The Beginner Photography Podcast

Photo Q&A: Does Personal Struggle Shape Your Photography?

• Raymond Hatfield

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#540 Photo Q&A
In Today’s Episode of the podcast I chat with YOU as I answer a variety of listener-submitted questions about photography. The episode covers key aspects of wedding photography, editing workflows, equipment considerations, camera settings, lighting setups for studios, the impact of personal experiences on photography, and more. 

KEY TOPICS COVERED

  1. Wedding Photography Tips:
    • Explanation: Raymond discusses key considerations for first-time wedding photographers, such as the importance of following the bride and groom, capturing candid moments, and understanding the significance of a wedding day.
    • Key Takeaways: Focus on enhancing the memory of the wedding day rather than capturing every detail, and consider renting essential equipment like a second camera body for reliability and insurance.
  2. Editing Workflow Optimization:
    • Explanation: The episode shares strategies for effectively selecting and editing photos, emphasizing the significance of choosing the right moments.
    • Key Takeaways: Utilize tools like Imagine for AI-assisted culling and prioritize personal artistry in photo selection.
  3. Studio Lighting Setup:
    • Explanation: Raymond introduces the concept of a three-point lighting setup for studio photography, highlighting the use of key lights, fill lights, and backlights for creating dynamic portraits.
    • Real-World Examples: He provides practical advice on equipment choices and configurations for achieving professional lighting effects indoors.

IMPORTANT DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS

  • Three-Point Lighting Setup: A lighting method involving a key light, fill light, and backlight to create depth and separation in portraits.
  • Culling: The process of selecting the best photos from a shoot, which can be optimized using AI tools like Imagine.

DISCUSSION & REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  1. How do you approach capturing key moments in high-pressure scenarios like weddings?
  2. In what ways can personal experiences shape a photographer's artistic style and subject matter?

RESOURCES:
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at https://creativeimageideas.com/

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Connect with Raymond!


Thanks for listening & keep shooting!

Raymond Hatfield:

When it comes to shooting indoors, I think that having a versatile lighting kit is going to be extremely important because otherwise all your photos are going to look like they're just taken in front of a wall. One of the things that I learned in film school is like, this was like day one, right? It's called a three point light setup. Now I'm going to try to teach this to you real quick. To create compelling portrait, you need three lights. You need a key light, the main light. You need a fill light to light the opposite side of someone's face. And then you need a backlight. The backlight is what's going to separate them from the background. Hey, welcome to the beginner photography podcast. I'm your host Raymond Hadfield and today we are doing our monthly Q& A episode. This is where I ask you for questions. You send me your questions and then here on the podcast I answer your photography questions. I know that things can come up while you're out shooting. You're new to this hobby. You're new to starting a business of photography. And these questions are gonna come up and you're always looking for somewhere to start. To ask your questions and get them answered. That is exactly what I want to do for you today in this episode. But first, the beginning of the podcast is brought to you by CloudSpot. I have been in the photography industry for 10 plus years, and I can honestly say that I've never found another company in the photography industry that is as dedicated to helping photographers as much as CloudSpot from being able to deliver beautiful galleries. To now being able to start and grow a photography business. Cloudspot has got you covered. Whatever it is that you need, they're there to help you. Just like me in today's Q& A episode. I am here to help you get clarification on your questions. So let's go ahead and dive right in. All right. The first question that I got is from Junaid Koopman. Junaid has several questions here, but I'm going to try to wrap them all together. The first question is when I do weddings for the first time, what are some things that you should look out for and what equipment on a budget would you look into renting or obtaining? Okay, great question. So, when you do a wedding for the first time, what are some things that you should look out for? One, really try to understand that a wedding is, is a big deal for your couple, right? If you're gonna go photograph a wedding and the couple has entrusted you to take photos of this wedding, possibly once in a lifetime event. You have to take that seriously, but at the same time, you have to know that you cannot possibly capture every single teeny tiny detail. You can't capture everybody's experience. So what I would do when photographing weddings is that I would essentially just follow the bride and groom. This is their day, I want to tell it from their perspective. Because, oftentimes a wedding day feels like a blur. So many things are happening, so many people you're meeting, and sometimes you don't get to take it all in and enjoy it as much as you were hoping for because you're busy, you're shaking hands, you're saying hi to people, you're putting on a big dress, you know, all the things. So by following the bride, following the groom, taking photos of their experience, highlighting those moments of maybe reactions that, that they didn't see of others who are seeing them, who are greeting them, who are just happy to be a part of this couple's day, I found to be great way to allow my clients to reconnect with their wedding day and have it enhance the memory of their wedding day rather than trying to create something new. Like, yeah, portraits are important. Wedding portraits, getting photos together, getting family photos, these are important, but again, my view is that at the end of the day, your wedding photo should enhance your memory of the wedding day and not entirely take your wedding day. So try to go into it knowing that you're not going to be able to capture everything. But if you go in with a game plan of, just following the bride and groom and capturing maybe reactions that people have to them or interactions that they have with others, you're going to be okay. Also maybe write down like three poses that you really want to do and then really hammer those out. Say them to yourself in a mirror, get them hammered out so that when the time comes to do those photos, you already know exactly where to start. You know what to say to the couple, you know how to pose them. You just go ahead and do that. And then nine times out of 10, that's going to get you in a flow. You're going to be willing to try something new. Maybe turn that way, turn into this light. Let's step over here. And then you can essentially do the same poses over and over again. And then you'll get them some variety and it won't be a huge mental tax on you. Because all day you feel like you've been fighting fires and trying to find, the best moments and all this stuff. Okay. Part two of that question is what equipment on a budget would you look into renting or obtaining? That's a great question. I'm not sure what gear you have, so it's hard to tell you exactly what you should rent. But, I will say that for my first few weddings, I owned a Canon 40 D, but I didn't have a second body. I really think that it is important if you're a wedding photographer to have at least two bodies. Two camera bodies, because if one of them fails for any reason whatsoever, it doesn't matter. You don't have time to troubleshoot it. You have to put it in a bag and then pull out the other camera and keep shooting. So that's exactly, what it was that I rented. I rented a second camera body. And for me at the time, it was a full frame body. It was a Canon 5d Mark II, I believe. Yeah, had to be. And then I just rented a general purpose all around lens, a 24 to 70 millimeter F 2. 