Workflows - Photography Podcast

[00:00:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Welcome to workflows presented by ImagenAI workflows is a podcast about saving you time and money in your photography business here from people just like you put down that camera for little connect the headphones and get to work with. Today, I'm speaking with Hannah Hall. Hannah is an incredible photographer based in north Hampshire, UK.

[00:00:24] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: At the time of recording this episode, she is in her eighth year of business. How to describe her style as honest and emotion driven with a bit of awesome thrown in, I would describe her style as organic and vibrant, the color she achieved. Looks, she brings out and people are out of this world when she is not shooting weddings.

[00:00:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You can find Hannah on mountains in a pile of dogs or wondering what killed her latest houseplant without further ado. Here is my conversation with Hannah Hall. Hello, Hannah,

[00:00:55] Hannah Hall Beddoe: how are you doing?

[00:00:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Good. Good. What time is it by

[00:00:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: you right now? It's just gone. Two o'clock in the

[00:01:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: afternoon. Two in the afternoon.

[00:01:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, it's 9:00 AM. And very cold, bright, and early the joys of having to do everything remotely. It's, it's amazing that we're, you know, 2022, we were able to record a clean video and audio podcasts remotely went back, you know, even 10 years ago in order to do this podcast innovators like Tim Ferris would literally send a full package in a Pelican case across the world for his guests.

[00:01:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I have video and audio equipment for every episode. And now you don't need to

[00:01:34] Hannah Hall Beddoe: the benefits, I guess, of a pandemic have improved like our skill and being able to do these kinds of things as well. Like, I didn't know. I didn't know how to use even two years ago.

[00:01:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Most people didn't even know zoom was a thing three years ago.

[00:01:49] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. And interestingly, like things like Google meet, which used to be Google Hangouts. You know, they've been around for years. I mean, Skype, I mean, basically zoom is a, is a, is a mutated Skype that has been enhanced with special abilities. So you know, it's. Yeah. Anyway, so it's cool. So what's going on with you?

[00:02:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: How's everything going on, on on your end?

[00:02:12] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Things are good. It's it's my month off, technically, obviously But in the UK, basically weddings got back to normal. In July when we say normal, like restriction free although weddings were back on from sort of the end of April. So I ended up photographing 53 weddings of my own.

[00:02:33] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And eight months last year, normally I don't want to do more than 35 and 12 months. So it's been busy. We got married ourselves in the chaos as well. So it's now it's just taking a month where I haven't got weddings to go to, to just catch up with editing, you know, tweak website. It's just, you know, do all of the boring, the boring behind the scenes stuff that no one ever really sees.

[00:02:54] Hannah Hall Beddoe: But actually after last year, it's kind of a joy not to be picking up my camera, every flight. It's just nice to go a bit slower and sit in my pajamas if I want to.

[00:03:05] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. In, in the, you know we just, this week actually in the ImagenAI community, we, we shared some advice for, you know, what to do during downtime and stuff like that.

[00:03:18] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And, and so it's, it's perfect timing. I mean, that's why we put that content out there when we did, but you know there's so much that can be done when you take a month off when just the industry, you know, your market is nothing for a little bit where you can prepare your business for when everything comes back or get caught up on things that.

[00:03:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Couldn't get caught up on before.

[00:03:43] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I've had a list of things for months in my head of like, oh, I'm going to do that. I'll do that in January. I'll do that in January. And it's now like trying to put all of that into. And make it happen before I start shooting, I've got five weddings in February. This we're still feeling the knock on of the pandemic here.

[00:03:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Bookings wise. I'd never normally have five weddings in February, so I've really, I've got a deadline to get a lot of stuff done. So I'm just chipping away quietly.

[00:04:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. That's and February is coming fast, faster than we probably want. My first question to you is what is one thing that you do for the photographic process with, with your camera, with your lights, things like that, that saves you time in that, in that part of your

[00:04:23] Hannah Hall Beddoe: work, one might balance.

[00:04:26] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I've been doing that now for maybe four years. It means that what you see on the back of the camera, sometimes when I'm showing my clients looks like fresh yellow hell, particularly in the evening. But, but I mean, it was, I guess, how imagine been round four years ago, maybe it's not something that I would have needed to do, but it allowed me to batch process for different You know, if I was in one room, my white balance was pretty much constant rather than it being affected by color casts and, you know, green outside or whatever.

[00:04:57] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So that has really sped up it, you know, my editing time. Even if it does look all for, when I send my pictures, the second sheet, I'm like just don't judge them until you've edited that.

[00:05:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What out of curiosity, what white bowels, you

[00:05:10] Hannah Hall Beddoe: set it at a 5,500 K. So like daylight, it's fine. Outside looks normal.

