Welcome Kevin! You've come to the right place! Asher owns the place, and he pays the electric bill on time (or so it would appear) and he and his lieutenants are generally an agreeable bunch. Asher rarely throws people out for D&D behavior, but he has been known to get a little testy if people post pics without letting on the story of the pic, and the all the gory tech details. (just kidding). (I think).
I've done this kind of shoot with 80 elementary school kids... hopefully some of what I learned will help you.
I had my 12 year old daughter keep a list of names as the kids lined up for their 1/60 second of fame. that didn't work so well, because it ran into 3 pages, then they were torn from the notebook. Next time, use a notebook with non-removable pages, and periodically shout out a frame number to be recorded in the book.
I took 3-4 shots of each kid. In most cases, that was two too many. But in some, i wish I had one more. But I had a line of 10-20 kids queued up -- they were not going to be patient for me. Funny, it just occured to me that for each kid, the first shot was usually the one that was the keeper.
Put a mark on the floor where you want them to stand -- its far easier than constantly instructing them to moving forward and back. Likewise put a couple marks on nearby objects (lightstands, walls, etc) -- they will understand "turn and face the blue dot" but if you ask them to turn to their right, they will invariably turn to their left.
I used a 2 SB-800's plus a studio strobe. One of the SBs gave out at about 125 frames -- I think it overheated. $175 to fix. Ugh.
I donated my time to the school -- they sold them for $25 a piece, and for the families that didn't have $25 (and had identified themselves as eligible for free school lunches or something) got the prints for free. ) I did not know, or want to know, who those families were. I spent far more time on these than I had planned -- but I learned a lot in the process, so it was not time wasted.
I retouched and printed every single one. I learned a lot about printing from this experience. The biggest lesson was that I think its cheaper to print to a lab like WHCC than to print myself. Besides, its easier to rebill the expenses. However, my own inkjet prints are far better now than they were before this project.
I am doing another one of these shoots in two weeks. I was unsuccessful at convincing the principal of the school that the shots are worth far more than $25. I wanted to charge $50. And I think they are worth $100. So I'm a little bitter about that.
However, I got a bunch of private portrait shots directly as a result of the first shoot, so I have nothing to complain about.
One thing I'm going to do different this time is make sure every frame has the kids name in the ITPC data (easy with photomechanic).
Parents think that prints are worth 62 cents because that what the local drugstore charges. Some parents will appreciate the difference between what you can produce and what they can produce without your help. My advice on this one is not to get worked up over it. Also, the portrait packages produce by the school photography companies are selling packages of prints for $20 and less. I can't stand the two-umbrella-muslin-background-and-school-picture-day-clothes-with-stupid-smile pictures... they are worth far less than the $20 that they are being sold for. again, some parents will appreciate your talent and some won't. So the ones the do, pull them aside and sell them a family portrait. Then, get their email address for next October when you do your email blast telling them why they should hire you to produce their holiday cards.
Hope this helps!
Ron