8 lens. My goal is to not have to use that equipment at all. It is simply an insurance policy. I'm comfortable with my Canon 4d D I was at the time I'm comfortable with the lenses that I owned. I didn't want to show up and not only have to figure out, the wedding day, but also have to learn an entirely new camera system. I didn't want to do that. So I kept it as easy as possible. I took the camera body. I took the lens, I put it in my bag and I tried not to use it throughout the entire day. Unless I absolutely had to. Because you want to be confident at a wedding. You want to be confident, in your abilities, right? You have a camera. You know how to use that camera. Why change it up? Like, just use that camera. Usually rentals are like, three, four, five days, sometimes a week. Maybe after the wedding, play around with that camera. Go out, shoot, your own personal time, whatever. So that next time you have a wedding, well, then maybe, you'll feel confident enough in using that camera to actually use the upgraded body at a wedding, but for your first wedding, don't do it. It's just an insurance policy. Use what you know, use what you're used to. Alright, question two. Editing flow wise, how do I optimize the selection of which photos to use, because shifting through hundreds of photos often dulls my eyes to smaller details that can make or break a photo. You're absolutely right. I have totally been there, there's an important moment, you rapid fire, you got like 10, 15 photos of the exact same moment, and you're trying to figure out, okay, which one do I use. I can't exactly answer that for you because part of choosing a moment is, is what makes you a photographer. That is part of the artistry of it. But I can tell you, it's often less of a big deal than it feels like it is. Meaning if a bride's elbow is out a little bit, shoulders are, a slightly different way because you took them in rapid succession. One, the bride doesn't, you know, the couple doesn't know what all 10 or 15 photos you took of that exact moment. So almost whatever you deliver is going to be the photo of that moment. That that's what they're going to want. That's what they're going to learn to love. So I would say just, take your time and pick the right one. That said, I've been to weddings and I've shot thousands of images for maybe 5, 000 images from a wedding more. If I have a second. More if it's a 10 hour day and even more, if it's a 12 hour day Today, there's tools, one specifically, is called Imagine. Imagine is an AI video editor. So the idea here is that you upload your catalog, your Lightroom catalog to imagine, and now they can just automatically call through the images for you to pick out the best ones. I have personally never used it. But I've talked to many professional photographers working, you know, dedicated professional photographers who use it and they swear by it. So if culling is the thing that takes you the most amount of time and you dread it the most, then look into outsourcing and again, check out, imagine for their AI culling services. Okay. No question three from Junaid, which is also, I personally don't use Photoshop because I'm unsure of what to do or what to look for when opening an image in there. I found that Lightroom and some minor removals work quite well. So if I do add Photoshop to the workflow, what are some things to look out for in an image that I would use Photoshop to enhance or edit out? Let me start by saying don't take on too much too fast. As a professional photographer for 10 years shooting weddings, which include a lot of portraits, I used Lightroom for legitimately 99 percent of my edits. The only time I would ever bring a photo into Photoshop was if I needed to swap heads or swap people in a very rare instance. And by swap heads, I mean, you got a group photo, you got 10, 12 people in it, it's a whole family and you just take five or six photos because inevitably somebody's going to blink. Somebody's going to have a dumb face. Somebody's going to be looking stupid and you want to have different options so that you can edit them together and make everybody look their best. For 99 percent of everything else that I did, everything that I delivered, I did it within Lightroom. Does that mean that it has to be done that way? No, of course not. If you love Photoshop, then by all means, do everything in Photoshop. In fact, I know a photographer who just, they take all their images from a wedding, they put them all through Photoshop into a Photoshop action, and then they just deliver those photos. That's it. If that's you, that's fine. But if you're at this point to where you're not sure of what to do in Photoshop, maybe you're just thinking about using it because it seems more professional than Lightroom, don't fall into that trap. If you don't have a very specific use for it, don't worry about it. As you said, the removal tool, the blemish tool, like light room has a lot of features and it had enough for me to be able to edit an image, portraits included to deliver those images to my clients. And. be confident in, in what it was that I was delivering. So I hope that that helps. Okay. Question number two comes from a Christopher B. Christopher says, my question is around cameras. I do mostly shoot fully manual at times. I do shoot aperture priority when taking landscapes. Does anyone have favorite settings they keep for taking particular shots like product, photography, portraits, or landscapes interested to know more? Thank you. Chris B, Australia, First of all, shout out to Australia who in 2024 became the number one, country for new listeners for the beginner photography podcast. So to Christopher and everybody else in Australia listening, cheers. Okay. Back to the question. I think what you're trying to ask here is, in what situations should I be using what settings? And there's no one size fits all approach to this. Again, unfortunately, that's part of the artistry that is photography. But I can tell you that for every image, there's going to be something that is most important to you. There's going to be a most important element of that photo. So you mentioned using aperture priority when shooting landscapes. I'm assuming you wanted to set your aperture to something like f11, f16, something where you're going to have a deep depth of field to get the entire scene in focus. So for you, that focus for the entire scene was what was most important. So that was the choice that you made. Aperture became the most important setting for you. And then you just set your ISO as low as, as what's reasonable, depending on how much light is