As photographers, we are always looking for strategies to be more efficient in our business and organized in our workflows. Today I am speaking with Sam Hurd, a wedding photographer with distinct style and mind-bending photographs. We are getting into Sam’s approach to staying inspired as a photographer, plus his way of building effective workflows and flexing his creative muscles. With his success as a photographer, workshop leader, Patreon mentor, and more, Sam has some incredible advice to share.
The Focused Photographers Podcast was created based on the idea that the most incredible tool for learning is a deep dive into any given topic from multiple perspectives. Join us every other week as we explore important topics, with host, Daniel Moyer and a variety of guests offering different perspectives! Make sure you’ve hit that follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast player to get notified each week as we air new episodes!
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REVIEW THE SHOW NOTES:
How Sam got started in photography (1:56)
Staying fresh and inspired as a wedding photographer (9:14)
Leaning into a minimalistic approach (13:42)
Sam’s wedding attire (15:35)
Showing up consistently (17:10)
Managing ideas using apps (21:05)
Staying curious about technology (24:04)
Building effective workflows (29:02)
Gear reviews, workshops, and the benefits of teaching (34:50)
Music production and flexing your creative muscles (37:09)
Becoming more efficient as a photographer (39:59)
Solving problems and making business easier (46:49)
Where to gain time and efficiency as a photographer (49:20)
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
CONNECT WITH SAM HURD
Patreon patreon.com/samhurd
Website https://www.samhurdphotography.com/
Instagram @iamthesam
CONNECT WITH DANIEL MOYER
Website: WWW.DANIELMOYERPHOTOGRAPHY.COM
Wedding Instagram: @DANIELMOYERPHOTO
Business Instagram: @GETFOCUSEDPHOTOGRAPHERS
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Thank you!
-Dan
Review the Transcript:
Dan Moyer
Hey photographer friends. I’m Dan Moyer and welcome to the focus photographers podcast where photographers gather. This episode today is brought to you by the focused five newsletter. It is a weekly business newsletter written specifically with wedding photographers in mind. And every Thursday morning I’m in your inbox bright and early, dropping off little wedding photographer business knowledge nuggets from by over a decade in business as a full time wedding photographer, some down to earth and sometimes ridiculous stories and just some hype for your wedding this weekend. There’s no fluff, it is purely educational and you can unsubscribe anytime. Check it out at Focus ographers.com/newsletter My guest today needs absolutely no introduction for me. He’s in a league all of his own. Really, he’s pioneered two different kinds of photography using prisms and the Ring of Fire. When you look at his photographs, they are highly recognizable. Like every time I see one of his photographs in my Instagram feed or on Facebook or wherever you just know it’s his right away. It is awe inspiring and mind bending, to say the least, especially when you consider that all of the stuff that he does is done in camera, his Patreon channel is jam packed with value and really sets the bar for what a successful valuable photography based Patreon channel looks like. He covers everything in there from photography based things and how he photographs and like some of these deep dives on and behind the scenes on some of his most noticeable and mind bending amazing photographs, all the way to the other end of things like deep dives into Lightroom, speeding up workflow file management and all these different things. So it is my great pleasure. And I’m so excited to welcome Sam here to the podcast today. Let’s go.
Dan Moyer
Sam Hurd thanks for being here. I’m really glad that you set aside some time to make this happen.
Sam Hurd
Thanks, Dan. Yeah, I’m excited to actually talk to somebody. It’s been a little while since I’ve done a podcast. I do my own. But it’s been. Yeah, a while. My co host is. He just had a kid. So yeah, ever since then.
Dan Moyer
So he’s in the Dark Ages. We’re like, Yeah, you’ve been in a lot of travel and and stuff lately, too. Is that obviously part of it?
Sam Hurd
Yeah, the travel has been pretty nonstop since the summer, probably four countries and I don’t know a bunch of different states and city like, all over the place. It’s yeah. Which I’m grateful for. I’m glad to be back in and able to travel smoothly without having to do like COVID tests before and after things and yeah, and all that. But no, honestly, though, the next maybe five weeks. I’m mostly local, local weddings. I’m going east on the east coast. So a lot of really big cities close by each other. And so I be back up and down between DC and New York the most.
