The next in our Untitled (a workshop) events is happening in Cape Town, and is hosted by ProPhotography. Am looking forward to going back to CT.

I’ve been getting quite a few emails recently about our mentorship programs and our workshops. We are developing a new workshop at the moment, so keep an eye on the blog or send me a mail if you want to be informed when registration opens.

You can also read about, and book, our Personal Mentorship Program here.

A new set of free lightroom presets for y’all to download. Named after wedding venues in Johannesburg that were the inspiration for them.

Anderland – hand colored (less)
Avianto – Expired
Avianto – Girls
The Cradle – Blue Steel
Hazeldene – Black and White
Intundla – Velvet Evening
Oakfield – Catch The Flasher

download them from here. They are free for use for commercial purposes, modification etc. If you do find them useful, a link back to this site would be appreciated.

NOTE: These are now available from our facebook group – The Dror Eyal Experiment. From now on I’m going to be releasing all textures, actions and presets as well as frames and templates on our facebook group.

As a photography studio we have a number of suppliers that we have to deal with specific to our industry, these include camera repair, various photographic gear and regular suppliers like canvas, prints and albums. So this is a quick tale of how two suppliers handled stuffups on their end.

The first is our canvas supplier who delivered a print so shocking in quality that I had to send it back, their reply was well we have to make sure that you are happy so we will reprint it for you. Pretty much to be expected. I picked up the new print two weeks later, you can imagine the joy that the client exhibited after being told that she would have to wait an extra two weeks, but we smoothed it over explaining that it had to be reprinted and I wanted her to get the best quality. Pick up the print, get told that in order for it not to look terrible (well, the said it in a nicer way, but that is what it boiled down to) they had to print on another type of canvas. Ok, fine, except here comes the catch, they will invoice me for the difference. Hang on, I ask for a quote, get a quote, charge my client the cost of the quote, you deliver something substandard, I complain and you charge me extra – so what? Now I should turn around to my client and say sorry, I quoted you for the crap quality and when I upgraded to acceptable quality I now have to charge you extra? Every piece that comes out of this studio is an ad for our work, there is no way I would let anything out that didn’t represent the quality that I would like the brand to project. So I swallowed the cost, but for the small bit of money that they made on the canvas, not even enough to cover the delivery cost of the canvas, they lost my business forever.

My album supplier on the other hand, sent an album to the wrong place – bit of a miscommunication as well as some technical difficulties and a byzantine system. The company reprinted the albums, sent them to the right place and sent me a complimentary voucher for another album. The client got two copies of their albums – I rescued the misplaced album and sent it to the client, and I got a warm fuzzy feeling that these guys cared about my clients and my business. So the album company still has my custom and will continue to do so despite the rand taking a serious dive, whereas if you’re a canvas company you’re welcome to send me a brochure and pricelist. If you’re a photographer who has had good experiences in the Joburg region with 1.5m+ sized canvasses please send me a link.

I think it was Saturday, maybe it was Sunday, I was sitting under some shade trying to avoid the sun when the sound engineer seated next to me, he may actually not have been a sound engineer, it doesn’t really matter. Anyway, the guy sitting next to me, mentioned in passing that photography was about getting things in focus. Wow! Hang on, hold the conversation, add some more ice to my glass, pass me a cigarette and add that one to the list of lies that photographers tell each other: Bigger lenses = better photos, more mega pixels means better quality, you must use off camera flash, shoot raw or your photo quality will be too low and more rubbish that could possibly be swallowed by anyone. Sheesh, sharper photos.

Then scarcely a day later, I get a request to recommend a good photoshop book, followed swiftly by two separate requests to shoot with me by two guys who shoot landscapes and wildlife images. Since when did wedding photography become about getting the sharpest image with the biggest camera using an off camera flash and then photoshoping it, let me rephrase that, when did photography become the province of geeks with a gear fetish? Yep, welcome to another Dror rant, cause sometimes my mind just get blown by people who claim to be photographers and spend all their time copying the latest technique or getting the latest bit of gear.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for experimenting, and trying out new gear, but not just because you want to get the effect that X gets. How about first learning about photography? You know it isn’t just about snapping a photograph using the sharpest lens possible and the most mega pixels that you can afford. Photographs should tell a story, it’s a visual language with all the nuances, verbs and sentence construction rules that any language has, and before you spend another small fortune on a new lens you don’t really need, you may want to learn how to communicate using that language. If you don’t know about balance and tension, colour, light, lines, gesture, frame dynamics and visual weight you may want to read up on it before rushing out and getting that off camera flash. I’m not saying that all images should tell a story, but come on, I can count the number of wedding photographers in this country who do actually photograph rather than snap on one hand, and they are all fully booked well into 2009.