available. Okay. And then just set your shutter speed to whatever it needed to be to get a correct and proper exposure. So again, in that situation, your aperture was the most important setting and all the other ones, shutter speed and ISO just became secondary. If you're shooting portraits, again, aperture is going to be one of the most important settings, but you're going to want a large aperture so that you can get your subject in focus, but have the background out of focus. So once again, you're going to choose a large aperture. Let's say. F1 0.8, F two, and then you're gonna adjust your ISO as low as reasonable, as low as it needs to be within reason. And then you're gonna set your shutter speed to whatever it needs to be to have a properly exposed image. If you're shooting sports, aperture is not as important. Shutter speed is most important because sports are quick. From soccer, people running down the field, to, baseball, to, open wheel racing, right? They all require capturing motion. And therefore, what of those three settings, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, controls motion blur? It is your shutter speed. So for sports, you're gonna choose the shutter speed that, that you want. You're gonna probably choose a shutter speed of maybe 1, 500th of a second if you're shooting baseball or, just human powered sports. And then you're probably gonna choose a shutter speed of something like 1, 2000 of a second if you're shooting something like open wheel racing to freeze the action. And then again, then you just, you pick an aperture and then you pick an ISO that just makes the image properly exposed. Or, if you want an example of this, check out Chris Owens work on Instagram. Chris Owens is the photo manager for the IndyCar series. And he does these amazing slow shutter speed images of IndyCars. I mean, going hundreds of miles an hour and maybe his slow shutter speed is something like one, 1 25th of a second. But what you get are these long, like this long drag of the car going down, the track and it's beautiful. So for him, that photo, not the subject, that photo, the most important detail was having a slow enough shutter speed. And then he just chose his camera settings based on whatever they needed to be to achieve the desired effect that he was looking for. The most important part of that image is that you get the motion blur of the car. It doesn't matter what the ISO is. It doesn't matter what your aperture is. That is the most important setting. So think about your photo. Think about the photo that you want to achieve. What is the most important element of it? If it's nighttime, it's probably going to be your ISO so that you can at least get enough light in to properly capture the photo. And then the other settings just need to be whatever they need to be within reason to get a properly exposed photo. So Christopher, I hope that helps. I hope that makes sense. As somebody who comes from shooting manual, I tried to tailor the answer to that a little bit so that you could better understand. And if you don't shoot manual yet, the other listeners, I hope that that gave you a little bit of insight as far as, why shooting annual is most important as opposed to when you're shooting an auto, because if you're shooting an auto, it's going to choose whatever settings it wants. It's going to choose the same settings that every other camera in the world on auto is going to choose. And you're not going to get something unique. You're not going to get something special. It just going to be a snapshot. So again, Christopher, I hope that helps. Okay. Next question comes from Debbie Oglesby. Hey Raymond, I really enjoy your podcast and have learned a lot. Thank you, Debbie. I'm in the process of creating a studio for senior and family photos. The room is approximately 11 feet by 11 feet, and I have an off camera flash, but I would like to know what other lighting options you recommend. All right, Debbie. Well, first of all, congratulations. That's a huge step. When it comes to shooting indoors, I think that having a versatile lighting kit is going to be extremely important because otherwise all your photos are going to look like they're just taken in front of a wall. One of the things that I learned in film school is like, this was like day one, right? It's called a three point light setup. Now I'm going to try to teach this to you real quick. To create compelling portrait, you need three lights. You need a key light, the main light. You need a fill light to light the opposite side of someone's face. And then you need a backlight. The backlight is what's going to separate them from the background. Okay. So these three lights and their main goals, the key light, this is the key light. This is the main light. This is what's going to do the majority of exposing your subject's face. This is typically a large, light source. So maybe you have on like a big soft box, the bigger, the better. Oftentimes I've seen in studios, they might have a five or an eight foot Octobox. However, if the whole room is only 11 by 11, maybe stick with a five foot Octobox. Actually, another thing that you could do, you don't have as much control, but, it's much cheaper and you could do it is that you could turn the flash away from your subject and have a giant, like a white poster board, hanging up and fire the flash directly into that, and then that will illuminate your subjects. Okay. So that the key light is going to be the brightest part of the brightest light, that you're using out of the three. And that's typically gonna light just one side of your subject's face. So, imagine that you are the model, you're the subject, for a moment. This light it's either gonna be to the left or the right, but it's gonna be off about 45 degrees, right? So not fully to the left or to the right, and not fully in front of you, but halfway in between. And then the light is gonna be up, slightly above their head, kinda pointed down. And that is what's called Rembrandt lighting. it looks natural. it closely emulates what we see, because our light source that we see naturally is the sun. It comes from above and oftentimes it comes from a bit of an angle as well. So that, that replicates that. Some photographers