Dan Moyer
Like yeah, I saw um, were you in Italy for a workshop or something? Was that a wedding? What
Sam Hurd
was that for wedding? Yeah, I was in Italy in May for a conference, which is an excellent one. If anybody’s considering a conference, it’s called way up north. And then I was back in August for I kind of took an extended trip to do some stuff for myself, which was also sort of educational. Behind the Scenes sort of content of just couple sessions, but I was there for wedding. Yeah, there was a Canadian couple that flew out with 40 of their closest friends and family and got married. So that was amazing. Right in the middle of Tuscany.
Dan Moyer
Wow, that’s awesome. So obviously, before weddings, I’ve been following you for a really long time. I sort of know a little bit of your origin story about like, shooting for the Press Club. Yeah, press club and doing like, like, I remember when you were first posting pictures of Mariska Hargitay. And like George Clooney, and Denzel Washington, and like all these different people, but for those people who don’t know yet or haven’t heard of yet, you know, what’s a little bit of your story and sort of how you got to weddings and all that stuff today?
Sam Hurd
Yeah, absolutely. So I first discovered photography as sort of a passion slash hobby in high school, kind of like everyone else got my first camera, or I think it was like the family camera that became Yeah, I was actually a Sony so I’m an OG Sony guy. Yeah, it was a Sony and it had an articulating screen. It was like attached to digital is digital. Yeah. Wow. Actually, that was the second camera. The first camera we ever owned was another Sony and it took floppy disks. You could literally put a floppy disk into it and take like a three and a half inch one. Yes. Yeah, not the not the big ones. Not the five inch or whatever. But yeah, the hard disk floppies wild I know. Yeah. That anyway, so I grew up just taking I grew up in the mountains really a place called Lynchburg, Virginia. Right along Yeah, Blue Ridge Mountains. Yeah. So I would go on hikes and take pictures of flowers and landscapes and never ever, people really kept it up and traveled a good bit, did a few little like European hostile backpacking trips for a few weeks for two summers in college, always orbiting around photography sort of the focus, but again, mostly like landscapes and nothing really oriented around people majoring in computer science and found a well actually it’s interesting. My degree sort of overlaps with no, not really photography. Okay, sorry. I’m getting getting off topic.
Dan Moyer
No all I give it to me all of it. Yeah.
Sam Hurd
I could talk for hours. But my first job in photography was discovered on Craigslist while I was browsing, kind of like it computer jobs, I came across a listing that this place called the National Press Club in downtown DC was looking for a staff photographer to work full time paid half of what any other job I probably could have gotten paid. And it was in the most expensive part of the town. I was just wasn’t paid. Yeah, so that’s the thing. That’s where I was like, You know what I’m going to apply for this. And then I went in interviewed and, you know, everything worked. They liked me, I didn’t have much of a portfolio. But this was the first time they were going to hire somebody, I would report to like the main guy, I didn’t have anybody that was going to teach me photography, there was no established photography service there. Anyway. So they hired me, and I figured I would take a year or two just to see how it went. Because how often do you come across, hey, jobs, doing photography, also, where the clients come to me, I didn’t have to, like find clients and build, build the client network or anything. Because the Press Club, it’s basically imagine like a country club for journalists. Yeah, that’s sort of its origin. It’s been around for 100 years. But to keep the doors open and keep things operating, they rent out many of their rooms for press conferences, and DC events, news, making events, stuff like that. And so they rent out TVs for that microphones, room space, and video. And then they wanted to add photos. So that was my job to be the photographer, to shoot for the clients that were having events there.
Dan Moyer
And so you get like this staff position, and you start photographing celebrities and how that stuff with like, super like kind of minimalist gear, and I mean, minimal knowledge other than landscapes at that time, right? Very,
Sam Hurd
very minimal I learned by so a lot of the events would be open to the public and other actual photo journalists would come through like the regular DC freelancers. And yeah, you would have some really high profile events where there’s just rows of photographers sitting in the front and all the big guys in the back, like, you know, really crazy of some of the events are really crazy big. So that’s how I learned by observation purely just like oh, my god lenses exist, where you can zoom in the aperture doesn’t change, I need that. These are really low light indoor spaces where I can’t use a flash, it’s all just sort of whatever the light is a video usually have some lights up, which would help. But that’s how I learned and yeah, they slowly invested in me as my work improved and buying more gear and equipment over the years. And my first like, real pro camera was the D 300, which is a sensor and then I jumped to the D 700. As soon as I could,
Dan Moyer
oh, D 700. Was I used to I had a D 700. And then I would rent a second D 700. From like the local camera shop every weekend for like two years.