[00:05:17] Hannah Hall Beddoe: It's just, when you come inside, it starts to look a bit weird and work. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Once you start calling under tungsten fluorescent lights, it's that's when that that's when the fun happens,

[00:05:25] Hannah Hall Beddoe: but it also it tricks LightStream. And so, you know, like sometimes like remotely, really crazy things with your pink, green balance.

[00:05:33] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Like if you're shooting where there's a lot of trees, it'll automatically put a lot of pink in, but light rain just goes there. I don't know what to do with this and just leaves the pink, green alone. So I only, I rarely have to tweak my pink, green. I just play with my blue and yellow.

[00:05:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That's great. I hope others try that.

[00:05:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I might even try it, try it, try that as well. So moving on to the business side of things, what is one thing that you do for your business that saves you time or money?

[00:06:02] Hannah Hall Beddoe: It's a time-saver and it's ongoing, but I, I rebranded it at the beginning of 2017. And my soul, like the sole drive behind my rebrand was to try to put people off booking me which sounds like a weird tactic, but I was getting to the point where this time of year, you know, Christmas and new year engagements, I was just inundated with inquiries, which were all dead.

[00:06:29] Hannah Hall Beddoe: They were all day. They were people who were bargain hunting, or they were people who just, I don't think had even looked at my portfolio. They just wanted a wedding photographer. I ran quite well on Google. So I was just spending all my time. And you know what it's like by the time you found out like what venue they were getting married at, you try and find them, see what galleries and back it was just so time consuming that I was like, this needs to stop.

[00:06:52] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I only need 35 couples a year to like me and I, you know, if I'm getting like 90 inquiries in January, that's a lot of time. Spent emailing. So the biggest time-saver for me and it obviously now it's an ongoing thing in terms of like my online presence and how I present myself online I guess is to be a bit more mighty.

[00:07:10] Hannah Hall Beddoe: You either love me or you don't same with my work, I think. But yeah, now generally I would say 75% of the inquiries I get turn into bookings and that is a good time-saver for me.

[00:07:24] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Wow. You know, so I, I don't photograph weddings. I my big thing which came organically, I've talked about this on the podcast previously is that I had an organic shift during the pandemic to photograph proposal sessions.

[00:07:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, you know, surprise proposals and I get a lot of inquiries. And I've got a full-time job. And so I have to turn a lot of them away or like recommend other people. But you know, it really, you do really have to, if, if you want the right client to not have to go through a bunch of hoops and back and forth and stuff, you really do have to present yourself how you want the clients who want you to present yourself the way you.

[00:08:07] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Your clients to come. Absolutely.

[00:08:09] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Absolutely. And I am really lucky now that the couples that I get to work for a super laid back they're lovely, the weddings and my kind of vibe. There's nothing really stuffy and formal about them. And I know like there's wedding photographers for everybody, but I think generally people who are planning, weddings like that also don't want to spend hours like sitting in a line grinning at a photographer, doing family formals and that kind of thing.

[00:08:31] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So it's, it's worked well for me and I. I spend all my time writing emails anymore.

[00:08:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I, you know, I, I, and I absolutely love not only your website, but your photos. I mean, they're so punchy. They're so like the way I describe it as very organic and vibrant, like they're like showing people how the people are.

[00:08:53] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And I, and so, whatever you, I didn't see your website before you rebranded and everything, but whatever you did. I love the changes.

[00:09:03] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I think I'm like for me, being a parent really changed my perspective on what photographs should be in. Like when I started reflecting, I think when I started my business, I just photographed weddings as I thought they should be photographed.

[00:09:15] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And then actually I thought like, actually, the, you know, my favorite pictures of my children are the ones of I'm throwing tantrums or like with food or laser their face. It's not the ones where they're sat beautifully under a tree on a blanket, you know? And then when I started applying. Attitudes the way I photograph weddings, that's when business really took off for me, like all my couples want pictures of their friends being their friends, you know, they don't just want pictures of them looking nice with a glass of champagne in their hands.

[00:09:42] Hannah Hall Beddoe: You know, they want that. They want to see their personalities coming through. So that's what I, that's what I'm always looking for in a wedding day.

[00:09:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. I, I've got a similar thing to share related very similar to that. Ben folds the musician from Ben folds five. So he's actually a photographer as well.

[00:10:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And he historically has always photographed his kids while he's on tour. And now his kids are older at this point, but so I saw a keynote that he did at a photography show once. And he talked about how he deleted all the photos of his kids, looking at the. I wouldn't go that far, but he, he, the ones that he kept are the ones of his kids looking out of the tour bus window, looking out of the hotel window, his kids playing, you know, the piano while he's not supposed to be watching, stuff like that.

[00:10:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Like his kids do being kids. And while I do still have photos of my kids looking at the camera, I try to incorporate that sort of principle, the more natural. This is what, this is what it was. This is, this is what, what they were doing. Not only for my family, but for my clients as well. So I think it's a, it's a great, it's a great lesson to learn.