only use that one main key light, and then that's it. That's all that they use. So maybe try to get comfortable with that first. And once you do, then you can start incorporating other lights. Cause if you try to do all the lights at once, it can be a lot. Okay. The next light is a fill light. Okay, so if, if the light, let's just say, is to the left of your subject, your key light is to the left of your subject, then the left side of their face is going to be lit, but the right side of their face is going to be in shadow. Sometimes it's too dark of a shadow. So you have what's called a fill light, and this is a much lower intensity light. So if your off camera flash is firing at full power, Then the fill light would be firing at say a quarter power. And what that does is it starts to give the face a bit of depth. It starts to feel more alive in the image. It's not very flat lighting, but it provides some sort of depth to the image. We start to see the contours of the face. And it just, it just looks pleasing. Now, the last light here is called a backlight. All right. Let's imagine that you have a dark backdrop and then all your subjects have dark hair. Well, how do you get them to stand out from the background? It looks like their hair is the same color as the backdrop. And then they don't, they don't stand out. You use what's called a backlight. This light is going to be almost directly behind them and it's going to be way above their head, pointed down towards their backs. And what this is it illuminates their back. It illuminates, it almost gives them like a halo, like outline. So when you see black hair with a back black ground, but there's this. Halo effect on the hair. It's going to make it stand out. It's going to separate it from the background, giving them again, more depth, more dimension, and it's going to feel as if they're popping out of the photo, look at some, I don't know, look at any fashion magazine, look at any, magazine that you find at a grocery store, once you do, you're going to start recognizing those three lights. One side of their face or their body is going to be lit more than the other side of their face or their body. That's the difference between a key light and a fill light. And then nine times out of 10, there's some sort of light that's hitting them from behind that is that you can see on their hair or their shoulders that is separating them from the background. That is the backlight. So Debbie, I hope that that helps kind of give you an insight as far as what what you need, what you should look out for, If you're in a controlled environment, like a studio, you can get away with using some continuous lighting so that it's easier for you to see, the, effects that the light is making on your subjects. But ultimately a flash is always going to be way more powerful and therefore give you a more polished effect. So Debbie, I hope that helps. If you've got any questions, follow up questions, let me know. I could talk about this stuff all day. Okay. next question comes from Gerard Gerard Exubery who I've had on the podcast before. This is good. Okay. Let's see what Gerard says. Gerard says, Hey Ray, what do you say? My question is, do you have to suffer in order to sing the blues? I'm talking about street work, which has a different gestalt than let's say commercial wedding or industrial photography. It does. I look at some of the world's greatest street photographers and see that more often than not, they've had tough lives. Very often suffering from depression, and or growing up in circumstances that reflect through their entire life. Effects that they would shoot and what the photographer effects on what they would shoot and what the photographer slash artist chooses to show. Okay, got it. I believe that if I had not experienced things that I did when I was younger, things that were not pretty at all, I would not be able to make the photographs that I do. I would like to know how many of your followers feel the same way. How have they been affected by their life experiences in a subject and matter in which they create their images? Finally, I'd like to know if you've heard any photography ghost stories. Okay. Photography ghost stories. I don't. I did, uh, when I first moved out to Indiana, I worked on that show Ghost Adventures. If you're not familiar with Ghost Adventures, there's a host, his name is, Zach Beggins, I think it is. And they go to haunted places and see if they're on it. They try to bring out ghosts and stuff. Anyway, I worked as a camera assistant. I worked during the day. They worked in the locations at night. It's really interesting. They came to a location called Fox Hollow Farms, in Carmel, Indiana. Horrific story. I mean horrific, horrific story. I cannot imagine the things that went on in that house. Beautiful house. Beautiful house. It was an amazing experience. No, I never saw a ghost. And I don't believe that they saw a ghost either. So, but that, I mean, that'd be as close as it gets. Okay, anyway, back to the question, do you have to suffer in order to sing the blues? You know, you said, if I had not experienced things that I did when I was younger, I would not be able to make the photographs that I do. And how have, listeners, how have their lives been affected by their life experience? Yeah, I mean, our life experience completely dictates how we see the world. It shapes how we see the world. It shapes the lens in which we look at the world. It's so much, you know, honestly, and, it's really hard to answer this question because I only know my perspective and the way that I have viewed the world. But I've definitely heard this before, right? But no, I don't think that you have to suffer in order to sing the blues. Meaning, I don't think that you have to have gone through a lot of trauma to be able to create art. I think that it's probably easier, because if you've gone through some trauma in your life, you're probably trying to outrun it or escape it, get rid of it. And I think one of the easiest ways to kind of forget is to immerse yourself in work, especially by creating something. When you create something, I mean, your brain just goes into this magical space. Time just doesn't really exist anymore. incredible. So