Workflows - Photography Podcast

[00:00:00] Susan Stripling: Yeah, we actually, started dating after WPPI last year. So yeah, it's what happens when everybody goes home and you're stuck with just one person who's left and you're like, let's go have dinner. And then almost a year later, you're dating

[00:00:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: workflows of the podcast about saving you time and money in your photography business as a photographer.

[00:00:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And content Creator who struggles with dyslexia, colorblindness, introversion, and anxiety stemming from years of being bullied as a child. Workflows have been my rock. I have workflows for every aspect of my life, and that's why I am so happy to bring you workflows, a podcast Presented by Imagen as a company dedicated to saving you time and money in your photography business, it makes sense to enhance and expand the conversation to all things workflow.

[00:00:50] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Tune in and subscribe to hear stories, strategies, and tools that could be your rock. Hear from people just like you. Put the camera down for little, connect the headphones and get to work with workflows. Get in on the conversation by joining the Imagen Community today. Imagen the possibilities. Susan Stripling has been photographing weddings, portraits, and theater for almost 18 years.

[00:01:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Her work has been published in countless outlets, including magazines like Martha Stewart, weddings and Newspapers like The New York Times and Ads like Epson Canon usa. And Imagen Susan has won the Grand Award in wedding photojournalism and the Grand Award in weddings at WPPI. She also holds the prestigious Grand Master status at WPPI.

[00:01:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: She has been named one of the top 10 wedding photographers in the world by American Photo Magazine and is the original founder of the Wedding School, which brings real honest education to wedding photographers worldwide. Susan happens to also be one of our talents here at Imagen offering her editing style in a Talent AI Profile called Clean and.

[00:02:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Without further ado, here's my conversation with my friend Susan Stripling. Susan Stripling.

[00:02:11] Susan Stripling: Yes. Hello. Hello, . I am hanging in there, about one wedding away from, getting a little bit of time off. So nice. Definitely doing pretty good.

[00:02:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Nice. Oh, we're gonna be talking about time off and stuff like that.

[00:02:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I'm sure.

[00:02:27] Susan Stripling: I figured, I figured that was a good intro into, time saving, all of that, all of that Good Imagen

[00:02:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So, we for, this is episode 15 of the podcast. Mm-hmm. . but it's the first episode of season two of the Oh, that's exciting. Yeah. We, decided that we're going to do basically an 11.

season from here on basically. So, we're, we're going to do February to December every year. Nice. and just keep it consistent and have some fun with it. So. Nice. yeah, this is, season two Very exciting, and I'm glad that I was able to get you on. This episode, the kickoff, kickoff the season

[00:03:07] Susan Stripling: and yeah, we've only been trying to schedule this for how many months now?

[00:03:11] Susan Stripling: It's so funny. It's so funny. Now. Single. We're

[00:03:13] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: here. We made it. We made it. . Looks like we made it. Oh, . So, you just had a birthday, happy birthday. I did. Yeah, I did.

[00:03:21] Susan Stripling: Yeah, I did. It was, very low key. I took a really big. and ate pizza and was in bed by 10:00 PM

[00:03:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, it was great. You, you, you're making me wanna have pizza for dinner, so it's,

[00:03:32] Susan Stripling: oh my gosh.

[00:03:33] Susan Stripling: This, one of my favorite restaurants in Baltimore, they opened kind of like a second restaurant bar thing, and it's all . It's, the menu looks like it was made by like a college student when they were on substances , because it's all.

[00:03:54] Susan Stripling: Sorry, we're gonna open season two with a coughing fit. same, it's all gross food. they have a macaroni and cheese pizza, which is literally a vel Vita mac and cheese on top of a pizza, a fried bologna sandwich. one of their sandwiches involves white bread and potato chips. but the reason I went was for the pickle pizza.

[00:04:14] Susan Stripling: Which is, ooh, just a lovely pizza with a lot of pickles on it, and it was glorious.

[00:04:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, okay. I would try that. I like pickles, I like pizza. I would try it. I don't think my wife would try it , so I'd have to eat it all myself, but Oh,

[00:04:29] Susan Stripling: that's not a problem. It's not a huge pizza. You'd be.

[00:04:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: All right. So next time I'm in Baltimore, we're going there and we're gonna do

[00:04:36] Susan Stripling: this.

[00:04:36] Susan Stripling: That's fine with me. That would be pretty great. So, yeah, come on over .

What is one thing that you do for the photographic process behind the camera?
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[00:04:41] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Awesome. okay, so let's dive into the first question. It's the same question. Oh, no. Okay. Every single guest. okay. What is one thing that you do for the photographic process behind the camera? Okay. That has saved, that has saved you?

[00:04:57] Susan Stripling: Ah, that's actually a very good question. honestly, the biggest thing that I've done to, to save time is just get better at photography because if I'm not having to crop and adjust exposure and adjust white balance and all of that in post, everything is significantly faster. So actually, can I have a second part to my answer?

[00:05:16] Susan Stripling: Two part answer. All right. Yeah, yeah. not only getting better at photography in terms of exposure and, and all of that, Composition. but being more deliberate with how I shoot. So I'll come back from an eight hour wedding, with 2,400 Imageners to call at the most. I used to come back with of hot more than that.

[00:05:35] Susan Stripling: I know photographers who shoots thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. But I want things to be sleeker and easier on the back end, and slowing down, being more deliberate, being very precise with each exposure. When I come back and I look through my Imageners, I'm already a huge chunk of the way there.

[00:05:52] Susan Stripling: So that's, that's honestly the biggest thing I've done. . It's funny, I, and I keep working on it. I keep, yeah. You know, every time I blow an exposure by a half stop or something like that, I'm like, Ugh, that's a second. I could've, I could've taken an extra second and gotten that better. , I'll get we'll get there.

[00:06:09] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Well, my goal is to, to come back from a wedding with almost no outtakes and everything being almost perfect. so maybe in like 20 years I'll hit that goal. I don't know. It's a far off goal. Well,

[00:06:21] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: so I, I think you might know this about me, but I, I trained in karate. I study a form of karate called GojuRyu.

[00:06:28] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And, I heard my elbow last night, by the way. I'm kind of, yeah. It was a two hour fighting class and I'm probably while I was

[00:06:34] Susan Stripling: eating pickle pizza and not working out at all, so, yeah.

[00:06:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. and we have a, like our slogan there is to strive for excellence, like mm-hmm. , you're never going to retrieve perfect.