[00:10:58] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I was still wouldn't delete, delete photos of your kids looking at cameras though. So moving on to editing what is one thing that you do for editing that has saved you

[00:11:06] Hannah Hall Beddoe: time? My foot, but my first reaction to this question. Well, I imagine, but actually, like I thought back a little bit further and actually having a custom preset built for me has saved me a lot of time and it was prompted by I shot Canon.

[00:11:22] Hannah Hall Beddoe: When I started my business, I shot Canon and I moved to Sinai and just, you know, make my preset either. And actually it didn't work. How exactly how I wanted it to work on Sony files. My greens were nuclear green. People were very orange and I couldn't, I suck. I said to you here, like I just, the science behind and the technology behind my business.

[00:11:47] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I'm clueless. Genuinely. So I've, I was kind of stuck in a rut and I didn't really know what to do and I didn't know how to fix it. So I had a custom preset built by a girl called Amy Lee Atkins. She's a Northern preset company here in the UK and she. Not only built the preset. I wanted that looked at like how I wanted my skin tones to look a nice kind of things.

[00:12:09] Hannah Hall Beddoe: But I have like several different versions of my preset. So I have a backlit version. I have a dance floor version, which has a little bit more contrast and is a little bit more punchy just because of the way I tend to like the dance floor. Corrections for people who do look very orange, the fake tan thing here is big.

[00:12:27] Hannah Hall Beddoe: But also, you know, sometimes where you just in a room where the light is horrible. So I had all of these various corrections and suddenly that combined with the one white balance. Just massively sped up my workflow because if a picture was backlit, I could use the backlit preset rather than just my regular preset and then having to pull the shadows and the highlights around and that kind of thing.

[00:12:49] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So that was a game changer for me. But, and I think actually, you know, that's probably helped imagine now because. There were lots of photos in very particular situations where those settings are applied, you know, fairly uniformly. If it's back lit, it's got a different preset on it. So ImagenAI learning from that Intel, if that makes

[00:13:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: sense.

[00:13:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely learned how you prefer each photo to be based on the each individual's, you know, situation and, and what had to be adjusted. But, but because you started with. With a a custom preset that was sort of uniform across the board with minor changes here and there. That definitely helps you, but also helped imagine, learn your preferences, which is, which is cool.

[00:13:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So yeah, that's a very smart thing. Having custom presets. I, I always have, but I've always used custom presets in a different way, more for quick actions. So if I know, I like a tone curve, a certain way for certain. I've got a preset for that tone curve. Not necessarily like major color shifts. Cause I I'm I I've, I've always preferred very natural edits for myself.

[00:14:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So but otherwise, you know, I've got a custom preset for like turn on the lens correction for this lens, like that kind of thing. So okay. So we've talked about the photographic process. We've talked about the. Part of things we've talked about editing, what is one thing you do after a wedding?

[00:14:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: After the session has ended to increase business?

[00:14:24] Hannah Hall Beddoe: For me, it's getting a previous, my couple as quickly as I possibly can. How practical that is when you're in the thick of August. It's not always that practical and it's not always possible, but I try to get their preview to them before their friends and family start dumping all their phone pitches on.

[00:14:45] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Because if I can get them to them quickly, it's my photos that become their profile pictures. It's the ones that they're sharing online. And immediately people see like people know who I am by the end of the wedding day, because they've seen me out and about, but then. Well, I've produced to my name as well.

[00:14:59] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And it also just means that everything that I'm sharing online is very current. And my couples are still excited. You know, literally like two or three days after the wedding, they're still buzzing. So they're doing lots and lots of resharing, their suppliers potentially getting involved in that as well.

[00:15:14] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And as a result, I photograph a lot of friendship groups, weddings, and all lots of, you know, siblings like I've done two or three siblings, weddings and stuff. Yeah.

[00:15:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Nice. And so when you do these these previews, are you watermarking them so that everybody who sees it on Facebook and whatnot know that it was you or you just you know, going with the assumption, Hey, they met me at the wedding. They knew who I am at. No watermark.

[00:15:44] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Yeah. I don't want to walk anything.

[00:15:46] Hannah Hall Beddoe: There's no point people just drop them off. Or I just kind of feel like actually, if you've got a big watermark in the middle of a picture, it just ruins your reception of it. Anyway, I'm quite, I'm quite strict with my expectation, but my, the expectations of my have of my couples and the way they. The cost of that fighters.

[00:16:03] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So right from the get go, like at the point that I am, you know, in potential like consultations with them before they've even booked. Like, I make it very clear that the photos are for them. They're not for their suppliers. If their suppliers want them, they need to come and speak to me separately. But I have an expectation that they don't put Instagram filters on them and those kinds of things.

