Treva Tribit Photography

There are many things a Dallas wedding photographer needs. Some of which are local business resources to call upon for equipment and supplies when you absolutely have to have something right now and not wait for Amazon or Adorama to ship to you.

For your photography equipment needs a professional wedding photographer can hit up these Dallas businesses. For anything cameras, lenses, backdrops, lighting, books, and more you’ll want to visit Competitive Camera or Arlington Camera.

The best price for compact flash cards in the Dallas area is usually Fry’s electronics. You’ll be able to buy the ultra fast pro cards and they usually have plenty on hand. This is an obvious need for when you realize a card has gone through the wash. As any experienced Dallas wedding photographer knows when that happens, the card is not to be rewritten or used again. If there are images on it, download them and discard the card and count it as a loss. If you have any doubts, the wedding photographers on the photo.net forums that ignored or didn’t know this advice can explain to you their expensive and sometimses unsuccessful recovery efforts.

A wedding photographer also often needs good locations for shooting couples, or for bridals, or anything else they may need. Some good North Dallas photography locations are The Cotton Mill and the M Group in McKinney, Texas. Their hourly rates are affordable and the locations are wonderful.

Stay tuned for some more information on online resources for any Dallas wedding photographer to get their website and blog on!

Bob here.

To raw? Or not to raw. I fought the raw and the raw won? Who can decide?

If you ever want to know what photographers get into fist fights over (besides Nikon v. Canon) Raw v. JPEG is one of those items of sometimes heated contention and often confusion, so let me help clear up our thoughts and how these Dallas wedding photographers roll here at Treva Tribit Photographer. So before we get to the shouts of “Your mother shoots JPEG!” let’s explore for a bit what each of these different formats are and the factual advantages and disadvantages of both.

Raw(fulppluseraw!):

In the digital world your camera has a sensor. This sensor has pixels, not too unlike your monitor, but instead of emitting light, it detects light. Now you may now that how many million pixels your sensor is also how many megapixels your camera is capable of taking per shot, but what you may not know is that additional processing has to occur to take all of the reds, greens, and blues and put them together to form a picture. When you shoot raw, you are basically telling the camera, don’t do anything else but save every bit of information from that shutter release and save it to a file on my flash card please. This is raw. The image is the opposite of cooked. It doesn’t have a color profile, no color correction, no dynamic range enhancements, nothing. If you were look to at the raw picture it would be somewhat dull and not as vibrant as we come to expect.

JPEG(‘dyourmotherlastnight):

Now for JPEG. Your camera still has a sensor. It’s still raw when it moves off the sensor buffer, but instead of writing directly to a file, it undergoes another step- the JPEG encoding process and then that JPEG encoded data gets written to a file on the flash card. The JPEG file has a color profile (either sRGB, AdobeRGB, etc), color correction may be added according to your camera’s settings (maybe a desaturated look or high sat like Velvia), D-lighting adjustments, sharpening, and more. However, in order to do this, the camera has to throw away the baseline raw information in order to post-process the image in camera and give you your ready to use JPEG file. You can skip hours of editing! Unfortunately, you can forget about editing if you don’t like how the image turns out, because the raw data has been thrown away. However, this is only partly true for several reasons.

It’s true:

- That a JPEG file will have increasingly limited returns per edit since it’s encoded with lossy compression. This means you will want to preserve the original JPEG file for subsequent re-edits, so you aren’t losing even more upon a series of encodings.

- That your camera can probably do both at the same time, at the sacrifice of flash card storage. That is you can tell your camera to shoot Raw + JPEG and you will have the best of both worlds. Fast work flow with your perfect JPEG images, and the ability to go back and edit if you need to with the raw. The disadvantage is of course that you are saving two files to your card and thus exhausting flash cards twice as quick.

- That you can still adjust a JPEG file in lightroom or photoshop. It still works. The only difference is those programs have less information to work with than if they had the raw file, so some of your more creative edits may be limited.

- That Raw is a pig on storage, editing, and time. Because you are working with the raw data, your image isn’t done yet, until you convert it to JPEG or rather something deliverable to your client. You’ll also want to go in and tweak some of the color settings to stretch out the color curves to give the raw image the look you want. It’s as if you had a parking lot full of cars you have to wash and you told the attendants not to run them through the automatic car wash tunnel….”I’m going to take care of each one, myself, with my bare hands.”

- That Raw allows you to pull incredible dynamic range from the sensor. You can indeed get an additional 3-4 stops of range, which let your shadows look less shadowy and your highlights less blown.

- That Raw is sometimes the refuge of lazy photographers who really need to perfect their craft on exposure. Because you have so much dynamic range, you can be off on your exposure by 3-4 stops, and you are still able to save your image. This can be life saving if it’s “the kiss” and you were off a little bit or if it’s intentional and you need to push your shutter speed up and consequently your exposure down to capture something you otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

Finally:

Now, what do we do here at Treva Tribit Photography? We shoot raw. Partly for the creative advantages, partly for the image insurance (because when you absolutely have to have the image there are no excuses, or at least I don’t want to be the one to make them), and partly because I can’t stand to throw anything out. I drive Treva nutty with hard drive and storage requests, however, I feel it’s worth it when I can say to her, when a client from two years ago asks “can we get another copy of our disk? Ours appears to be damaged.” and I can say “Yup! We got it.” We keep backups of our lightroom catalogs, we keep the raw images, and we keep the cooked images we deliver to our clients. Of course, we don’t officially guarantee this, but we quietly (or not so quietly now) do it anyway.