[00:06:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But all you can do is keep working at it. Mm-hmm. . So if it takes you 20 years and you're just keep working at it, that's all you can do is keep getting. Absolutely. You don't wanna go the opposite direction. You want to keep getting better, so. Absolutely. Yeah. and I specifically recall hearing you say something along what you just said.

[00:07:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm. at WPPI during your photo walk

[00:07:04] Susan Stripling: probably. Yes. probably said exactly that, .

[00:07:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, yeah, that's pretty, pretty good. You're, you're very consistent with, with that answer. It's great. Well, I just, I,

[00:07:14] Susan Stripling: I hate wasting time on Yeah. On any, anything. Anything in my personal life. Anything in business, and I'm thinking.

[00:07:21] Susan Stripling: Why did I leave this like this or do this like this? Now I've made a bigger problem for myself. I say this as my eyes cut sideways and I look at the dishes in the sink and I'm should have put them in the washer last night. You know, that's another, we're striving for excellence. We're not excellent yet.

[00:07:36] Susan Stripling: Yeah,

What is one thing that you do for the business that saves you time or money?
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[00:07:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah. Kidding there. Never look at the sink. Never. No. No. Yeah. so , what is now one thing you do for your business, not editing? What is one thing you do for your business that has saved you either time or.

I have a studio manager, who works for me. She's worked for me for a long time. she works from home.

[00:07:54] Susan Stripling: She doesn't come into an office or anything. We actually don't live anywhere near each other. And not only does she do album design, she does everything that eats up my new bits of time for me, because when you've been doing this for a long time and you've got clients that have kind of. . I mean, sometimes people will resurface after a handful of years and when you've been doing this for 20 years, a handful.

[00:08:15] Susan Stripling: You know, it's a lot of people that sometimes reach out for things. I just forward those emails to her and it, for me, it's not so much about getting back large chunks of time. It's about getting back minute bits of time that then add up to large chunks of time. So like this morning I forwarded her an email of someone that wanted to download their Imageners from a wedding.

[00:08:32] Susan Stripling: That was like eight years. and I have the link, but it's in my old gallery system, so I'd have to go find it. I don't really remember when their wedding is and maybe it would take me 10 minutes, but it's took me three seconds to forward the email to her . So she does a lot of that stuff, for me. And then I try to, as much as possible, pre-plan a lot of my, social media posts.

[00:08:57] Susan Stripling: I'll plan them and schedule them out so that I don't have to think about every single day what I'm gonna post.

[00:09:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. And I need, I, Hmm. Are you using a specific tool for the scheduling or are you Yeah,

[00:09:07] Susan Stripling: I'm using something called Plann. And the reason I like plan is it will. You can integrate it with your cloud spot online gallery, cuz that's what I used to deliver to clients.

[00:09:20] Susan Stripling: So if I put up a folder of, sneak peaks, which is usually how I start my gallery to clients, they get a sneak peak and it's got their link in it. And then later when all of the rest of the Imageners go up, they're still under the same link in plan. When it says, you know, what image do you want? Prep or post or whatever.

[00:09:37] Susan Stripling: Do you wanna get it from a Dropbox from your computer? Do you wanna upload it now? Do you wanna get it from one of your cloud spot galleries? I'll be like my cloud spot gallery, and that way I can really easily just go and access like, Their sneak peaks, their Previews, whatever, right. without having to constantly be uploading something new to a new system.

[00:09:54] Susan Stripling: And I love it when things integrate. So yeah, what I'm actually looking at, well I was supposed to actually do it earlier this week, but I didn't, because I'm about to have some downtime planning out a couple months of social media posts, but I've been watching movies instead. So

[00:10:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: what movies we'll get

[00:10:10] Susan Stripling: there.

[00:10:11] Susan Stripling: What are some of. I've been watching. I mostly just watch horror movies. I, I don't know why. but what did I watch the other day that was, I watched a movie from the eighties called Possession, which was very strange, not scary, just weird. and then I watched, smile the other week, the one with that really creepy viral marketing campaign where, At one point I actually got mad at the movie and I was like, we have to turn it off.

[00:10:33] Susan Stripling: We have to turn it off. Because it was actually kind of freaking me out. And Bill was like, what is wrong with you? And I was like, it's just scaring me. Okay. but we persevered through and then the ending sucked. But they, the endings always suck. That's fine. ,

[00:10:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it's

[00:10:45] Susan Stripling: like these really great, scary movies and then they don't know how to close them

so yeah, but Smile actually ended pretty.

[00:10:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Because I refuse to watch that one.

[00:10:54] Susan Stripling: It's honestly, it's like super traumatizing because now anytime anyone, I don't know, is like smiling at me, I'm like, you have a demon in your body. Yeah. . yeah.

[00:11:04] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. I've

[00:11:04] Susan Stripling: had creep me out since I watched Did you ever see it follows?

[00:11:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: No, I, I'm not a big horror

[00:11:10] Susan Stripling: fan. Don't watch that one either. Cuz then you'll think that anyone walking down the same street as you is out to get you so. also possessed with a demonn. So that's the, that's the theme of our talk today, apparently.

[00:11:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about horror films and demons on this episode of workflows.

[00:11:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Correct. . So speaking of Bill, how are things with Bill going?

[00:11:31] Susan Stripling: I love him. He's lovely. he just moved in here. Oh, fun. I know. It was very exciting. yes, he is absolutely lovely. And we also have a, , like similar philosophy about shooting, which is like, get it all right in camera and, and yeah, shoot as, as minimally as possible.

[00:11:49] Susan Stripling: So it's really nice to kind of be with someone who's in the same, like, looks at work the same way you look at work. and he's just funny and lovely and talented and weird. I think weird is the most important part, , but he makes me laugh like every single day. He's, he's a delightful human. I'm looking forward to bringing him to WPPI and subjecting him to all of my friends.

[00:12:08] Susan Stripling: Nice .

[00:12:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Well, he was there last year.

[00:12:11] Susan Stripling: He was there last year. Yeah. But now I wanna introduce him to everybody and like just inundate him with social activity. Nice. not parties. I don't do parties, but yeah, we actually, started dating after WPPI last year. So yeah, it's what happens when everybody goes home and you're stuck with just one person who's left and you're like, let's go have.

[00:12:31] Susan Stripling: And then almost a year later you're dating.

[00:12:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. So living together. Yes.

[00:12:37] Susan Stripling: I, and it's so funny, I was like, I'm never gonna live with anybody ever again. I'm never gonna live with anybody. Like I'm gonna be single forever. I love being single. Cause I was single for like three years. and it was great.