[00:16:22] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I would say that I now at the point when 99% of this. It just, isn't a problem. They tack me. They've generally got nice things to say about me as well, which really helps in terms of like, here are our pitches. Hannah was great. So yeah, the watermark thing I used to do it, I used to like pick a color out of the picture to make the worst mark.

[00:16:42] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Liquor statically. Nice on the pitcher. I've given up with that and that's long gone.

[00:16:47] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. You know, you could even put in the contract that like, if, if, when I send you the previews, if you do share them on social media, please make sure you're tagging me. And that basically gets around. You know, and, but they're doing it for you naturally anyway, anyway, which is, which is great.

[00:17:03] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Yeah. And I think if I look at you know, generally flicking through Instagram, now it is becoming more of a trend that people are tagging the photographer, even if it was their friend, they're kind of, you know, there's an element by which they're starting to recognize that somebody is someone else's work.

[00:17:21] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So a lot of my couples, I think just do it instinctively now anyway. Yeah. Yeah, it works. It works for me.

[00:17:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. So this is the point where I'm going to ask you for a 30,000 foot view down look on earth of an outline breakdown of your workflow from lead to delivery. You don't have to get into the deep details, but just an overview so that everybody's listening can understand this is what's worked for me.

[00:17:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Hopefully you can take away. Something from it that'll work in your, in your workflow.

[00:17:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Sure. So obviously I get inquiries through my website. And I always try and respond to them as quickly as possible as well. I think my experience of having planned my own wedding recently is I got really frustrated when suppliers didn't reply to me quickly.

[00:18:12] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So with that, I'm always like maybe not immediately, like made them stay for 10 minutes, but to try and get that to them as quickly as possible. And I really encourage everyone to at least have a phone call with me, if not like a zoom call. I used to do in person meetings, but I can those with COVID and I don't think.

[00:18:29] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And to be honest, because it means that I can sit with my pajama bottoms on and they don't know. So I well have a, you have a zoom conversation with them and. Normally for couples, it's just them checking. Not, I'm not completely balmy. I am completely bombing, but you know, a good kind of balmy. And when they book, I send, after the consultation, I send them a booking form and they get to see my contract at that point, so they can ask any questions they've got about legalities.

[00:18:57] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Don't shoot me, but I don't use a CRM. I still rely on my diary and a wall planner and it served me fine for seven years. Broken, it doesn't need fixing. So I still do my contracts on paper. People are spending a lot of money with me and I feel like I need to give them something. So I give them my signature on a real bit of paper in the post and they pay their deposit and then I send them.

[00:19:20] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Like not about compact. They basically get a link to a secret page on my website. That's got all my recommended suppliers and some tips for wedding planning, just kind of, you know, what, the period of time in between a booking and their wedding looks like when they can expect to hear from me and those kinds of things.

[00:19:36] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And also in there, there's like the rules, some rules for them. Like don't WhatsApp me at 11 o'clock at night, six months before your wedding, because. It's simple as that, like what's up on the day or the night before the wedding is fine, but not, you know, not when it's not their wedding, basically. So then on the day I shoot shoot on to Sony a seven threes and I use both cards, lots, both right into RAW.

[00:19:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: The The one thing that I've learned over the last seven years is that when you're tired and ingesting cards at the end of a wedding, and that's when you're most likely to make mistakes. And there have been numerous times where like my files who've gone into. My car, my photos are going into two files.

[00:20:16] Hannah Hall Beddoe: You know, like I've gone through the numbers. I don't know what that's called, but it started again. So it's in a new folder and when I've been tired, I haven't made the second one across, but it's okay because I've shot on two sets of cards. I copy off one and the others get put away safely and the special memory card box and they don't get cleared until I've delivered the wedding and they're happy.

[00:20:33] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And there's been numerous times, like last. I was so crazy busy that there was a lot of times I forgot to move everything over. Say the magic box of cards really saved me. In that respect.

[00:20:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. That's a really good, I hope a lot of people take, do a takeaway from that because that's a, that's a, a huge problem that a lot of photographers have is what, you know, how do I secure things?

[00:20:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Because you never know, you know, the memory cards these days, you never know. And if you have a a memory card, that's got a fall. You know, having that backup and what you're doing, what you're doing is ticket to a whole new level. You're, you're not only, you're not, you know, remove it, you know, wiping that card right away.

[00:21:11] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But you're, you're waiting until you deliver that wedding, which could be, you know, a couple months potentially, hopefully, depending on your, you know, a busy

[00:21:20] Hannah Hall Beddoe: yeah. And like, we joke that we probably have shares in like Kingston and SanDisk between the two of us, but you know, like. And you people are like, oh, I've got a really robust backup system.