Like anything, shoot within your comfort level. If you can rock it out with JPEG and it makes you a speed demon on image delivery and your customers have come to expect that, rock on. If you like to whittle away at images in Raw and squeeze and tease every level of detail out like we do here, we think that’s groovy too. Just know what you are sacrificing and/or gaining by doing either and you should be fine. As always, feel free to comment and ask more questions or if you would prefer…shoot us an email and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Thanks and don’t forget that your Raw wears combat boots.

Its time for another Q&A Session!  I find myself becoming recognized by my name in the strangest of places.  Not that its unusual to recognize an unusual name.  Anybody who has ever known a “Treva” their entire life, is usually incredulous when they hear my name.  “Oh, WOW, I knew a Treva back in (some random location) many years ago (some random timeframe) and she spelled it just.like.that.”  Not that I don’t like knowing I’m not the only person in the world with this oddball name. (Thanks mom!) Growing up, I used to dread first days of school, when the teacher would call out my name, using the short e sound instead of the long e.  Or someone would snicker (children can be SO evil!) in the back of the room.  Growing up in a small town kids got used to it though before long.  But stepping outside of that small town?  Lets just say I have learned to go by more than one version of the pronouncing of my name.   And if people aren’t sure what to make of it, they say “what a beautiful name!”  Which is probably code word for “what was your momma thinkin!?”  Ok, so back to the point, if there is one…lately, people have been recognizing my name, for my work.  Putting the photography with the face, and its kind of cool!  Like, something I am doing, is speaking for me before I ever open my mouth.  Its scary, and humbling.  Which is why I work every day to do right by every person I come in contact with.  I also get, whether it be the grocery line, the coffee shop, the clothing store, or one of my kids events, a million + 1 questions about photography, cameras, and generally “how can I make my pictures look… (random issue with camera).  Or even more lately, “how can I start my own business?”

This is why I post these Q&A’s.  Because there were a lot of photographers who didn’t give me the time of day when I started out.  And there were some, who posted such helpful information, I could given them a big hug on the spot!  Hollllla out to the awesome photogs who share their hard-earned knowledge for the rest of us!  You deserve an award, or at least, some chocolate.

We are going to be offering an opportunity for anyone interested in starting up their own business, a very cool thing.  We will be hosting a workshop for a day in late August/Early September, which will include valuable insight into this business, an opportunity to shoot with us and ask as many questions as you like, and we will be all yours for the day.  The first five who sign up can come at HALF price!  We already have a few who have emailed or messaged me that they want IN, so the half price opportunity won’t last long!

Here we GO! (grab your coffee, its 1pm, if you are like me I KNOW you need it right about now!)

{Q}  How many images do you give clients after a shoot?

{A}  It depends on the shoot.  If its just a couple, or a senior, the images vary between 50-100 edited images that they proof, and then ultimately receive if they purchase the CD with printing rights.  If its a large family session, its closer to the 100 images range.  Weddings are also unique in that a smaller wedding might yield 300-500 images, a larger more time intensive wedding may yield 1000-1500.   I know that I give more images than most photographers, and I do work very hard at each shot, editing them as if they are individual works of art.   The important part is that there is a high level of quality, over quantity.

{Q}  What’s the skinny on printing rights/copyright/ etc. with regards to the CD’s?

{A}  We (as photoraphers) own the copyright to every picture we take.  When selling the CD, we sell the printing rights, NOT the copyright.  This means we are still allowed to use the photos on our websites, marketing materials, blog, etc.  Without the copyright, you must gain approval from the new owner for every picture you want to use for yourself as a business.   Selling the printing rights allows the client to take the images and print them wherever, however, forever. 

{Q}  How do you stand out when there are so many photographers who are not necessarily as good as you, marketing and advertising?  How do you pull in the business?

{A}  You have to always remember, as photographers, we are selling OURSELVES as much as we are selling our work.  The relationships that I build with clients that I’ve never known prior to a shoot or a wedding, is invaluable to my business.  I am not just offering my work to my potential clients, I am offering a piece of myself, of my life to them.  This is my passion and my calling, and unless I am capable of showing and giving every client that part of me, as well as their friends and families, then I have not been successful for my clients.  We are more than just a vendor, and we are more than just our work.  THIS is what we need to offer our clients at every meeting, shoot, and wedding.

{Q}  How do you figure out your niche in this industry/business?

{A}  That is a GREAT question, and one I am still figuring out myself!   I’m not the cool single photographer.  I don’t jump around at photo shoots and sport Prada bags and sunglasses.   I am probably not the first name on the lips of the socialites, though if they met me they would love me.   Or at least love my beautiful babies!    I am just someone who loves people, who loves fresh, flirty, REAL and genuine photography, I want you to FEEL something when you see my work.  What niche does that fit into?  I don’t know.  But if people are looking for this type of photography, I’m their girl.  Because ultimately, I don’t want to be a photographer but THE photographer for my clients, and their families, and their friends.  I want my vendors that I work with to feel inspired, and that I genuinely appreciate them.  And hopefully this is my “niche”…Fabulous photography for everybody.  Be real with your work and your clients, and you’ll find your niche too.

Post any other questions to the comments section of this post!  Have a fabulous weekend, I’m off to edit more pictures, peeps!  And because what post is complete, without a picture….a reminder of some recent, gorgeous clients!

Treva

So, its a bit late for coffee, but I’ve been known to throw back a few cups of delicious caffeinated deliciousness this late, so its ON! This is for all those fabulous upcoming photographers who email, snag me in the grocery store, at church, when I’m picking up my kids from school..with lots of questions just like I had (hey, I’m still asking questions!)…ask them here, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability (you might not want me caffeinated though when I do, I tend to get wordy.) Ask away, peeps!

And because every post should have some eye candy….and I mean the cold frosty yumminess I’m sipping of course.