[00:12:47] Susan Stripling: And then here this guy is, and he's great and like lovely and changed my mind about all of this stuff. And I found myself saying, do you wanna move in here? And I'm like, who am I? . but my therapist tells me I'm fairly well adjusted. So, so it's, it's a good thing. we still have the Christmas tree up cuz I don't wanna take it down.

but yeah, he's, he is a delight and everyone should know. .

[00:13:10] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I love the fact that he dedicates part of his business to charity. Yes. Like with the food.

[00:13:16] Susan Stripling: And he's gotten me doing that as well. Like that was one of the first things that I, even before we, because we've known each other on and off for years.

[00:13:24] Susan Stripling: Mm-hmm. , and that was the very first time I went to his website. That was one of the things that I. Really liked and he's really passionate about it. every time anyone books him, a portion of the proceeds goes towards, there's a food bank in Easton, Pennsylvania and I've gone along with them to buy stuff for it and like he was able to help them buy a new freezer, like all of this great stuff.

[00:13:43] Susan Stripling: And then, , you know, I just kept saying, I've always wanted to do something like this, but I don't know what to do. And he really pushed me to, he saw someone else doing something like that and it was just a trickle down effect. And then I said, but I don't know what to do. I don't like people. And he and he said, what do you like?

[00:13:59] Susan Stripling: And I said, I like dogs. So he helps people. I help dogs. So when I book a wedding, a portion of it goes towards. , kind of the biggest animal rescue here in Baltimore, so hopefully between the two of us, you're

[00:14:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: saving a lot of lives, people and animals. Yes. Yeah.

[00:14:16] Susan Stripling: And I would have 900 dogs, if that would not be insane.

[00:14:20] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, of course. I, you, you'd run outta names. There's only so many Taylor Swifts and those type of, Of of people to name your dogs after .

[00:14:28] Susan Stripling: I, I love Taylor Swift. Okay. And the funniest thing is when I, like when I'm walking her and I meet other dogs on the street, or I'm walking her and my other dog and Bill's dog.

[00:14:37] Susan Stripling: Mm-hmm. and you know, people, we stop and we talk, we talk about our dogs and I'm like, we don't even introduce ourselves. We just introduce our dogs. And I'm like, this is Tika, which is Bill's dog named after Tika Masala, like super cute name. And this is my dog. This is Chloe, which is the name that she had when she came to us.

[00:14:53] Susan Stripling: Cause she was a rescue. And I'm like, this is Tika, this is Chloe, and this is Taylor Swift. And they're like, oh, did your kids name her? And I was like, yeah. Nomia is a 43 year old adult woman named her Taylor Swift. Listen by myself, Taylor Swift. The most, we call her ta. because that just fits her demonic, bizarre little personality, and it is really funny, like I yell Taylor Swift when I'm really mad at her and that just makes it funny sometimes. I call her by Taylor Swift's actual real name with her middle name cuz Taylor Swift's middle name is Allison, which I can't believe this is a thing I know. That's why I will yell at my dog, Taylor Allison Swift, which makes no sense whatsoever, cuz that's not even.

[00:15:37] Susan Stripling: Yeah. But it, it definitely takes down the anger when she's pooped on the rug and I'm mad so, but yes, her name is

[00:15:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Taylor Swift. I, I, I have no shame in saying I do enjoy Taylor Swift's music, especially the more recent stuff. Mm-hmm. , right. less of the pop stuff. More of the like, like

[00:15:54] Susan Stripling: the folklore Evermore, yeah.

[00:15:55] Susan Stripling: Yeah.

[00:15:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Lovely psy stuff. Yeah. Fun fact. Tell me, I, I grew up in, in high school and a little bit after high. . I was in the music scene, I was in bands. And some of the, you've met James, one of the bands? No, one of the bands. Okay. This is a weird connection. One of the bands that I was very fr friendly with, that one of the band mates was actually in my high school with me, was in a band with, Jack Antonoff, who's the producer.

[00:16:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Oh, yeah. Oh, I know who that is. Yeah. So, so I've known Jack, I don't know him, like we're not friends anymore. Like I haven't seen him in years since, like he was in fun. Steel train and all these bands. Do you have a cell phone number? No, I don't have a cell phone, but, but, but, but

[00:16:38] Susan Stripling: listen, I'm working my way towards Taylor

[00:16:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Swift.

[00:16:41] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. . But, but yeah, so, so, there's that weird connection. I have a, I have a, I am connected to Taylor Swift. Sort of. There you go. One of those, it's one of those Kevin Bacon type things,

[00:16:52] Susan Stripling: you know? Oh my god. Jack Antonoff is like crazy talented. He is one of those, I'm literally in like 900 bands and

[00:16:59] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, you have to listen to his first, the first band he was in.

I'll have to send you some of the music. Please

[00:17:05] Susan Stripling: do. I would, because I would enjoy that.

[00:17:07] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It's like punk, punk. Bill

[00:17:09] Susan Stripling: would love that bill. Yeah. I think Bill listened to music and then stopped listening to music in like the late nineties. So. , he has a time capsule of like Green Day and like that whole era.

[00:17:22] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of times we'll be here, because I own the building that I live in with my two best friends and we have a pool table downstairs, so we'll be down there playing pool and we like to like watch YouTube videos while we're playing pool. and Bill never knows who anybody is and it is the funniest thing ever.

[00:17:36] Susan Stripling: He'll be like, oh yeah, this, this band. And he's like, , not a clue. So, but I'm catching him up on Taylor Swift, so we're all

right. .

[00:17:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I'd much rather listen to some of the stuff from the, from the nineties, early two thousands than a lot of the stuff that's now, but, you

[00:17:51] Susan Stripling: know. Yeah. But the videos now are very entertaining and videos are like, so much better than they used to be.

[00:17:57] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Yeah. which is funny because we were talking about how like you have to go on YouTube or, or Vimeo or whatever to watch videos when we used to just sit around and watch them on mt. Yeah. And now MTV doesn't show videos so great. It's fine. But if you come play pool with us, we have a, a YouTube playlist, so we play videos in the background and then play pool.

[00:18:18] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Nice. Yep. Yeah, I'll be there. I'll be there.

[00:18:21] Susan Stripling: In all of the time that I've saved, I do really productive things like play pool than, than we bought a ski ball machine, so we are fully adult.

[00:18:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yep. Awesome. Yep. speaking of saving time,

[00:18:34] Susan Stripling: did you like why I brought it back? I brought it

[00:18:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: back. , besides from Imagen.