[00:21:30] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I've got that blazer crash plan or whatever. And that's great. It's important to have that too. If you haven't backed up all the photos in the first. You know, user error or something went wrong, like you're competed, went to sleep and stopped writing. For example, like having that set of cards and memory cards are so cheap these days, I just, for me, it's a no brainer that that's just always another set of pitches.

[00:21:52] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And generally, like if my laptop's at home, the box of memory cards is in my bag, wherever I'm going or in the car, just so that they're in separate.

[00:22:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Are you labeling these when you, when you, when you store the memory cards temporarily for, until the wedding's delivered, are you labeling them with the couple's name, with the date of the wedding?

[00:22:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: How are you

[00:22:10] Hannah Hall Beddoe: organize? I have like those tiny little plastic bags that you might get. I don't even know where they are, you know, like little buggies with the, like this thing. Right. And I just literally just shop you the couple's name on them and they, and then the box that I have for them, I can just put them in a chronological order.

[00:22:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I like it.

[00:22:30] Hannah Hall Beddoe: It's like it's old school, but it's effective. It works, it works. It does work. So at that point if it did, it really depends on what time I get back from a wedding. A lot of my weddings aren't close to home, so I stay away for work quite a lot. So at some point then. Go through and pick out a preview and doing that while the wedding is still fresh in my head saves me time because I know I've probably got an idea of at least 30 pictures that I definitely want to include in the preview.

[00:22:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I always try and make sure that I deliver like a cut, like a family photo, like for each of the couples, like immediate family, just cause I think it's nice for them to be able to give those to like parents and grandparents quickly. And then. I look for like him, there's probably some key moments. Like there's normally a confetti photo in there.

[00:23:19] Hannah Hall Beddoe: There's normally portraits. There's normally a first case. You know, the stuff that they really, really love. And then there's a few in that that are just my favorites. You know, they're really silly moments where like their friend has just built their drink down the front and those kinds of things, they go in there to just say that they can see that, like they can start to really get a flavor of the things that they missed while they were busy.

[00:23:41] Hannah Hall Beddoe: You know, talking to people and stuff, cause loads of other stuff's going on that they don't get to see. And it's my job to fill in those gaps. So like the inner preview, I aim for 60 ish photos. And that keeps them going. That gets them off my back. If I'm in the middle of wedding season or like I am at the moment where I've got a big backlog of work, I haven't had anyone hounding me for pictures, this wedding season, because they're like, oh, we've got loads of stuff and they can make their thank you cards and all of those kinds of things.

[00:24:08] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So that, yeah, that's my next step. So obviously then it might be several weeks between doing the preview and actually coming to look at this that I'm hoping to completely change my workflow this year. Now that Imagener is a thing, but it's not tried and tested yet. This is just how I work at the moment.

[00:24:25] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So when I come to work on this, that I cuddle in photo mechanic and culling is like the one thing that I am exceptionally good at, I call my weddings on my husband's weddings, cause he's really rubbish at culling. But I can generally call a wedding. Five 6,000 images in an hour. There are probably some photos in there that are cheap tickets, because I want to be able to see what they look like when they're edited.

[00:24:47] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And ideally is probably another couple of hundred in the final edit. I'd rather spend the time really looking carefully at then once they're edited or at least semi-automated before I make a decision about what staying and what's going, right. So that all comes into light stream. I tell it to stop building previous immediately and then goes to imagine.

[00:25:08] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And if I kind of oversee my already got my preview and light rain for that one. At that point. And I always send my fine tuning off from my previous as well, just because sometimes actually I'd probably spend more time making sure the previous are really shiny compared to a full set of, you know, 800 photos or whatever.

[00:25:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Small factors, large bets, small batch verse, large Brach. The client is going to look as carefully at a large batch than they would the small batch.

[00:25:35] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Exactly. And actually, you know, going back to that kind of like what's in your memory. When I'm doing the preview for the wedding, that wedding being fresh in my head means I've got a much better memory of what colors particularly look like.

[00:25:46] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Whereas eight weeks later I might have forgotten what some of the colors were really like and that kind of thing. So using, having the preview there as already as a reference point is really, really hard. So obviously before I send it off to imagine I tell it not to re-read it, my previous, I have done it once by accident send about that was quite annoying.

[00:26:08] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I am today, but it's just, you know, when you're working through quickly and you've got like a forgotten what was colored flags and stuff anyway, it's fine. So yeah, so it goes off to Lightroom and to imagine, and I go and make a cup of tea and that's really important. Like utilize it. You're fine. It doesn't matter how much I need the toilet or how fast I am.

[00:26:24] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I'm like it doesn't happen. So let's me send to imagine, that's it. That's the way we roll.

[00:26:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Is there a specific type of tea that you make while you're waiting for your edits to come back from?

[00:26:33] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Well, so I used to just drink whatever tea, like whatever, you know, generic kind of English tea that was going until I met my husband.

