Is there an OSP for mall photographers? If so, I need it.

I was approached by a local charity to shoot Santa portaits with families at an upcoming fundraiser. This is my first time doing this kind of thing. As much as I would like to try to avoid the standard Santa setup, I'm afraid we may have to resort to that due to time constraints. We'll have to move people in and out fairly quickly.

I plan on asking the charity to provide some volunteer helpers to take orders and money while people stand on line, move families in and out, and write down filenames as I shoot.

I have SB-800's and was thinking they might not be up to the task, but there should be plenty of recycle time while families file in and out (or out and in, in this case!). I only use Powerex AA's in my regular work, so I don't have any Quantum batteries. Plus, I plan on popping off only one picture (MAYBE two) per family so we're talking about 400-500 exposures at the most.

I have suggested digital files for fulfillment to keep costs down (so more money goes to the charity) and so that families can get their images more quickly after the event.

I'm looking for any and all suggestions to make this kind of shoot go smoothly. Any problems you've encountered, solutions you've found, good workflow for distributing order forms, taking money, etc.

Thanks.

Do you get to dress up like an elf too?!?! Had to ask

I do this at local florist since she sends me lots of weddings and is a good friend. the first time we did it for local cheerleaders but they didn't do crap so we decided the next year to do for local park board

it is alot of fun

busy at the momment but remind me on Monday and I will fill you in on everything I do that has seemed to work out for me.

I did a similar shoot early this year for our MOPS group, but had more time (and it was all outside): 10-15 minutes each family. One thing we did that I will do again next year was write down the first image number from each group. I put up one big gallery and each family had its own subgallery (photocart). I set up a special price group with minimal product options and let them have at it. It worked just about perfectly for us, but you may not want to do the subgallery thing for 1-2 shots per family. If you are interested in more details about what we did, PM me and I can tell you--

If you do digital files, will the session itself cost more than you would charge if you were selling prints?

Hi Matt...I have 2-Dyna-Lite 4040 heads with a M100wi for power (these have pockwizards built in). Let me know if I can help...

You sure you want to do this? Yuck.

Better be a charity that's near and dear to your heart. But in the end, I'm sure you'll have lots of new words of wisdom for us.

I did something like this at an RCMP charity event a few months ago and holy cow, it was a ton of work after the fact. Will you print on site, or will you e-mail a file??

Jayme - Looking forward to hearing more on Monday.

Robin - Thanks for the info. The plan right now is to e-mail each family their photo directly. No gallery. I thought about a gallery, but I have privacy concerns about one big gallery where everyone can see everyone else's photos. Especially when kids are involved. I've seen galleries shot by these guys that go out and shoot a town soccer game and then post the photos for purchase. I don't like the fact that any random person can buy a photo of little Suzy. So, I'm staying away from a gallery which includes every family. To answer your other question, the main goal of this shoot is to help the charity so I'm not concerned about digital vs. print sales. It will be worth my time but whatever I get I get.

Bryce - Thanks. I'll let you know.

Jules - No, I'm not sure I want to do it. But it's local to Ridgewood and I'm ready for a new challenge. It's not near and dear but I don't really have any charities which are near and dear. Maybe I should work on that in 2009. I'm sure it's a lot of work and some kid will pee on Santa but I think it could be kind of fun in a hectic, zooey kind of way.

Elizabeth - No printing onsite. Families will get their photo e-mailed. My plan is to provide the charity with a high res disc and have some of their volunteers handle the digital fulfillment. I'm hoping there will be ZERO post processing. I plan on having one setup, shooting jpg (maybe RAW + jpg to be safe) and just burning the disc of jpgs at the end of the shoot.

Thanks everyone! I'm open to more thoughts if you've got 'em.

I'm afraid I don't have any logistical advice for you. My son had his Santa portrait taken by a local photographer two years ago — not a typical mall Santa style shoot. Rather than the traditional open lighting that a mall Santa photo has, he lit it with one umbrella at about 45% a bit of distance away. I can't remember if he used a reflector for fill, but the resulting light is not really soft and not really hard. Kinda moody, and I think it looks different than any other Santa shot I've ever seen. I love it — rather than a smiling photo, the photographer chose the moment where my three-year-old (at the time) was looking pensive as he thought about what he wanted, and it matches the lighting perfectly.

I say all that to suggest that you consider shooting in such a way that the portraits look different than the ones they'll get in the mall. Maybe it's the lighting, maybe it's something else. This could come back to bite you if a lot of parents hate the style, though.

Maybe you could find a way to shoot one "safe" one and one more creative one for each kid. That could be as simple as flipping a light on and off.

For post processing, if you're using something like Lightroom, you could easily create a preset with curves, sharpening, etc. that looks great for your setup. As long as you shoot in manual for these, you could download them, apply the preset to all of them at once, then burn a dvd and they'll look that much better without much extra time. If your name is associated with these, that could be good for business.

Anyway, I just typed as I thought, so that's probably not that cohesive, but I hope it helps! Good luck!