I could see how if you were constantly haunted by your past and you were trying to not relive those moments, that trying to find yourself in a flow state, some sort of creative flow state, beneficial that would be. And of course the more time that you spend in that state, the more time that you spend creating, well, guess what, you're going to be better at it. The better you are at it, the better it feels as well. see the validity to that argument, I guess the correlation. But I don't think that suffering is causation for great creativity. I truly believe that anybody, even if you've had a nice, cushy, soft, easy life, can create meaningful work. It just might not be meaningful in the same sense. I don't value a Jeff Koontz, you know, dog balloon, but others do. So he went through something in his life that led him to create that. Actually, I remember watching a CBS Sunday Morning story, about him, where he talked about how it reminds him of his childhood. In a good way. And he's arguably, I mean, one of the most famous artists alive. Not to say that he hasn't had any trauma or, things that he's gone through. But he, he looked at his art in a way that was, in a happy light, it seemed. Now the other side of that coin is that there's the Ansel Adams quote. Yeah. There are two people in every photograph, the photographer and the viewer. Right. So maybe the things that you have gone through Also, shade your lenses in a color to look at the work of others and maybe make assumptions. I've definitely worked, looked at work and made assumptions. Either about the subject matter or the photographer themselves or, you know, what have you. And one thing that I find most interesting about photography is that just because your experience of an image differs from how the photographer intended, doesn't make your viewpoint of that artwork any less valid. Because art is designed to, to move you, to make you think, make you stop, and question life, and, but also enrich life as well. So anyway, point is before I start rambling on that, no, I don't, I don't think that you have to suffer in order to sing the blues. I also don't think that you have to suffer in order to enjoy the blues. I do, I do think that there's a connection there. What is it? I'm not exactly sure. But I think that whatever your life experience is, you can create incredible work if you're dedicated to it. So Gerard, I hope that answers your question. Okay, I think this will be my final question. This question comes from Deidre. Deidre says, here are some questions. We got four questions here, okay? Number one, do's and don'ts. Camera storage and handling. What is something you should never do with a camera or with a lens? Okay, I was thinking camera storage like memory cards and stuff. Deidre's talking about. Like handling your camera and your lenses. Okay. All right. Great question. Okay. So when it comes to storing, your cameras and lenses, dues, or I guess we'll start with don'ts. Don't store them in an extremely humid. Place, right? Because liquid, moisture is going to be the death of electronics. So try to keep it in a cool, dry, place when not in use. Also remember that your camera is a tool, right? If you create great images and the camera gets broken, like, is it a financial hit? It is, but I would literally spend. I mean, cameras could triple in price, and I would still pay for them because they allow me to express myself creatively in a way that I can't with pencils, music, any other form of creative expression. So to me, I'm going to use a camera. But again, I understand that, especially if you're new to photography, that it can be quite an investment. So yeah, try to keep them in a cool, dry place. In fact, you know what I have? I bought these on, uh, on Amazon. They're large, like silica gel packets, and they're actually reusable. So can you hear that it's these plastic bags with silica gel inside? And what they do is they soak up the moisture. So when I leave my cameras in, my tool cart, I put the cameras in there and there's also a number of these silica gel packets. They're blue, but when they absorb as much moisture as they can, then they turn purple. Usually this happens over several months or, whatever. Then when they're fully saturated, you can actually just put them in the oven and, I guess dehydrate them again to turn them blue. And then they are now reusable. They're super great. I'll put a link in the show notes to where you can find them. They're amazing. I put them in my camera bags. I put them in my tool carts. I put them with my memory cards. I put like everywhere. They're in my luggage. All over the place, wherever I travel with a camera, I have one of these packets with me and you can also microwave them if you need to. So like if you're on trip and you're in a hotel and you find that it's, turns purple, you can microwave it. It'll be good to go. Also don't change lenses in windy conditions or sandy conditions like beaches. I mean, again, your camera's a tool, your camera's more rugged than you think that it is. But yeah, just, just take some, minor precautions. It's not as fragile as you think that it is. If you have a really heavy lens, then it's just good practice to hold both the camera body and the lens. At the same time, one hand on the body, one hand on the lens, so that you can support the mount. However, those are engineered pretty well. Also, don't toss your gear. I don't know. I mean, like these are just kind of like common things like if you wouldn't do it to I don't know a brand new cell phone Maybe don't do it to your camera and your lens Okay, next question. How long do you keep client galleries before cleansing storage space? That's a great question. Yeah, I keep them, I would keep them for about 13 months. So, I would deliver a gallery to a couple and then in that email I would say, be sure that you download this because I'm going to keep it for 12 months. And then on the one year anniversary of their wedding, I send them another email saying, Hey, congratulations, I can't believe it's been a year, By the way, here's a link to all your wedding photos. If you haven't downloaded them already, then go ahead and do so. Because I'm going to, I gotta remove the gallery. It's no