[00:26:40] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And now it has to be Yorkshire, Yorkshire tea. So that's

[00:26:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: all.

[00:26:47] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Well, yeah, I mean, he's probably even more of a coffee snob, to be honest. Like we, like, we had four copies in this house and hand grind and everything, but he's just very particular about his tea and I'm not that fast, so I'll just drink whatever, but that's what we have now.

[00:27:00] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So all of those kinds of, you know, like go and put the washing on all of those things happen and they're like, you know, 25 minutes or so that it takes for the gallery to apply to imagine. And come back from imagine so then also like gender, they'll open it up in light room and tell it to build all my previous and go and do another job somewhere else, you know, go and reply to emails and stuff while that's happening, you know, 5, 5, 10 minutes later, we get to edit.

[00:27:26] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And imagine I, on average, I'd say now I can turn a full wedding round the editing as in. The w you know, the color correction, the straightening and all of those things. And two hours, if I just sit down and do it, where I was before, that might have taken me a day and a half. So the time saving is massive.

[00:27:46] Hannah Hall Beddoe: At that point, I, as I'm going through, I'm not a massive Photoshop person. Like I don't, I don't believe in manipulating people's bodies or their skin, particularly, unless it's something like a spot which needs removing. So my rule with Photoshop is that if there's something in the background that catches my attention twice, that it gets photo-shopped out.

[00:28:03] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So that like in the UK, they're really, really keen on putting fire exits. Everywhere. Oh, there's normally like, they do really stupid things. Like put the cake in front of a plug on the wall. Can you just move the table with like four inches? But, so it's those kinds of things if they catch my attention twice that's, that's when I get rid of them.

[00:28:24] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So I just flag everything that needs Photoshopping and then I take the Photoshop. Last very occasionally there is stuff beyond my skillset. So obviously at that point, I'll have to send it to my retoucher, but she's amazing. Her turnaround is always really, really quick. And she like last year she had an associate shot, a wedding for me in London, on the south.

[00:28:46] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And Larysa managed to basically rebuild the entirety of the south bank with no tourists in it, which I could never have done. I don't know how she did it. Like recent. I'd like to use her. And when the photos came back, our jaws were just on the floor. And so, yeah, there's a time and a need for these things.

[00:29:02] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And Larissa is one person that I wouldn't be without, but I'm getting better at my own Photoshop slowly. And I'm once a fight it's about from Photoshop, that's it. I export them. And I upload them to pixie set. And at the moment I used to deliver, I used to deliver an online gallery and a physical product.

[00:29:21] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So I used to do a USB with a print box and a selection of my favorite prints. But quite a lot of my couples were like, we don't have a USB port. So this memory, this memory stick is useless to us. Also I get my, I was getting my USBs and my parent boxes from Katie albums in Poland. And since we left the EU, it means that these things are more expensive to bring into the country.

[00:29:47] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So I am actually in the process of phasing out USBs for that reason. So this year I've given all my couples, the option. Of either having some print credit or having, having the USB, and most of them are taking the print credit because I think they've just realized they can just download it from pixie set and, you know, stick it in that Google drive or whatever.

[00:30:04] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Right, exactly. And that is that's kind of the end of the, of the process. The delivery. I, then, if I go, I go on, if I want to blog their wedding or they have a questionnaire that they fill out for their blog. And I incentivize that with print credit as well. Just, I think it's much more interesting reading about someone's wedding from that point of view, then module fee, why they made certain choices and those kinds of things.

[00:30:30] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And that's kind of that's, I guess that's the end of the process. Isn't it doesn't mean it's necessarily the end of me using the pictures or the end of my relationship with my couples, the best thing about my couples. And so I stay in touch with most of them and go drinking with them and stuff now.

[00:30:43] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So that's nice.

[00:30:46] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. That's yeah, there's you, you've just shared a whole bunch of things that I really hope that a lot of the listeners take away and, and consider implementing themselves in, in their, you know, top, bottom workflow. Very smart things. So you, you were riding, you were in, I already spoke about this before we started recording this episode and you even mentioned it just now once that you're not very technical, you're not, you know, like most photographers, not very technical, you know, you use ImagenAI, which we really appreciate.

[00:31:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And we love that you're that you're a customer of ours and you're in the community, but obviously you don't understand how it works. You're like, It to you. It's magic. It's it's witchcraft and it is, you know, I'll do a lot of the customers, you know, they don't understand how it works, but I'm going to ask you a question and if we'll see if you have a, any answer, if you don't, that's fine.

[00:31:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What does the future of artificial intelligence in photography look like to you?

[00:31:46] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I do have notes for this. I didn't think about it. From what, like, from what obviously, like I have learned a little bit about Manchin and how it works now as a, as a, you know, as a result of being in the community. But I think the long and the short of it is the AI.