What is one thing that you do for editing that has saved you time?
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[00:18:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. What is one thing you do for editing that has saved you time? Photo mechanic. So we're gonna get to Imagen, so

[00:18:46] Susan Stripling: I don't want you to, using photo mechanic. a lot of people call in Lightroom or whatnot, but photo mechanic is just, it has been my go-to Culling software. It just, your Previews are up like that.

[00:19:00] Susan Stripling: Mm-hmm. , it did so fast to go through it. and it's such a basic program, but it's, it's my absolute favorite. So yeah, photo mechanic.

What is one thing that you do after a session that has increased business?
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[00:19:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Love it. Awesome. Awesome. okay, one more question before I have a surprise question for you. Oh God. Okay. what is one thing you do after a session that has increased?

[00:19:22] Susan Stripling: after a session that has increased business. Mm-hmm. getting Previews out really quickly. I used to think I'd be like, what's the point of doing a sneak peek when I could just edit the wedding a little bit faster? Mm-hmm. , , but if I edited the wedding a little bit faster, it's like an influx of a lot of Imageners.

[00:19:39] Susan Stripling: So after an engagement session or a portrait session or a wedding, I try to get a gallery of Previews out to them within like a day or two. And we're not talking a ton, we're talking like maybe 50, 60 Imageners, so that they can start sharing them and. That's actually been really big and I send it to all of the vendors because I collect a list of vendors before the wedding day and the Previews go out to everybody.

[00:20:01] Susan Stripling: So I'm pretty much giving people social content right away when they're very, very excited. and I thought, God, this is like so much extra work on my part. It's not, and it's not gonna work. Whatever. It's gonna be like a waste of time. And it actually isn't, cuz it's, it's putting professional Imageners in people's hands at the time that they're usually just posting cell phone image.

[00:20:19] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you asking for them to, to credit you? Like what, like to mention you when they shared on Facebook or whatever, or are you just letting them No,

[00:20:23] Susan Stripling: just tag me. Yeah. and honestly, most people now, like the rules of tagging have been pretty ingrained in people, especially other wedding vendors, that it's generally not a, not a problem.

[00:20:35] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Are you walking your dog while listening to this episode? Take a moment and pull up Lightroom on your phone. Share a recent photo, Imagen edited in your style. Share it on Instagram using the hashtag ImagenAI and caption it with your thoughts on this podcast episode. So I started doing this about three episodes ago.

[00:20:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. and I'm now doing it on live streams when we have guests as well, and it's fun. Okay.

[00:21:02] Susan Stripling: Phenomenal. Great. Great. Pick a color deck. Oh, no. Orange. All

[00:21:08] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: right. Oh boy. That was a loud noise. . How dare you. Okay. I'm gonna start shuffling through. You tell me when to stop. Okay. Here you go. Tell me when. Stop. Okay.

[00:21:22] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Okay. My next question to you is, oh,

Jesus.

[00:21:25] Susan Stripling: Okay. You just picked this card, so

you

[00:21:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: can't blame me.

[00:21:27] Susan Stripling: I did. Okay. You're right. You, I did this to myself. .

[00:21:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: All right. You got this one. You got this one in the bag. What does your typical Friday night look like?

[00:21:37] Susan Stripling: It's so freaking boring. It's so funny. It's like, I expect, you know, people are gonna get this question on like a normal podcast interview and it's gonna be like, and I went to the bar and I did this.

[00:21:47] Susan Stripling: My Friday night is sitting around in my jammies charging batteries, for my wedding the next

[00:21:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: day. You can't charge them when you're not in your jammies. You gotta be in your

[00:21:55] Susan Stripling: jams. I mean, to be clear, I'm also from the waist down in my jammies currently. So no, the, the goal never wear real pants again.

[00:22:04] Susan Stripling: 2020 has taught us you do not need to buckle any kind of pants ever. . I mean honestly, Friday night is, is, and dating another wedding photographer is very similar. We charge our batteries. I go looking for missing lens caps cuz for some reason I'm always missing lens caps. Always. Yeah. make sure that my, the way I give my timeline to.

[00:22:23] Susan Stripling: My assistants, I used to print them out, but I would always lose them. And sometimes there's like, I'll make notes on there that I don't really wanna leave, like laying around, like if they're sensitive family situations and like people don't talk to each other. It's written down on the timeline. And I would hate for someone to pick it up and be like, oh my God, they told her that.

[00:22:40] Susan Stripling: Like, so and so and so and so don't talk to each other and like whatever. I make a note on my. laptop, like just using notes and you can share your notes with anyone you wanna share 'em with. Yep. And so I'll share my note with my assistant, and one of the things on the note is like the family formals and we can actually check them off.

so I'll go through my note. I'll make sure my note is correct. and then we usually watch Impractical Jokers and then fall asleep. . Nice , but we've got, I can't believe I'm about to say this is the, this is the oldest thing I'm gonna say. We've gotten really into Jeopardy lately, so, okay. But it comes on at seven, so Jeopardy comes on at seven, so we can still be in bed on time.

[00:23:19] Susan Stripling: Yep. So yeah, my Friday nights are wild. They're just wild. But

[00:23:23] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you know what? You get to chill out, relax, because you call this extra time thanks to things that we'll talk about.

[00:23:30] Susan Stripling: Hey, you brought it right back around again. Well done.

[00:23:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Okay. So before we get into that kind of topic, okay. this is going to be a deep one that will probably make you want to think about for a little bit, but Oh, no.

Can you share an outlined breakdown of your workflow from lead to delivery?
---

[00:23:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: take a look at your business from a 30,000 foot view down, okay? Mm-hmm. , can you share an outline, breakdown of your workflow from lead to delivery?

[00:23:55] Susan Stripling: Yes, I can. so when a lead comes in, all of my leads come in through tave, which is my studio management software. I generally don't like to call leads because I hate the phone.

[00:24:07] Susan Stripling: And also, like for example, right now I'm trying to hire a dog trainer and everyone wants to talk on the phone first. I'm like, oh my God, I don't wanna talk on the phone to everybody. I just wanna tell you my dog is weird and have you come fix it. . she's so weird. it's like, what's wrong with your dog?

[00:24:20] Susan Stripling: She's just weird. I don't know. She's strange. so I'll email the lead back. It includes a link to my pricing. a lot of times and, and I close out my email with, you know, let me know how you'd like to connect further. Whether you wanna get on the phone, please don't say the phone, or Zoom or more emails, you know, just let me know.

