3 sittings, print 4X6s on the spot, photoshop the dig images and email to the clients. I could see doing this in a park and taking out an ad in the newspaper to generate clients. We did this until 11a, then stopped downtown for me to set uplights on a ceremony/cocktail hour setup, then I did another event (with uplighting) up north of town. I was a tired little camper by the time I got home at midnight. Here's the album:

https://plus.google.com/photos/104949851951762302969/albums/6072236613007863089?banner=pwa

BTW, wifey finally got her first Ceremony shoot edited and posted late last night. She did this one by herself and down south of Birmingham. Ended up taking a sound system and pretty much DJed the entire event, in addition to being the main photographer. On her editing, I have to admit I like to punch the colors up a bit more. She prefers it more subdued. Steve-o, she used the non-IS 70-200 F2.8 a lot on this one (on a mono-pod). She's in love with that lens.

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.386009854887921.1073741845.334701590018748&type=3

BTW fellas, one more thing. I downloaded SparkBooth DSLR to use at the Pumpkin Patch shoot. If any of you are looking into Photobooth software, stay away from this one. The interface is slicker and it's easier to setup than Breeze Systems but this was a complete piece of crap software. It kept crashing and the error message pop-up would come up behind the Sparkbooth interface. Stay away.

steve149 said:

Your wife's pictures are getting very good. A little specular highlighting and she'd be golden.

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In general, I think she's still a bit too dark and she's timid on punching up the colors but I appreciate the props. I'm going to spring for a 2nd Alien Bees B800 strobe. She's gotten really comfortable with that and with the radio poppers, it's a simple and quick setup that makes any room look good. On another note, I got to make up our first 24"X36" poster from one of her shots last night (a dentist's office). That Canon 6d is a sweet piece of gear. Unbelievable definition, even at that large of a size.

steve149 said:

The 5d is even sweeter. I need to start shooting in RAW mode, since I've been doing a lot of indoor and nighttime sports with no flash. RAW helps preserve the image better than working on a jpeg. Raw chews up card space though .. almost 3x that of the compressed jpeg, so you need to use bigger cards. I've switched to 16 and 32Gb cards, but probably need to get some high-speed 64Gb ones for the 5d.

Also ordered a new 7d MkII, which is supposed to be available (I pre-ordered it) in 2 weeks.

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RAW is a huge difference and yes, it chews up cards pretty quick but a 32gb is general plenty for an entire event for us. Biggest hassle I don't like is Lightroom takes for frickin-EVER to load up the shots. Not sure if that's from the wireless HD hanging off the router or if it's the pentium laptop's CPU I'm running it on. BTW, we're picking up a 14mm, F2.8 Tamron lens this evening. Looking forward to seeing what that piece of glass will do on some of these panoramic room shots.

steve149 said:

14mm on a full-frame is hugely wide.

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Yes, (salivating) it is. We got a lot of big girls down around here............

steve149 said:

I need to get back to Lightroom ... I switched back to Picasa since most of the images were destined for Facebook and I could process them quicker (shooting multiple events per week and 700-800 shots per event generates lots of pictures). Lightroom had better tools, lens corrections, etc. and handled RAW.

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Picasa is a very fast tool. I loved how easy it is to just highlight the whole batch and run batch edits against them. LR had a bit of a learning curve but I think we've gotten a pretty good handle on it. Now if I could just figure out what the long load time on RAWs is.

I gotta figure something out on the spot-printing thing. Tried using photobooth software on our shoot Saturday and it was a PITA. Too much lag time and little ones are not patient enough to wait on 3-2-1.....I know we can use wifi on the 6d but just not sure how to pass the shot straight over to my dye sub printers. Would probably also want the ability to put some kind of overlay template on the prints as well. Any suggestions?

steve149 said:

I though there is software (not sure if photobooth specific) that you could tether a camera via USB and print immediately (sort of using the camera like a webcam)?

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Yea, but I think that only works with certain printers, not the ones I own. I'll had to do some more research on it. Being able to go wireless would let the photog go freehand and get multiple angles. I believe this could be a healthy little piece of biz.