Sam Hurd
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it’s funny that the 700 people don’t remember that. That was a single card body that was the most affordable same sensor as the d3. The incredible sensor for the money was like half price. And I think Nikon always regretted launching that body because it completely ate away their d3 sales was out there. $6,000 Camera anyway, we’d have to get into all that. But I worked at the Press Club for Yeah, six years full time. And about halfway into working there is when I shot my first wedding, it was a coworker who got engaged and had very little budget. I think they paid me $500 Something like that and discovered I was meant to shoot weddings, I love weddings, everything about them. And that is the only thing I’ve tried to shoot more of since and then with travel and everything else I eventually had to leave the Press Club because I just couldn’t be there. Monday through Friday like they wanted.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, I remember this post you made speaking of like loving weddings, something you made a long time ago about like, like needing to appreciate like marriage as like the institution of marriage or similar you have to like believe in marriage to be like a really good wedding photographer. Do you remember that?
Sam Hurd
Nope. But it sounds like it’s possible. I’ve had a lot of long things it’s I mean, I definitely written if not publicly then then to patrons on my Patreon and stuff like that about kind of needing to find ways of loving every layer of a wedding day and of course the what marriage is and you kind of have a belief in it otherwise it’s going to start to feel I would imagine a little bit soul sucking, right if you don’t believe in the thing that you’re there. or to a document, it’s kind of tough, long term to really reconcile. But yeah, you know, it’s a big source of staying motivated and inspired is just trying to stay grounded. And I’ve done maybe 500 weddings and trying to keep the perspective for myself that I’ve seen pretty much every permutation of timeline, chemistry between couples all this, like, I’ve seen everything. Yeah, but for them, the wedding I’m shooting this weekend, you know, it’s their very first time, generally, this is their day, and so kind of have to stay fresh for them and lean into that and get excited about, you know, even if it’s a venue I’ve been at before, which I think a lot of photographers deal with, maybe even more than me, you know, because especially if you’re in the Midwest, or somewhere where things are really spread out, you’re, you’re kind of just stuck on in your your market. And there’s probably, you know, a dozen really great venues and every market. So people end up rotating through a lot of the same places multiple times a year, and it can be really difficult to see things with a fresh eye and try and stay inspired. But yeah,
Dan Moyer
I actually kind of want to stay on this before I asked, like, you know, move into, like some of the workflow and mindset stuff that you have around that, where you do shoot a lot, and you always seem to be, I’m just amazed that, you know, one your ability to bring, bring objects and things that can transform a space, but then also just use the space in a way that you that nobody else has seen and things like that. So when you do shoot at multiple venues quite often, what is it about it that, you know, allows you to stay fresh, or stay curious and create things that are constantly different and, and surprising even to you, you know, a
Sam Hurd
big part of it is early on, realized, I need to be able to give myself over to whatever the light is doing first. Because I think most people go through the phase in their first few years where you, you buy like four speed lights, and you get all the triggers. And you’re just like, I want to be able to like, bring my light with me and create light wherever I need, you know, blah, blah, blah, which is totally fine and viable as a strategy. But I think it’s much easier actually to be creative when you like, just give yourself over to what the light is doing first and let that be your guide for what room or corner you decide to shoot in or whatever, because the light is always changing. Even if you’re in the exact same venue at the exact same day, the year later, at the exact same time, which is very unlikely, the weather is probably going to be different, you know, it’s probably going to be cloudy one day and sunny the next. So that is going to it’s sometimes it’s more subtle, but even subtle changes in life can totally shift the inspiration and result of a photo. So really just being super comfortable. In non obviously, well lit spaces, figuring out a way to make that light work for me without actually using off camera flash, or flash in general because it can be I think, when I went through my little flash phase, I started to realize like the quality of light was always amazing and kind of the same on my subjects. Because I was shooting through you know, a beautiful giant modifier. There’s always a limit to how much how complex you can do off camera work with weddings, and clearly because of time and portability and all that you know, you’re not in a studio where you can really create an epic epic scene with 15 different lights and whatever. So yeah, I do use flash. Don’t get me wrong, I mostly just bounce flash during receptions to get like nice clean, beautiful light during dancing and toasts and stuff like that. But even then I still try and lean into a preference of the ambient light first, and then add if I absolutely have to have LED lights. Yeah, I don’t know if any of that made sense. But