[00:24:39] Susan Stripling: And it usually goes one of two ways. I never hear from them again. Or they wanna schedule something to chat further. whether they wanna do phone or Zoom. I don't really meet people in person much anymore cuz there's not a whole lot of a point. We're also used to meeting online now. Okay, great. We'll have a meeting.

talk through the process and everything, and, and a lot of times by the, if they do wanna have a meeting, I've got about like a 75% close rate after a meeting because they've seen my prices and if they want to talk, they either wanna hire me or it's between like me and somebody else. . so we talk to, we talk and then I, using Tave, send out a contract and they can sign and pay write online.

[00:25:18] Susan Stripling: Cause they don't think anything should hold up people from being able to book you. I don't think they have to write a check, find a stamp, anything like that. Fax machine, any of the above. okay. So then there is, one of my clients said that their venue only got, you could only send them paperwork by fax.

[00:25:35] Susan Stripling: And I'm like, Okay. How do you, okay. sure, why not?

[00:25:41] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: There's a reason why Halifax exists, you know, correct. . That that's the

[00:25:45] Susan Stripling: reason. It's like, you know, we, we do have a more modern version of faxing. It's called emails. Email, just email it to you. But once a client is booked in Tave, they have, I have multiple emails that go out between booking and.

[00:26:01] Susan Stripling: The wedding itself, and it's mostly just check in emails because if I, for every single client, if I wanna check in every six weeks or so, I'd have to put it on my calendar and remember to send the email. I just have it scheduled in Tave to go out. You know, just check-ins. How are things going? Do you need any help with your timeline?

[00:26:19] Susan Stripling: Things like that. So it's touch points along the way. At about six weeks out, I send them a wedding day worksheet, which covers a lot of details of the day. And usually by this point I know a lot of this information, like timelines and, and photo lists and things like that. But it helps me put it all in one place.

[00:26:35] Susan Stripling: and I get that. We usually do a final phone call just to make sure that everything that I've read in the worksheet is actually what they intended. And then from there, I create the note, send it to my assistant. I don't often work with second photographers, but I always work with an assistant. And if I do have a second photographer, they get the note also.

let's see, that brings us up to the wedding, which I go to and shoot. and then. . I come home, I download the same night as the wedding. This is all providing, I get home before like 12:30 AM if it's after 12:30 AM we're doing this in the morning because I'm very tired, but I usually have a lot of adrenaline when I get home just from having worked all day and having loud music blasting in my ears for the last like four hours.

[00:27:24] Susan Stripling: if at all possible, and about 95% of the time it is possible. I download and Cole on the same night and that's something that charming and I actually, I know you talked to charming. She and I both do this. Mm-hmm. , if I wait at all to Cole, the wedding, it is slower. If I shoot another wedding after this wedding and then I have to go back and call this wedding, it takes twice as long.

[00:27:48] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But if I Plus you've now, you've now like littered the, the. your memory of, of that wedding.

[00:27:56] Susan Stripling: So if I go home and I call night of, and I've got like, here's the flower girl coming down the aisle. I will remember the first two shots. She wasn't doing much of anything. And then the next three shots, she was laughing.

[00:28:08] Susan Stripling: and it's just that, that little muscle memory from the day I can call a wedding no matter how long it was in less than an hour. so I'll call, I'll throw everything in Lightroom usually while everything is being thrown into Lightroom, I'll go take a shower, something like that. and then come back and I'll start my Imagen.

[00:28:26] Susan Stripling: The same night. then after that, like this is provide, if I only have one wedding on a weekend, if I have two, I throw it up into Imagen and then go to the wedding the next day. also while everything is uploading, I start my backups just so that I have the RAW files backed up on drives. Then the next day, I just go ahead and download everything from imagen-ai.com, like done.

[00:28:48] Susan Stripling: I'm doing this in pajamas, holding a cup of coffee. I just download everything. And then I set Lightroom to do my one-to-one Previews so that I can go through it even faster. And a lot of times it'll be Paul drinking coffee the morning after a wedding. I'm skimming through everything in Lightroom room and I probably spend maybe an hour just kind of going through everything.

[00:29:11] Susan Stripling: like Imagen is AM is amazing. Like we all know this, but it isn't completely in my brain because sometimes I'll shoot, like for example, if I've got a couple in front of a window, sometimes I wanna blow it out. Sometimes I wanna make it a silhouette, right? And if my exposure is a little too much in the middle of that, Imagens like, Ooh, we're gonna guess where you wanna go with this one.

[00:29:32] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Other of the times it's right. But sometimes I'm like, you know what? I actually. Fix this and go the other direction or throw a, it's

[00:29:39] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: a replacement for you. It's not a replacement for you. It's still correct. You still have your creative control over

[00:29:44] Susan Stripling: everything. Sometimes I'll throw a, a more of a vignette on something or a radial filter or, you know, mask out the background or something like that.

[00:29:51] Susan Stripling: But at this point it's just fun because my exposures in my color and everything are absolutely just spot on and it's going through and adding some little artistic touches. once that is all done, I. go back to Imagen. I upload the final edits and then I create a virtual copy of every single image in my Lightroom catalog and desaturate them so that I have a color version and a black and white version of every single image.

[00:30:16] Susan Stripling: And then I export them all out, start uploading them to Cloud Spot. And while that's going on, I throw all of the final Imageners back into photo mechanic and pick the ones that I wanna put up for Previews. And that's pretty much it. ,

[00:30:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: you said that you desaturate, so you have a black and white version.

[00:30:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yes. I wanna dig into that just real quick. Do you literally bring the saturation down or do you convert it to black and white?

[00:30:42] Susan Stripling: I literally just bring the saturation

[00:30:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: down. Is there a reason why? Is there a reason why you do that versus the other?

for some reason it tends to look better. , I, interesting. I do not know why.

I've mo I've tried different ways to do it. Turning at black and white, running an action, not an action a, a preset on them. Mm-hmm. . and literally just grabbing saturation, pulling it all the way down has given me the, the best looking conversion from color to black and white. So, interesting. I don't know, I, I'm not saying it makes sense, and I'm not saying everyone should do it, but Yeah.

[00:31:14] Susan Stripling: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's for some reason, The way that has given me the most consistent results. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. And everyone gets a color version and a black and white version of all of their Imageners, so, yeah.

[00:31:26] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. in, Imagen, just for everybody listening, so Imagen when you create your profile, you can say, mm-hmm.

[00:31:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: if it's a black and white or a color, right? Mm-hmm. , the way that we identify if it's a black and white, image to like, if, if you, if you make a black and white profile, it's going to ignore everything that's set to. So like if you, like, if you're in color and you just desaturate Yep. Technically, technically according to Lightroom and mm-hmm.