[00:32:01] Hannah Hall Beddoe: AI is only going to get more clear. Right. So for me, the future, I guess, is having B being able to have, like for wedding photographers event venues, specific profiles, you know, like at the moment I just have one, one imagine profile, I think, you know, long time it would be a case of like, oh, you've shot this venue.

[00:32:22] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I've got a separate I've got a separate profile for that venue, just because there are some things like there are venues that I'm recommended. Like when I was there eight times last year and other overs they're five and there are some very specific things that I might do at those venues. And I do them, every wedding, I add it because of the windows or because of where top table is put in those kinds of things.

[00:32:45] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So I guess for me, That's that's what the future looks like. You know, AI learning more about me specifically and how I work. I did try to think about how like, artificial intelligence might change more of my workflow and at the moment I'm not convinced there's anything more it can do. Like I know there's, you know, there's there's products that will do.

[00:33:07] Hannah Hall Beddoe: To me. It's not something that I feel like I need because I'm so quick at it. And the jury still seems to be out about people that are using artificial intelligence for calling. But yeah, I think, I guess it's just, it's, it's how artificial intelligence can be more specific, like starting to learn about how I might do brush work or how I might use radio filters and those kinds of things.

[00:33:27] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I guess it's coming. Like I know now that like imagine straight Imageners straightening better for me all the time. So you surely sooner will learn when I use the radio filter to do that to you.

[00:33:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. We are working on local adjustments. From what I understand, the first that we're going to have is going to be a standard brush as sort of a proof of concept that, Hey, this, our AI works for local adjustment.

[00:33:53] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Once we've proven the concept well that we can then take what we've coded and built four brushes and port them over to the other, you know, local adjustment features as well. So I agree. It's just going to get smarter and even more personalized as time goes by, which is very exciting. So this is a very deep second to last question.

[00:34:13] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: A very deep question. How did ImagenAI AI impact your.

[00:34:20] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So obviously I started using imagine in some very, very specific circumstances in September, at the beginning of September, just after I'd shot 14 weddings in August on the way coming home for a wedding, my husband and I were involved in a car.

[00:34:36] Hannah Hall Beddoe: It was a hit and run on the motorway and I'm like, how either of us walked away from the crash is America really like the pictures of the car that I've seen? Don't really represent what my car looked like before the crash. So after the, after the accident I was in hospital for a week, I had two operations to reconstruct my arm and then two and a half, three weeks later, I had to have another operation because things didn't quite go to plan.

[00:35:00] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And that meant that. Oh, I, I shot all my weddings apart from the two that I was in hospital for. I went to some of them and had seconds and thirds to kind of pick up where I couldn't. She but that obviously meant that I still had a massive backlog of editing from the summer because of the summer being the summer.

[00:35:17] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And then I had this backlog of weddings that I hadn't even looked at because I was literally staying in bed until I had to go and shoot a wedding, come home and go back to bed. And suddenly I found myself, I guess, at the beginning of October, With 20 weddings to edit and the gray cloud of having that much editing on your shoulders on my own, I average four to 5,000 photos, a wedding.

[00:35:41] Hannah Hall Beddoe: If Reese is shooting with me that he's shoot similar, so I can have 10,000 rules to look up, you know, for each wedding and actually the, yeah. The impact on my mental health, nevermind. Everything that had gone on surrounding the car accident was massive just because of the backlog that I had. And someone said to me, oh, you need to try.

[00:36:01] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I was like, yeah, but how, how can it just do the stuff for me? I don't like, it didn't make sense. And then I was like, you know, when you're in the thick of it, you, it you're like, oh, I haven't got time to do this. Like all my time. Like now it basically all brought up the fact that I couldn't put my elbow down because of why the damage was to mile.

[00:36:19] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So I was like all the time that I've got, where I can put my elbow down on the desk, I now need to spend editing. I haven't got hours to be like pulling out photos to send, to see if it was. But I thought, well, what have I got to lose? Because ultimately, like I can send all that stuff off. I overnight when I'm not, you know, while I'm sleeping, the computer can be doing that work for me.

[00:36:40] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I've still got to edit the wedding. So. Work when I apply it to the first wedding I'm going to work on. I haven't lost any time because I can just reset everything and off I go. And so I sent off, it was a big wedding. I shot it on my own, but it was, there was nearly 200 guests and a lot of speeches and just a lot had happened that day.

[00:37:01] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So it was a big gallery and I sent it off and I sat here waiting for it to come back and it just. My mind, the everything that was outdoors was perfect. Like I couldn't, I kept like resetting it and applying my preset and I couldn't, I couldn't see a difference and indoors, it needed some work. And over time, like, obviously I don't know how many weddings have delivered since that first wedding that I sent, but I think I'm well over the 5,000 for it to have started, you know, adjusting my, my profile.