longer going to be available. That typically, then they do that. They download the gallery. That being said, I don't actually delete the galleries. I don't see any use for it. I have enough storage with cloud spot that, In fact, I still have all of my wedding galleries in CloudSpot. Weddings from 10 years ago, lot of space. but. I could remove it if I want to, but, from a customer service standpoint, if somebody reached out and they're like, Hey, can we get this gallery? Like I'm going to send them a link, no big deal. Storage is, is relatively cheap, just to keep myself safe in the contract, it says that I will keep it for up to 12 months after that. It's up to them. So, I hope that answers your question. Question number three. What is photographer's insurance? Oh, that's a good question. Okay, so, photography insurance is, it's two parts. Let's say that you are, traveling and your gear gets stolen. Well, photographer's insurance will pay for that. Repay, for, for your losses so that you can buy new camera gear. And that is helpful. oftentimes if you're not in business, then your own homeowners or renters insurance policy should cover this. I'm not an insurance agent. I don't know what your policy says. So if you have any questions, be sure to call them and confirm, like, just say, Hey, I got, a few thousand dollars in camera equipment, what happens if I'm traveling and it gets stolen? What happens if, I'm on a hike and it falls and it smashes and breaks, you know, I think things like that, just to get some answers. But again, if you are in business, then it's considered a business asset. It's just good. So if it's a business asset, then oftentimes a homeowner's insurance policy won't cover it. So yeah, it's a, it's a good thing to look into. The other part of it is liability insurance. So this happened to me a few years ago where I was at an engagement session and we were at this, local park. And there's this nice little creek bed and like the sun was coming behind them and I was like, Oh, this looks beautiful. I wanted them a little bit closer, to the water just for compositional purposes. These are like, I didn't ask them to do anything crazy. Like it wasn't anything wild. However, there was a bit of a muddy spot that I didn't see, that the bride to be didn't see, she stepped in it, slipped, and broke her leg. She was out for like months. Now, whose fault is that? Is it my fault for telling her where to go? And suggesting that she walk there? Or is it her fault because she actually did it herself? That's where it becomes like a bit of a legal thing. If she wanted to sue me for having her do, I don't know, dangerous stuff, I mean, I guess it'd be possible. You know, she could sue me for, for her medical bills. Luckily, she didn't do that. She understood that it was simply a mistake. But, what if you're at a wedding and you're photographing the couple and you're backing up and then you accidentally bump into a kid? I don't know. Who falls and I don't know hurts himself somehow who is at fault, right? So the liability insurance covers you in case there's any sort of issue that comes up related to that personal injury and things like that. So those are the main reasons to get insurance oftentimes larger venues older venues historical venues will require that you have a at least here in Indy, it was like between one and 3 million of, liability insurance, which is what you can get, I think for like 20 a month. It's really cheap. Some companies even offer it like it as, as a per event basis. So like, if you're not shooting a ton of weddings, you don't have to invest in like a monthly cost, but you just pay monthly. So anyway, I hope that that answers your question there. Okay. Last question. Can you recommend the best way to start a website for somebody who's never built a website before? What platform? All right, DG, when it comes to a website, I think simple is best. If it's too complicated, you're not going to keep up with it. So when you ask what is best, that is. up to whatever your goals are. If you want a website that's optimized for CEO or SEO that is optimized for, maximum control to let you do whatever your heart desires on a website, probably WordPress is the best route to go. Cause it's going to offer the most amount of flexibility. However, it's not the most user friendly. If you're looking for something that is user friendly, for years, I used Squarespace and I loved it. In fact, I still use Squarespace. I'll probably never switch away from Squarespace, but there are some trade offs. It's not that great when it comes to blogging, just the way that it lays out blogs, it is not great. But if you just have like photography business and you're not putting out hundreds of blogs, like I do, especially with the podcast, like for show notes and every hundreds of episodes, hundreds of blog posts are what those are, then it's not something that you really need to worry about. And I think that Squarespace is going to do you just fine. So it's up to you and whatever your goals are. If it's maximum flexibility, I would say WordPress. If it's maximum usability and ease of use, I'd probably say Squarespace. That said, I have not used every website platform. I've seen some people use Wix. I've never used it. But again, you asked me for my opinion. That's what I would say is my opinion. So hopefully that helps. I would recommend maybe watching a few YouTube videos and watch like beginner's guides to both of those and see which one you like best. So that is it. Yeah, no, that is the last question for today. I really hope that you enjoyed today's Q and a episode, here on the beginner photography podcast. If you have questions related to photography that you want me to answer, then I would love to do so. You can head over to beginner photopod. com forward slash Q a again, beginner photopod. com forward slash Q. A, that's just two letters Q a to submit your question there. You can even leave a voicemail if you want to hint, hint, tons of fun. And I would love to answer your question on the next Q and a episode of the beginner photography podcast. That is it for today until next time. Remember the more that you shoot today, the better of a photographer you will be tomorrow. Talk soon.