[00:31:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What? Imagen Reads, it's a color photo, not a black and white. So just, it's still a color photo. Yep. Yes. So just as, so for listeners who are using, Imagen these desaturation method won't work as far as. color versus black and white profiles, that has to actually be a black and white set image enlightened for Imagen.

[00:32:13] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: But, um, anyway, I just wanna make sure that I, I just find that interesting. You know, it's, it's proof that there's so many ways to do the same thing. Mm-hmm. , there's no wrong way. It's just, you gotta find what works best for you and you found what works best for you. So, and

[00:32:26] Susan Stripling: sometimes it's a little weird, like everybody's got something in their workflow that if you told your workflow to somebody else, they'd be.

[00:32:33] Susan Stripling: Okay. but I've tried a bunch of different things and simply a virtual copy and taking the saturation down looks best. That's cool. Who knows. Hey,

[00:32:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: there you go. Yeah. so I'm now like, later when I have some time later, I'm going to open up Lightroom and play around. And I wanna see the differences for myself.

[00:32:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Cause I've never done that

[00:32:52] Susan Stripling: before. And honestly, tell me if, if, if you're, and I'm always tweaking and changing workflow, if you do that and you're like, actually, if you just do this simple other thing instead,

[00:33:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: let me know. Yeah. I'm gonna play, I'm gonna play. yeah, you gave me something to play with, so that's, that's fun.

What does the future of AI in photography look like to you?
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[00:33:06] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Why not? Sure. . So my next question to you. Oh. And thank you for, for sharing so much detail. That was, that was, fantastic. yay. So what does the future of AI in photography look like to you?

[00:33:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: This is a hard one. It's

[00:33:28] Susan Stripling: funny, I,

[00:33:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I mean, if it's not something that you think much about, that's perfectly fine. You know, I

[00:33:33] Susan Stripling: think about it and then I go into a depression spiral , because I'm like, the one thing you really can't AI is things happening in realtime with real people. Mo like capturing these moments for people.

[00:33:51] Susan Stripling: Mm-hmm. . , I don't know how you'd AI that. Then I go down a very deep rabbit hole of robots and, you know, my Amazon Alexa shooting a wedding for me and things like that. and I, I love ai. I do, I just wish it would kind of leave the arts alone a little bit. Interesting. cuz I'm really, there are a lot of people using mid journey and whatnot to Yes.

[00:34:11] Susan Stripling: Create art. . But is it, is it really art they created, they just, they just told a prompt to Yeah. A computer that's not, you didn't make it. Right. So I guess I'm old. This is, again, this is like my parents not understanding how to program TiVo back in the day. Right? Like, cuz everything was on the dvr. I'm like, why are they doing this?

[00:34:36] Susan Stripling: This is stupid. honestly, I think about it and then, , my brain blacks out and I end up somehow on climate change and the future and our planet burning, and I try not to think about it anyway anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So,

I saw a con, I saw a conversation about this and about like mid journey and that kind of stuff, and one of the comments was like, don't tell them where John Connor is.

[00:34:55] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: And I was like, , don't tell them where John Connor is.

[00:35:00] Susan Stripling: No, I just, I don't, I guess I don't get it really. Like I and I, yeah, it can, it can do cool things, but you didn't make it right. Like it, it required no artistic skill on your part to say. Make me an image that is a bride in a veil standing in the catacombs in Paris.

[00:35:24] Susan Stripling: Smiling.

[00:35:25] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. I see. I have fun playing around with it. I would, I, I have been thinking about using it for something that I've been working on for a long time. children. Children. I have two written that I'm like, do I pay an illustrator or do I now experiment with this, which

[00:35:43] Susan Stripling: could do it for me?

[00:35:44] Susan Stripling: And that's where I have a hard time, which is like, it's, and now there's, there's AI for copy editing and like, yeah, people are just gonna get edged out of the arts. And there are certain things that I don't mind being. automated or like, I never want to go through a human manned cashier at a store. I would always rather check myself out.

[00:36:10] Susan Stripling: So yes. Yeah, you could argue that's taking a job away from a person. But if I'm getting AI to illustrate for me and the illustrations are really beautiful, which they would be. Mm-hmm. , am I taking a job away from a. , and that's where, as a creative, I start to just feel weird about

[00:36:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: it. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. There's that fine line of like, is it, mm-hmm.

[00:36:34] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: is it good? Is it bad? Is it, is it going to hurt people's lives? Or at the same time, like sometimes it's just about something being fun. That's it.

[00:36:46] Susan Stripling: Like exactly a toy. Exactly. 100%. I realized I took it to like a deep, dark place, but, no, it's okay. It's okay. Somehow we ended up on like polar ice cast melting and like all and climate change.

[00:36:55] Susan Stripling: And why is it 65 degrees outside today? It's winter, but that's fine. it's, it's just, it's a new interesting tool that I don't know how I feel about it yet, and I don't know what I, I always worry about the future of my job being taken. . But then I also realized that like there are people out there still painting oil paintings of humans that people are hanging over their fireplaces and they're actually doing them.

[00:37:22] Susan Stripling: They're not doing them through Photoshop or anything like that. So I think the thing about it, it just, the future of AI just kind of makes me tired cuz it's gonna mean I'm just gonna keep having to adapt and work even harder to stay relevant and keep getting work. And. . That's something that I know a lot of my friends who've been in the business like over 10 years, like the constant hustle is a

[00:37:44] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: little right.

[00:37:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Much. so for those listening, if you're interested in this topic, in December, 2022, it's, I can't believe it's 2023 already. December 22, but

[00:37:56] Susan Stripling: year is it? I told you I forgot how old I was this morning, so it's it's fine. Time is a construct. Yeah.

[00:38:02] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: So, so Imagen did a webinar with,well, our ceo, yo Tom did a webinar with Amir, the CEO of, pick Time and mm-hmm.

How did Imagen impact your life?
---

[00:38:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: the whole discussion was on ai, in photography. So anybody who's interested in watching the replay of that webinar, it's on our YouTube. and that this topic of mid journey and its impact on photographers actually came up and was discussed by two, you know, people in the

[00:38:31] Susan Stripling: two high level professionals in the industry.

[00:38:33] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. Yeah. So, definitely worth listening to if anybody who's interested in that topic,

I am interested in that topic.

[00:38:40] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. so, you are not just an Imagen. You are someone who has created a profile Yes. That is being used by thousands of photographers worldwide.