Dan Moyer
no, it totally does. But it’s interesting that like the take is like the the scene will give me something more creative than like, Hey, let me just bring this perfect light setup or whatever. But also, I can imagine like one of the things that in my career over the last decade or so, is like I just became super minimal because if I was driving three hours for a wedding or on a plane, or you know downtown, I didn’t want to have to bring all bunch of stuff so it’s like can I just have one rolling bag and a shoulder bag? And like that’s it like can I just dream weddings with that right like that’s it no stands nothing, just one flash camera a couple and bodies and that’s it, you know, lenses. That’s it. The
Sam Hurd
other thing about leaning into minimalistic approaches for things not just with equipment and technique, but literally everything business related, like keeping a really streamlined, efficient operation across the board. If you can figure out exactly what you need to just get by. Then there’s headroom later on. If I do want to evolve my style, I’ve I can start using off camera flash and completely change my entire approach to stuff. I’ve got the headroom to do that. It’s a lot harder to scale it back when you when you like really are used to really complex ways of doing things and But yeah, I mostly shoot just by myself like, you know, business ever got really bad or something I could start hiring, you know associate shooters and things like that there’s plenty of headroom to grow, if and when I decide to change. So it’s like figuring out what the bare bones rigged that you could possibly get away with to get things done and have amazing photos that your clients are going to review you well and share and recommend you to their friends and family. Bringing out everything you need for that. And then slowly building over time, I think is the best approach.
Dan Moyer
Speaking of streamlining inefficiency, do you still buy only like the same pair of black socks? A whole bunch over and over again?
Sam Hurd
Yeah, that was a huge life change when I realized like, Why? Why do I spend two minutes every single day trying to find a matching sock? Sock that I have? It’s clean? Yeah, man, I bundled them all up one day, put them in the bag. Through through through them out, you know, my like collection of socks? that I had up till I was 25. And then yeah, just bought like $100 worth of Under Armour socks or something. That’s
Dan Moyer
what do you have? Like all of the same? Are they all ankle they like are they do you have like long ones for wedding days? Nope. Nope.
Sam Hurd
My wedding attire I also excuse me own six pairs of jet black pants jeans, really? But they’re they’re nice. And then white shoes that are essentially just I have them over here. But they’re called atoms at OMS. Oh, yeah. You can get you can get away with a lot. If you’re wearing black and white I find because the white kind of feels wedding II and people they’re, they’re not like super casual. They’re not tennis shoes, but they’re, they’re just nice shoes, but they are not high tops everything. So yeah, you do see my ankles. But I don’t need to be too formal. I mean, the thing about the other aspect of what I wear is the sling bag. So that already is like, okay, like it’s not like nobody’s gonna expect me to wear a tie with that or be wearing a jacket with that. Okay, I’m laced in equipment all day. Yep, as long as there’s some thoughtfulness. Now wear a black button up shirt. As long as there’s thoughtfulness into what you’ve decided to wear, I find that everybody’s fine with it. But yeah, I’m lying to myself. And I just look really out of place.
Dan Moyer
I don’t know. I mean, I’ve seen the behind the scenes of the Taylor Jackson video, like, which is pretty recent and all that stuff. But I feel like this lens like actually leans right into like the conversation I wanted to have, which is like it maybe this is already sort of your answer to it. But like, you’ve got so much going on, right? Like you’re talking about traveling all the time, you’re doing lots of weddings, you’ve got your Patreon channel, which just past five years, right five years of, yeah, fiber integration and content on that, like you’re always posting stuff on YouTube, or you’re on social media, and it just doesn’t seem like you miss or you like, like, you’re constantly putting things out there in a thoughtful and meaningful way. Like, I know, it’s gonna take forever to edit all the videos and, and like the Walk With Me series that you do, like, you have to edit that and then all the videos like the long form videos and chop those up like yes, but again, it’s just this doesn’t seem like you miss. So how do you manage all that?