Will you be using CF cards, or will you be hooked up to automatically download onto a computer to have the people see the shot, or will they not get to see the basic image? I was shooting CF cards and cycling them after every 10 couples, and if I had a way to just save straight to my laptop at the time, it would have been way easier! I really didn't have a good plan of attack that day - I learned a lot from it on what i won't do next time!!

Aaron, do you have any way to show the picture you're talking about? We've never done the Santa pictures with our kids because... well, because. But I would love to see something different!

Aaron - Thanks. I'll keep your suggestion in mind.

Elizabeth - I'll be shooting with CF cards and don't plan on doing onsite proofing. Sounds like that would be really cumbersome. I have never needed to shoot tethered before, and I don't want to do anything new that day... other than shooting cookie-cutter Santa shots, that is.

Have somebody on hand to accept "registrations" via computer where the parent has to TYPE their email address where the files will be mailed to. Sounds to me like the actual mailing of files isn't your job, that you'll just be handing a disk to someone in the charity, but it will be YOU the parents blame if they never get their file, so I'd be making sure the mailing of files part of this is going to happen smoothly and perfectly.

Jules is smart.

Definitely do whatever planning you have to in order to set it up so the charity group is doing the work you can't--so all you have to do is take the pictures, process them (or not), and do the disc.

Don't shoot RAW. There's absolutely no reason to.

Do take at least two images of each kid. Even if the first one is perfect. We do something similar, and one time, when the shot was perfect, I stopped after the first one. That was the ONE file that I've ever had that was corrupted. It ended up costing a small chunk of change to re-do the shot a few weeks later. Now we always take at least two.

If you want to show the pictures, hook up a TV to the video-out port of your camera. Some cameras will show it on the TV and the LCD, some are just one or the other. My advice is to not show the pictures. It'll take four times as long. Don't even be tempted to show one that's fantastic. It can be hard sometimes.

You're not printing on the spot, so that's much easier. We do events like this every year, but we're set up for it. But not for free. ;-)

No, I'm sorry — it's at my parents' house.

Adam is smart! I shoot everything in RAW+jpg (hi res jpg) and on the last disk I checked last night, there were two random jpg files that were corrupt. Thankfully, the raw files were good. But it's a seriously good idea to shoot two images of each child, just in case of a random jpg thing or whatever. Good luck. Let us know how it goes! You could post about it on your blog!

You know, I never get tired of hearing that.

You mean that blog that I never update? Thanks for the prodding, Jules!

I peak at your blog just about every day. It's like Groundhog Day over there.

dont do it dont do it!!!! just kidding. I did something similar at my kids school a couple of years ago.

Certainly it was a good fundraiser but what was the best thing was the exposure it bought me. I must of had a hundred inquiries over the course of a couple of years about doing family shoots.

I made the shoot fun and made sure everyone knew who I was when they left.

That's certainly an added benefit, despite Santa portaits not being representative of my location work.

What i did was in order for people to order they had to go to my site... then go to online viewing and type in the passcode which was handed out via a business like card... I also got each families email address and emailed the info to them

They saw my site and it bought a ton of hits on my site which in turn made my site higher on google searches.

so they saw the quality of our work at the same time the ordering was easy. of course the net sales went to the cause.

Thanks Matt. I considered that, but to quote myself higher in the thread:

"I have privacy concerns about one big gallery where everyone can see everyone else's photos. Especially when kids are involved. I've seen galleries shot by these guys that go out and shoot a town soccer game and then post the photos for purchase. I don't like the fact that any random person can buy a photo of little Suzy. So, I'm staying away from a gallery which includes every family."

Am I wrong on this? Is it a non-issue?

I don't know...I post pics of the basketball games and stuff online and anyone could buy. I don't see it as a worry as long as they are aware that they will be viewable by everyone.

What I would do is have it posted that they will appear online and if someone doesn't want it online then they let you know. Out of the hundreds of people I have photographed the last five years I have only had one not want images online.

It is an issue here in Jersey. I get a lot of privacy requests. But, if you have the registration organized well enough, it'll work to your advantage, the way the other Matt said. If your goal is to get people to know you, you've simply GOT to drive them to your web site. Period. Because yeah, the mall Santa posed picture is not indicative of your specialty in any way. It's indicative of... the MALL.

Either that, or you have a really nice display of canvas gallery wraps and coffeetable books and albums and LARGE framed prints for people to peruse while they're waiting in the Santa line. At the end of the line, they'll get an envelope with some basic Matt Richman Photography goodness inside. A sample print, a business card, an Edit Bunny maglite keychain.

thats fine.. easy fix here... when your shooting the kids have a parent or santa or someone hold up a sign hand written with their name or a passcode... take a photo of the sign with the kid in the photo... when you pass out the code card write down the code on that card. make sure you still get their email address.... when you finished the photos you email the parent the reminder that the event is ready.

you just have to stay organized... it can be a cluster if you are not..