[00:38:51] Susan Stripling: That's so exciting. Which is

[00:38:53] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: really exciting.

[00:38:54] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. So, we, we've been discussing time this entire episode. Mm-hmm. , we've been discussing workflows. Imagen obviously it plays a role in your workflow, as you've mentioned. How did Imagen impact your. ,

[00:39:11] Susan Stripling: you know, a lot of people will talk about like a software or something and be like, it changed my life.

[00:39:16] Susan Stripling: And you're like, okay, calm down. It did not change your life. . but legitimately Imagen changed my life, like on a financial level. It saves me a ton of money. it, I had been using a really incredible team of humans to edit my Imageners before mm-hmm. and. They were fantastic. They did an incredible job.

but I've saved thousands and thousands of dollars by using Imagen. And again, that's gonna feel kind of bad about, that's another discussion entirely for another day. But, it has saved me a ton of money. It has saved me just like you, you can't. , I can't even qualify like how much time it saved me. It is mind boggling that if I really wanted to, I could deliver a wedding the day after the wedding in my pajamas, drinking coffee with minimal effort.

[00:40:13] Susan Stripling: Like it's, and the fact that I can keep teaching it, it just keeps getting better and better and better. Yeah. it's also saved me so much. , like I, I get the wedding done as fast as I can get it done, and I upload it and then I, I sit on it for a couple of weeks. And it's not to create the illusion that it takes time to process these Imageners.

[00:40:35] Susan Stripling: It's, that's not it. It's that I don't want to create an unrealistic standard of my own turnaround times, because if I started turning around to all my weddings, within a week, I'll have weddings where I have travel and I'm gone for a week and. Or it's the middle of wedding season and it's gonna take me a couple extra days to run these things through.

[00:40:54] Susan Stripling: Imagen I still tell people six weeks. I delivered about three weeks at this point. but like my last wedding, let me look at my calendar. I had a wedding on, oh, hey, did you know I'm supposed to record a podcast today? All right, . I had a wedding on December 11th. Mm-hmm. , and it was in Florida. And I drove down and I drove back and you told me to Florida.

[00:41:13] Susan Stripling: Yeah, I have a camper van. Okay. So I drove the camper van down to Florida and it was really fun. . at a wedding on the 11th, I got back like the morning of the 13th. The wedding was done by the evening of the 14th, like done, and that involved driving back from Florida. I have a wedding this Saturday, which is technically I get the end of my season, and then I have some time off the wedding.

[00:41:35] Susan Stripling: I'm done with the wedding at like eight 30 Saturday. By morning on Sunday, I will be completely caught up and done and can close my computer and go on vacation if I want, like it. It also just, not only is it a time saver, it is a workflow consolidator, like it just chunks your workflow down into such a small amount of time, and combining that with the fact that I'm working even harder to shoot less, to do better in camera.

[00:42:05] Susan Stripling: it. Imagen what it does. Just finishes things off in a really nice way and it like, the amount of spare time I have is almost embarrassing at this point. , and I love it. That's so good. It's, and I know like we harp on like yeah, Imagen, you know, saves you time, saves you time. But when you shoot like 30 ish weddings a year and you add up the time that you've saved,

[00:42:34] Susan Stripling: It, it is absolutely mind blowing, honestly.

on the topic of not having humans doing your editing anymore Yes. something that's been coming up a lot recently for mm-hmm. wedding photographers that are in the same boat as you that are doing still a lot of weddings every year. Yeah. And have an extremely high volume of work to go through.

some. Some wedding photographers are now hiring humans solely to do their calling and or AI calling and their AI editing, um mm-hmm. final touches. Yeah. Like, not, not like just running it through Imagen, but like, all the work after the fact. Yes. You know, like the, the fine, you know, blemish removal or the, yeah.

[00:43:18] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: What you talk about like the backlight adjustments and things like that. So people are still hiring humans just to. The final work. yeah, so the humans,

[00:43:27] Susan Stripling: and that's what I talked about with like the people that I'd worked with before. I was like, I, I feel like while initially it looks like something like Imagen could put you guys out of business, I actually think it's a really unique, business.

[00:43:40] Susan Stripling: Proposition for you because you can also use Imagen mm-hmm. to run the Imageners through, and then people still, there are people who do way more after the fact than I do. or even just after the fact, like to crop more or put more radio filters on things or whatnot. It is still, you know, can give them the ability to do more fine tuning for people.

[00:44:04] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Without having to spend so much time on just the RAW processing bulk of. .

[00:44:09] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah. We've been seeing some, editing, you know, editing shops, starting to add, specifically add in like an AI finishing plan mm-hmm. option to their packages and stuff. So, as a way to like keep customers mm-hmm. that they might have otherwise lost to Imagen, which, so like we we're, we're glad that, that, as the world, you know, changes that the,

[00:44:30] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Mm-hmm. editors are making their adjustments to what the world, where the world is going. yes. So it's, it's good. I mean, so yes, some are losing jobs, but at the same time, some are being, ahead of the curve and Yeah. Doing what they

[00:44:44] Susan Stripling: need to, which is good. And I mean, I just, I think this is such a fantastic tool because what it does is it does the stuff that nobody wants to do.

[00:44:51] Susan Stripling: Yeah. like image by image, exposure, tweaking, color, tweaking. Oh my god. It just takes that boring base level out and leaves you with a better place to start playing or tweaking, or if you wanna spend more time on it. It's your workflow's not eating you alive anymore, cuz you're sitting there going, is this image the same color?

[00:45:16] Susan Stripling: Is this image? let me go back over here. Let me go back over here. Like, it is actually shocking to me how, I mean, I even, I'm choosing my Previews now from the Imageners that I've run through AI and I used to edit all of my own Previews myself, and I don't even do anything extra to. when I put them online.

[00:45:37] Susan Stripling: So everything that you see, like on my Instagram or blog or whatever, it's not really had anything else done to it at most. Like an extra radial filter maybe? Yeah. , but it's always like a, a robot can't edit as well as I can. It's like, well yet can if you teach it how you edit. Exactly. It's just doing what I do just in about 10 minutes, which also, how is it that fast?

[00:46:00] Susan Stripling: You know what, don't tell me. I want it to be a secret. I want it to be a secret. I, you know, I don't, it's like I don't turn the lights on. I don't wanna know too much. but it's actually hilarious that I can upload it to ai, go take a shower and come back and it's like your edits are done. Yeah. It's like,

[00:46:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: okay.