Sam Hurd
Well, it does ebb and flow, I still don’t post as consistently as I would like, across anything other than still images on my Instagram feed. That is the one thing I’m very consistent about. I try and aim for Once a Day, which I’m usually busy enough to do unless it’s like the winter and then things slow down a little bit. But yeah, I do everything myself. So it does get overwhelming. And it does come in waves where sometimes I’m way more inspired. And I’m the consistency is much more there. And other times, you know, not so much so is to you or anybody outside of my head, it probably does seem like I’m always on it. But I’m not like that’s the reality. I think for most anyone that that appears to be just totally got all their ducks in a row. Like there’s plenty that I fall behind on plenty of emails that fall through the cracks or, you know, delays and getting back to my accountant with tax stuff or whatever. But the video editing that that was a bear in the early years that just came with practice, like being able to find the right tools that intuitively. I could use really really well one specifically for like tick tock or reals which I don’t use tick tock but maybe other people do. So an app called in shot i n shot and then that’s just an iOS app. It works beautifully to edit video. You can do really advanced stuff and it’s not the interface is really intuitive. It’s not clunky, super fast. I don’t have to like throw all my footage all the time into DaVinci Resolve on my MacBook and make it a whole production in shot works great. And yeah, I just kind of knock stuff out. Whenever I have kind of found time from waiting at an airport or whatever, I’ll get there together a real The other thing is finding a camera that took forever a camera where I could just hit record and not have to focus or pay any attention. at all, to the fact that I’m recording video, I want to be solely focused on my client interaction and my photography. Yeah, so the Insta 360 cam that I wear just along my sleeping bag really helped with that. Before that I put a little GoPro mounted on my hot shoe or whatever, like most people, but the 360 cam gives you circular footage. So you can crop and post to be vertically oriented or horizontal depending on where you end up. Yeah, yeah, that’s a post on Patreon, you should you should check that it’s amazing you the footage, it requires an extra step in taking the recorded file, putting it in the Insta 360. Like studio, they call it it’s just an app. And there is where you can pan and scan and use keyframes to like Mark exactly the perspective you want. And then as perspectives change throughout the timeline, you can mark exactly what you want it to be pointed out basically later on. It’s amazing. And and then you can export that as vertical or landscape and not have any resolution loss. It’s really cool. Yeah,
Dan Moyer
I appreciate like the humility of saying, like, you’ve got like this stuff on the back end that you like, you know, because I see like a constant stream of like, you know, like pretty much regularly hitting stuff, you know, Patreon member and like, you’re always like, you know, posting stuff out there. And, and it’s awesome, because like, the everything is thought out everything looks really great. So I guess, you know, maybe on this like sort of back end, do you like as a kind of a first step? Do you have like a management tool that you use to like, Oh, I’ve got like this idea for some I just write it down?
Sam Hurd
Notes, the Notes app. Yeah, that’s one. The Yeah, I find that works really great. I tried the Reminders app for a while. And I’ve tried a bunch of different apps to just see if there’s anything that’s that’s amazing. But the Notes app, I keep coming back to just as a running list, they did update it recently to support hashtags as well. So if you’re not good about organizing your notes into separate folders or something, you can, as long as you plug something with a hashtag, in that note, it will audit sort. So anything anytime I have a Patreon idea, I’ll just scribble down my notes app, hashtag Patreon. And it auto sorts to that hashtag, which is great. Wow. Yeah. So that’s where I tend to like put a lot of little ideas that come across and, and then I just tackle that from from there, and I prioritize whatever I feel like. And there’s no real rhyme or reason to when I decide to post something other than this is on my to do list, I’m feeling inspired to do an update to my workflow post or something like that, then I’ll, I’ll get it done. But the other big app that seriously helps is an email app called superhuman. It just sits on top of Gmail. But it’s a really thoughtfully organized email app. I don’t want to get too much into it. And it is $30 a month, which is insanely expensive for an email app. Yeah, that sits on top of Gmail. But it just makes everything better. The canned responses, where you can have pre formatted replies to things that you often kind of have to reply with like an engagement session FAQ, or my pricing list or something like that. All those canned responses sit in superhuman, really, logically and easy. That isn’t also in the Gmail interface. But anyway, check it out superhuman is incredible. You can do boomerangs with stuff. So if you have an email that you want to get back to and week, you can just say, remind me come back to my inbox in a week. And it’ll re surface itself then you can also create do things like, say you have an email, like, quite often I get a timeline from a planner. And it’s like God, okay, do I have to take this, save it as PDF and put it in my Dropbox folder for timelines. Actually, what’s cool and superhuman, you can share an email link, so you can just copy a web link to that exact email. And I just paste that in my calendar, you know, wherever the date of the wedding is, or whatever is relevant. And then I can just click that link, you know, pop me right to that email without having what? Yeah, it’s awesome.
