Question about selling Portraits

[heartseye]

These are good examples of the BC Eternity Bees.......They fly 24/7 as they have no landing gear.....

[littlegal]

On engagement, bridals, and formals, I always crop to 8x10 when showing a client, but leave a bit of room for 4x6 and 5x7 crops in case those are ordered.

[bobbyz]

Originally Posted by littlegal

On engagement, bridals, and formals, I always crop to 8x10 when showing a client, but leave a bit of room for 4x6 and 5x7 crops in case those are ordered.

Can you show some example. 5x7 can be doable with some cutoffs but making 4x6 out of 8x10, I would like to see.

[littlegal]

Originally Posted by bobbyz

Can you show some example. 5x7 can be doable with some cutoffs but making 4x6 out of 8x10, I would like to see.

Sure, no problem. Below is from a Bridal series I am currently working on for a client. The size she gets in her package is 16x20. Because 8x10 crops the same way, I crop in 8x10 origianlly because it's faster to work with, and rez up later.

Here is the 8x10 crop:


5x7 crop:


4x6 crop:


Notice, in the original I've left a bit of room surrounding the crucial areas of the photos, which in this case is her hand, and tip of head. The pillar and the overhead really aren't all that important, yet don't hurt the photo either. It's just a bit of extra room. It's hard to get the hang of when you first start doing it, but after a while, you can just eyeball it as if it were second nature.
Hope that helps!
Cindy

[bobbyz]

Cindy, thanks. This really helped. I just tried 4x6 crops of my 8x10s and they look good. Only issue is that I loose pixels when shooting for 8x10 and then some more if someone wants 4x6 out of my 8x10 (I only upload 8x10 on my web site) but then I don't that many pixels for 4x6 prints.

Have some Karma.

[Jacque]

Originally Posted by waple

By this, do you mean that you simply imagine what an 8x10 will look like and you leave the extra room so you can crop later, or is there some way to actually crop in a camera?

Waple,
Sorry for my late reply, haven't been around much and didn't notice your question
.
Yes, a way to crop in camera like bobbyz said. I've put strips of tape or hair onto my focusing screens to mark where an 8x10 would crop to.

I've just purchased a ProCrop from Rob Lewis, as his is a finely made etched line in the focusing screen, and mine were kinda... messy (still have the tape in the other 3 cameras though)

[littlegal]

There is also a guy who will etch crop lines into your camera for a very fair price. I think it was $50 bucks...(He did a few of my old cameras, and he's great!)
CropLines - Crop Your Photos IN the Viewfinder