[00:46:16] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Sometimes, like if you're uploading multiple things at the same time, by the time everything's like, everything is done uploading, like the first project is already done. Yeah. It's

[00:46:23] Susan Stripling: done. So I've done that before and I'm like, hold, like, calm down.

[00:46:27] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Like, just calm down. I'm in the process of preparing a catalog specifically for Imaging USA coming up this month, the month, January.

[00:46:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: We're recording this, this episode airing in February. So I'm sorry I just screwed that up. But,

yeah. sorry. I hope you had fun at Imaging usa. Let's

[00:46:43] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: talk about it in the past. So I'm preparing this catalog and I'm like, I'm making like, like a. Preview, like different collections of all the, of the same eight photos edited with every talent profile.

[00:46:56] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Oh, that's cool. Right? Yeah. And it's, it's all my client work, so I'm, I have the approval to do this and stuff, so it's not no big deal. And, so I prepared everything to batch upload. No joke. By the time it was uploaded, a hundred percent of the projects were done. It was the craziest thing. And the last one took, took the most amount of time.

[00:47:14] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: It was. . It was so crazy. that's wild. And it was only cuz the last one had cropping and straightening turned on as well. Just to show that working too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that one took longer. But like, it's so funny how, how that happened. It's so funny. . Yeah. So, speaking of Instagram and website, like you just were talking about.

[00:47:32] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yes. where can listeners learn more about you connect with you and of course? Oh, they see

[00:47:36] Susan Stripling: your on the worldwide web?

[00:47:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: www

[00:47:39] Susan Stripling: www dot slash no, it's my website is just susanstripling.com. S T R I P L I N G. And my Instagram is susanstriplingphotography. Awesome. And that's

[00:47:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: that. Thank you for hopping on, chatting with me.

[00:47:55] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I'm glad we were able to make this work. Third time is the charm. We did it. We did it.

[00:47:59] Susan Stripling: It happened. We did it.

[00:48:00] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah, for the record. For the record, one of the reasons we had to cancel was power went out. So, .

[00:48:08] Susan Stripling: One of the other reasons was Susan can't read a calendar. . yeah, it's, listen, it's, it's the point of year where wedding season is like, it's like right.

[00:48:15] Susan Stripling: Almost over. I'm working on one functional brain cell at this point. Yeah, yeah. Like you can't see that I'm wearing my pajama pants and slippers, like I've had multiple cups of coffee. Like we are, there's a lot of under eye concealer going on right now to make me functional. . Yes. We're we're, we're limping to the finish line at this point, so.

[00:48:37] Susan Stripling: Well,

[00:48:38] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: I, I'm so glad we're able to do this and I look forward to me too. Seeing you at W ppi.

[00:48:43] Susan Stripling: I was gonna say, you're gonna be at WPPI right? I can

[00:48:45] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: hang, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I'll be at WPPI. I'd

be

[00:48:48] Susan Stripling: pretty shocked if they didn't, bring you, bring you along, so,

[00:48:51] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: yeah. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I'll be there.

[00:48:52] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Maybe we'll do something fun. They have, they've, I'm gonna be busy. as a whole bunch of curse words of anything . That is for sure. ,

[00:49:01] Susan Stripling: it's gonna be fun and I'm looking forward to going. There's a lot of people I haven't seen in a while, so Yeah. And I gotta hang out with Bill and we're actually trying to put together a road trip because like I said, I have a, I have a converted campervan.

[00:49:14] Susan Stripling: Just the coolest thing ever. Mm-hmm. . And he's done the road trip where he's driven from out here all the way to Vegas and like spent a lot of time in Arizona. Nice. And I've never done that. So hopefully this year we'll get to go camper vanning our way across the country.

[00:49:31] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: That'd be fun

[00:49:32] Susan Stripling: with three dogs.

[00:49:32] Susan Stripling: Yeah. Hopefully by the time you see me in, in Vegas, I'll be tanned and well rested and all outdoorsy. Nice. Not like the bleak, pale, Victorian child I am right now. ,

[00:49:42] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: will you, would you be bringing all three dogs or would you be boarding them when you go? Oh, no,

[00:49:47] Susan Stripling: no. Absolutely not. Taylor Swift is not going to the desert.

. She might, she's a weird dog. I've told. She's a weird dog. They'll probably, we'll probably start the trip by like detouring down through Georgia and like going that way. and dropping all the dogs off with my parents. Nice. That's great. I'm pretty sure I asked them. If not, Hey guys, can you, Hey dogs.

[00:50:07] Susan Stripling: Cool. Hey, thanks. Love you guys so much. yes. So cool. Bye. They can deal with Taylor Swift, the very weird dog for a couple weeks. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. But yeah, if you wanna learn more about Taylor Swift, the weird dog, I post her on my Instagram stories doing strange stuff all the time. A weird dog. You know what Scott, if you ask enough about Taylor Swift, I'll bring her to Vegas and just give her to you and you can hang.

[00:50:30] Susan Stripling: She can be I'm good. I'm, I'm, she can be the Imagen, um, mascot. She'll poop on the floor and scream in people's faces and just, yeah, you can borrow her

[00:50:41] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: anytime you want. My daughter is so afraid of tiny dogs. It's the funniest thing Really? Yeah. Bigger dogs, she'll go up and pet them and snuggle them, but like it's the little ones that freak her out.

[00:50:56] Susan Stripling: Honestly, little dogs are creepy and they're generally real. A mean little dog to me is really

[00:51:01] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: freaky. Yeah, it's. It's so funny. Anyway,

we'll leave back. This conversation has taken some turns, but hopefully there was some educational content in here for, for the people.

[00:51:12] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Yeah, there's a lot of good nuggets for everybody to, to walk away with, so thank you.

[00:51:15] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you. We're gonna, yeah, seriously, anybody,

[00:51:17] Susan Stripling: anybody listening to this, if you have questions like your Imagen Facebook group is great. People can always email me like, I think everyone should be using this. So I'm glad to help as much as possible.

[00:51:29] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you. That's a great way to. Anytime

[00:51:33] Susan Stripling: I'm gonna go make another cup of coffee, which is surely going to be great for my heart

[00:51:36] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: rate.

[00:51:37] Scott Wyden Kivowitz: Thank you so much, Susan, for that incredible conversation for sharing all of your insights and knowledge with the Imagen Community. You have been listening to Workflows Presented by Imagen. To hear more from workflows and to find a link to our guest, please go to imagen-ai.com/podcast. Be a part of the conversation by joining the Imagen Community at imagen-ai.com/community and be sure to subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you for tuning in. Until next time.