Dan Moyer
So do you consume like a lot of content? Like, are you constantly reading articles? Because you just mentioned before, like, Okay, well, iOS has this new like hashtag thing where you can like, you know, just do this thing and then like, Okay, well I’ve also got like, superhuman does this like thing and it just seems like there’s all these like little little like tips and tricks. Are you reading the manuals to things like, are just inherently a very curious person really
Sam Hurd
curious? Yeah, just use everything a lot. And I love staying up to date with like, newer products and figuring out this is the Apple Watch Ultra. If you can see it, it’s huge. And yeah, but that’s the computer techie side of me that just likes to really see the limits of what I can get out of something. And when a certain app just feels perfect for me, I tend to lean into it even more. So. Anyway, that’s no I mean, I definitely consume something I feel as well, I never watch YouTube that’s been like a huge blind spot in my life. I’m shocked with how many people watch YouTube to learn stuff because I’ve literally, I don’t have the patience to sit there and watch a 15 minute video about anything, I can make them and I understand the value of Yeah, you know why people might but I never do I want to read an article where I can get exactly to like the the meat of what I need, by scrolling real quickly or whatever, or actually read the whole thing. But I do consume a lot of kind of tech content and nothing photography related, just sort of like I Apple commentators, that’s like a whole industry of people. Daring Fireball, that net is a fantastic writer named Joe Zoolander daring fireball.net. So it’s one web site run by a guy named John Gruber, who just literally writes mostly about Apple products, or the tech industry in general, it’s really well done. And so I, there’s this whole little network of those guys, I tend to, that’s what I consume the most, for sure,
Dan Moyer
there was a, I think it was one of your Patreon, it was actually about the Insta 360. And like, I think you’ve started off that YouTube being by like, are being saying, like, I actually hate making video content, I hate putting YouTube videos out there. And because I don’t consume YouTube. And I, I thought that was interesting, because I am sort of the same way. Like if it’s unless it’s house projects, like, I’ve got a like my budgets or family budgets or like low, just random things. We don’t spend a lot of money on things except for like our house budget, like I love working on our house. And it’s like this massive list, and I will go and do you know, a lot of YouTube things for that. But I’d rather read, which took some time for me to, you know, enjoy reading and have the patience to read. But that’s interesting. So you’re constantly kind of looking at those things. And so if you find yourself having a need, right, like, oh, I need to be able to edit video quicker, better. You’re just like, constantly looking for a new app or downloading something and just seeing what starts to feel right. And then you lean into it a little bit more. And and until you find something that you really liked, then stick with it for a while.
Sam Hurd
Pretty much. And I mean, don’t get me wrong, I definitely. If I have an app that I currently really like, I’ll research a little more deeply like comparison articles, or Reddit I’m quite active on. That’s probably the thing I consume the most is just reading through Reddit forums. And yeah, I kind of lean on that as a oh, you know, maybe there’s something better than superhuman, which there isn’t just me often. Yes, but there’s an infinite number of email apps out there. It’s funny to me how like everybody’s always searching for the best email app. superhuman, is it. It still has some things it needs to do better. Don’t get me wrong. But yeah, I’ll just look for comparison videos and go from there. But yeah, just download a lot of a lot of different pieces of software and try them all for a little while. That’s the big thing is just experimenting.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, what’s your favorite sub Reddits currently.
Sam Hurd
And well, one, I’m very interested in battery company called Quantum scape. They’re solid state battery company. So I’m quite active in that subreddit, and a lot of people way smarter than me have a lot of information to share about battery technology and sort of the landscape. In general, not just this one company. But that’s where I’m very active. But there’s a ton of actually one of my favorite things is to join a subreddit for completely different careers and industries. Like I’m in the the residency subreddit, and the teachers subreddit, and just lurk in see, I’m in the flight attendants subreddit. I just like to see what other people are like, complaining about and they’re in their job and their every day sort of thing. It’s so interesting how every industry kind of has their own culture, and issues that they’re dealing with, especially like some of the more medically oriented subreddits like for doctors and residents and all that kind of stuff. It’s fascinating. So I tend to lurk a lot of those things. Nothing too political. I purged that a long time ago.