“Most people using a camera for the first time try to master the controls but ignore the ideas. They photograph intuitively, liking or disliking what they see without stopping to think why, and framing the view in the same way. Anyone who does it well is a natural photographer. But knowing in advance why some compositions or certain combinations of colors seem to work better than others, better equips any photographer.” – Michael Freeman in The Photographer’s Eye (a must in any photographer’s collection – if you’re local, don’t bother with Kalahari, they don’t stock it).

btw in case you were wondering the latest trend in wedding photography this year has been off camera flash with many photographers, including myself, investing in radio receivers. It’s been around for a while, but reached tipping point earlier this year and essentially it allows the photographer to set up a mobile outdoor studio, some do it well, most miss the point. At least the whole video light thing is almost over. I somehow can’t image James Nachtwey or Selgado, or even Tim Hetherington pulling out their off camera flash units.

I was asked by a couple of people what lightroom presets I used for Nicola and John’s wedding. They’re actually presets I made while fiddling about with lightroom to get the effect that I wanted. You’re welcome to try them out, the baobab set is available from our facebook group – The Dror Eyal Experiment.

I really don’t have time to offer support for them, I’m getting too little sleep as it is. So please don’t send me any, “how do I install them” or “they don’t work on my machine” support requests.

We’ve opened bookings for our two marketing seminars for wedding photographers. The advanced one, called Selling The Invisible, is a one day seminar for those who already have a studio and the second is called Day Job Killer and is aimed at those that currently have day jobs and need to create a stable income stream.
They both have very limited seating and will be on a first come first served basis.

If you have any questions, you’re welcome to mail me at the usual address or leave a comment.

more on Selling The Invisible …

more on Day Job Killer …

Just waiting for this weekend’s backup DVDs to burn. A couple of minutes to surf and check out the 2008 shortlist for Prix Pictet, Christian Cravo’s work always blows me away. I also really like Munem Wasif crunchy lith colours, and ultra sharp photos.

I’ve been at this since 7 this morning, answering emails, and there are still about 20 left. Quite a few are clients but a lot are other South African wedding photographers, so I thought I’d put together this little blog post faq to answer some of the question that seem to come up a lot.

Before I jump into it, I just wanted to say that when I started working in this field I was just coming off 12 years of photojourn for a whole lot of publications and the one thing that struck me was the lack of resource and information sharing in the wedding photography field. You couldn’t even get anyone to tell you what they were charging!! So from day one I had a policy of answering any one who asked me anything. It has however gotten to the point where I get 10-20 emails a week, some of which start with “Please run it through step by step and please bear with me as I am a novice at this and still learning! PLEASE HELP”. I unfortunately can’t help everyone and it has gotten to the point where the amount of emails is overwhelming. I am in the process of putting together a bunch of marketing seminars that will be very practical and very orientated towards the South African wedding market and getting results.

Feel free to add anything in the comments.

Q: How much do you charge for a wedding? How do you price it?
A: You can always look at my latest prices by sending a mail to prices.at.droreyal.co.za. My seminars have a large section devoted to pricing and package structures and options.

Q: I’m an aspiring wedding photographer can I come shoot with you sometime?
A: We invite people to apply for second shooter positions once a year, we pick two and we train them for months before we allow them to shoot along on a wedding. It would be irresponsible for us to bring anyone along who does not know what we expect and is not up to our level of experience. This year we had over 300 requests. This matter is closed.

Q: How do you get <insert look> to your images
A: I use photoshop and Lightroom, I use my own actions to get the effects that you see. Every once in a while, when I have time, I package some of the actions and offer them to other photographers.

Q: How do you get so high up in Google. This normally goes along with How do you get so many hits on your website.
A: 100% of my marketing is done through Google. I don’t advertise in any mags and I don’t subscribe to any portals. This ensures that the values that I want associated with my brand are always there. I talk about how to use Google and new media, web 2.0, word of mouse or whatever you want to call it in my seminars.

Q: How do I improve my marketing? Where should I advertise?
A: We are going to be holding two seminars on marketing for wedding photographers, keep an eye on the blog for details.

Q: What albums do you use? How much do they cost?
A: I use Asuka Book albums exclusively.

Q: Can I call you sometime to chat?
A: I’d love to chat, I can talk about photography all day. Unfortunately, I no longer work for a boss who will pay my salary regardless of whether I’m on the phone, surfing all day, or actually working. I’m looking at consulting structure where we will offer one on one consulting. Drop me a line if you’re interested.

Q: What equipment do you take with you to a wedding?
A: I’m not a big fan of a lot of equipment, I try keep my photos as natural as possible. I have a small backpack with my main D200 (all the cool kids have one) and a backup camera, as well as SB flashes for both. I have a 50mm for the one camera and an 18mm for the other. No massive zoom lenses to hide behind, no reflectors, big bags, no fiddly bits and pieces. Just real moments and a camera. I’ve recently acquired a remote trigger for my flashes – haven’t had a chance to use it yet.

If you came here looking for my free photoshop actions and textures for weddings – you can find them here.