[00:37:36] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Like it's now, like generally, sometimes there's something that's a bit wacky. I'm like, I wonder if I can make it better. And I'm like, no, actually, like imagine her still done giving me a better starting point with, from which to make adjustments. So I basically went from maybe spending eight hours, probably five to eight hours, depending on the length of the wedding and whether I had a second to spending two hours tweaking a certain.

[00:38:00] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And you can imagine if you've got 20 weddings and you're in quite a lot of pain. So your desk to suddenly be, you know, that's like, ImagenAI, that's like 160 hours worth of work down to doing the maths. I can't do the math, but like it's such a, such a time-saver. And even when it doesn't quite get it right, it still a generic, it just it's like.

[00:38:27] Hannah Hall Beddoe: ImagenAI's still got a bit better handle on it. And, and so I just, I can't like all the time, whenever I'm talking to people about how they have to just give it a try, I'm not you, you can't go wrong because actually getting it set up, isn't this massive time consuming process. So I thought it was going to be, and I know that obviously I've got a very unique set of circumstances, but all of that.

[00:38:48] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Could benefit from having more time not working. I think when we own our own businesses, we're all guilty of having a really terrible work-life balance and You were you, you were in between surgeries and you were doing weddings. Like you want to talk about work-life balance that you shouldn't have been doing those weddings.

[00:39:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah.

[00:39:07] Hannah Hall Beddoe: I probably shouldn't have them, but you know, I, you know, in normal circumstances maybe I wouldn't have done, but some of my couples were four or five times postponed and it just felt like it was, I dunno, I just felt so bad for them being like, oh, I know you've had to pay something five times, but now you also don't get the sugar for of your choice.

[00:39:25] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So. I like, it felt nice to be there and have a distraction, but also when one of my brides is a physiotherapist and she was like, you'll probably, I haven't had to have any physio on my arm now it's well healed. And she was like the best thing that you probably did. And in fact, she was going to lift your camera up to your eye a few times a week.

[00:39:42] Hannah Hall Beddoe: Just in terms of like my mobility and stuff. So yeah, but you know, we were talking about this before we started recording. Like we'd basically been able to take down. And I've still got editing to do, but I just, when I think if, I think to how long editing was taking me before, like I'd probably still be editing September now, not like the beginning of November.

[00:40:04] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I would be rolling my eyes about having to edit rather than just being like, yeah, it's okay. It's just another day. And I'm just going to do another wedding and crack that out today. So yeah, I can't recommend it.

[00:40:17] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So I do tell people that the most time consuming part is getting their profile, you know, T teaching ImagenAI the, you know, a profile because you're talking 5,000 photos at a minimum.

[00:40:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: You were in the mix of, you know, injury trying to get these new, you know, new weddings done. Plus your backlog of wedding. Well, you already organized ahead of time. And to the point where you were able to quickly just send 5,000 photos to teach, or did you have to, you know, organize yourself ahead, you know, before you said,

[00:40:49] Hannah Hall Beddoe: no, you don't have them, I guess.

[00:40:51] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And I think, I guess the one drawback I suppose, is if you are newer to the game and you don't have. Loads and loads of photos like race. My husband, he's not been shooting for as long as me. And like, he, like everyone has kind of been free that like, oh, this is my preset. No, this is my preset. So he's got a lot of work in a agitated, in a style that he didn't want to include.

[00:41:13] Hannah Hall Beddoe: So it took him a bit longer to get his profile going for that reason. Whereas, like, I'm quite lucky. No one, no one understands my storage system apart from me, but everything was already there on my computer. Ready to go. So it wasn't, it wasn't a massive task of, you know, trying to like pull things out and find things because I knew where it all was to send it.

[00:41:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That's great. That's great. Always stay organized.

[00:41:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. As long as it's organized in your head, it's all the matters. So Hannah where can listeners learn more about you connect with you and of course see your beautiful.

[00:41:50] Hannah Hall Beddoe: They can find me on my website, which is Hannah Hall, photography.co.uk. I'm also on Instagram just at handheld photography.

[00:41:58] Hannah Hall Beddoe: And you probably see, I kind of feel that my website is a good experience of what it would be like to come and have tea with me anyway. But I think perhaps my day-to-day chaos and the things that made me take her probably a little bit more evident on Instagram and my Instagram stories, but they're the best places to find me.

[00:42:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me today and we'll talk soon. Thanks. Very much. Thank you, Hannah, for that incredible conversation, all about your workflows and thank you to those listening will listen through. And I hope you gathered a whole bunch of insights from Hannah. In this episode, you are invited to be a part of the bigger conversation.

[00:42:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Join the ImagenAI community today, but going to imagine hyphen ai.com/community. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts, you've been listening to workflows presented by ImagenAI. To see the show notes and everything referenced in this episode, please go to imagen-ai.com/podcast.