Dan Moyer
Yeah, I feel that actually going back to that thing I mentioned before about Taylor Jackson, where like, I, I kind of watched your behind the scenes. And I don’t know that I’ve seen somebody else film you for like an entire wedding and put together something like that before. But there were these moments in it, where you sort of confidently state like, this is what I’m doing. This is why I’m doing it. And it’s just like, like, that’s the thing that you do. And I guess, like one of them was, you know, camera settings, I think about like bouncing flash or something you’re like, all I could bounce off those tree leaves over there. I could bounce over here. And like, there’s just what I do, I kind of put these settings and this is where I go and this is what I do. Even even the like low back stretch, like putting your feet up on the wall. Like that’s just what I do, right? Like just these little things that like, have just become such a part. And they just seem very intentional, right? Like you’ve found this like process to get there. And I know you’ve shared lots about your actual Lightroom workflow and all that stuff. And you know, lots of people can go to your Patreon to find that out. But I guess I’m just really interested in like how you kind of come to the was conclusions and, and like build these such efficient workflows? Like how do you like what kind of things do you looking for to like test and retest all these different paths and all that stuff to find what’s most efficient.
Sam Hurd
I mean, doing it, that’s one of the things that appeals to me about weddings is that they’re high volume, not just what you’re shooting, but the number of weddings I take on, it’s like a lot. The most I’ve ever shot in a year is like 55, or something. But the closer average is usually like 35, or 40. Now, so doing something that often as long as you really can pay attention to every single point of friction, that you experience throughout shooting a wedding day, having like anything, you really have to like, be honest with yourself in a lot of ways to realize like, this thing that I spent a lot of money on it, I hate it, you just have this realization, like, I’m only carrying this with me, I haven’t used it in two months, I’m bringing it with me because I spent $500 on it or whatever. I actually hate it. And anyway, you really just need to be hypersensitive to like, what is adding mental load that you have to think about even something as simple as lens caps or lens hoods, or something like that. I can’t, I can’t handle them. I used to use them religiously. Because, you know, I didn’t want my stuff to break. But then I realized, you know, I’m every 1520 minutes, I’m swapping a lens and I’m thinking about not dropping the cap or I can’t find it. Now I’m spending 30 seconds thinking about that. It’s all coming back to the sock thing, right? Every day, you’re spending 10 minutes trying to find the matching sock, just freaking buy all the same socks like that is the easiest path forward. So kind of breaking everything down into that mindset is what enables efficiency. And that happens very rapidly when you’re shooting 1000 photos at a wedding every single weekend. And so the backstretch, right, I used to just constantly struggle with back pain. And somebody recommended it. And it’s not like I invented this stretch, but I tried it. And I was like this is ridiculous. So it looks so silly. I have to try this. It’s a beautiful wall. Yeah, feet up on the wall. I do try and find somewhere private. So wedding guests aren’t like how drunk is that photographer?
Dan Moyer
But I’ve never ever walked in on you doing that? Oh, no,
Sam Hurd
I don’t ah, oh, no, not. I mean, maybe they immediately walked out. I didn’t realize. Yeah, but when I tried that stretch, and I and I realized this is what I’ve been looking for. Like, that’s my thing. I’ll try any other stretch like once or twice just to see if somebody recommends something else. But that thing will snap my back right back into shape for another couple hours. It’s amazing how effective it is. Yeah, and back pain has been a constant thing I’ve been worried about. You know, it’s very physically taxing to do weddings, risk pain that I had early paranoia about, because I grew up playing the violin, and everyone is freaked out about RSI, you know, especially the violin, but piano players as well. Any musician really tends to develop wrist issues. Same with computer people, right? They quite common to have wrist issues where you have to wear a brace, and all this to protect what is carpal tunnel syndrome or whatever. So I’m doing things that keep my muscles from feeling really tense, especially while shooting has also been a priority. I don’t know if I talked about this in the video. But something as simple as if, okay, if I’m gonna bounce flash as adding a lot of weight to the top side of my camera, so it becomes much more kind of top front heavy. And as you’re shooting a reception, that’s for whatever, you typically have your camera really high up to get those cool overhead shots. At least I didn’t. So actually, it’s counterintuitive, but you want a gripped body, if you can I shoot with the are three, so there’s always a grip. But what you want to do is add the battery grip underneath that increases the weight overall. But yeah, so not just that, yes, it’s better ergonomically, so your pinkies not hanging off. But also, it centers the balance center of gravity of the camera and the flash combined. So there’s not if you’re holding your camera up over your head, there’s not nearly as much strain on this part of your wrist that nobody can see because this is a podcast, but the part that tends to get really painful for people, it’s much easier and then I use the camera strap combined with this nice center balanced rig to offset the weight even a little bit more. So I don’t get any real wrist pain after many hours of shooting, dancing, stuff like that. So I don’t know just thinking as simply as possible about everything is kind of a trick. It’s hard to do is you have to practice it. And yeah, more seems like a month to cultivate. Definitely don’t get me wrong, I do a lot of things that also it was probably just out of habit and it’s like stupid or whatever. But everyone has those things, you know, yeah.
Dan Moyer
Do you write things down? Like like when you say like, Alright, here’s my thing, right? I’m just gonna do this. Like, I don’t know sometimes and maybe just my you know, because kids and And like all this other stuff outside of just like the wedding world, that sometimes I’ll like forget to do the new thing that has been like a big shift. And you know, like, are you prioritizing setting aside time to think about these things to write it down to make it into like a list of a workflow to I mean,
Sam Hurd
I am so grateful that for whatever reason, I’ve always had a tendency, I’m not very good at like list making and keeping my thoughts like super organized, and what I described earlier in the Notes app, but I’m so grateful. I started early with doing workshops, and writing gear reviews, and just stuff, really workshops and teaching about photography was born out of just writing on my blog reviews about a lens, or a camera body or whatever. When you sit down and start to write your thoughts about a new lens, you just find that you, you think about things in a way that like, why is that button there? Do I really like it? Is it better than than the lens before? Like, you just start to have all these realizations? And then teaching kind of forces you to reconcile things in your head even more, because now you have to explain to somebody in the simplest way possible, why I’m doing this. Yeah. And most people never go through that process. No, I don’t know anybody. That’s unless they’re trying to explain it to somebody else, that they just sit down for themselves and write like, Why do I bounce the way that I bounce, my flash, or whatever. So teaching definitely helped with that. And it’s just all evolved sort of from there. So I’m very grateful that I was able to, I don’t know, I did my first workshop four years into shooting, which is pretty quick. That’s pretty early. But I got a big leg up. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m very lucky by the fact that I did have even though I don’t think my work was technically there yet, or creatively there yet. The celebrities that I had access to at the Press Club, made me stick out to other photographers whenever I did write, like a lens review or something. And so that gave me an early start to have spine successes, sort of a teacher, because I really liked it. I love explaining myself, because I learned new things about myself going through that process. So it’s fairly healthy. Yeah.
Dan Moyer
Yeah. I mean, there’s like, like, I know, you have some songs like on Apple podcasts and that kind of stuff. Like are you energized by kind of the like, some people say, like, I need to have like restaurant doing nothing. I’m laying in my hammock in the backyard doing nothing does just like some of the stuff you talked about before, like Reddit, and that darling fireball and like, those kinds of things, are those things that also sort of fill you up that like, are, it’s not just like, Oh, I’m reading about my craft. And this is like for work. It’s like, no, no, these I also just enjoy doing those things. And they also happened to help me become more reflective and a better practitioner, and all that kind of stuff.
Sam Hurd
In a way. Yeah, that kind of stuff comes and goes in terms of whether it’s like nourishing my creative mindset and my abilities. As a photographer, the biggest thing that I do to help is actually do music, music production. And again, that comes in waves. That was my original goal in life was to produce records for bands, like indie bands, I played in many myself, and I recorded probably 15 albums, through college, and then a few years after, and I mean, most of the equipment behind me is all music stuff. And so that it comes in waves. I’m not constantly like writing songs every day, and I’m not some like, secret, amazing musician. But I love the time for it, which is awesome. Exactly. And it’s still flexes the exact same process of thinking those creative muscles get flexed in a way that isn’t photography. So you can learn something new and find that informs your photography, big time, especially the production of music, like the engineering side of things with mic choice and tone and all these things. It’s the exact same decision sort of process as photos, editing your photos, like tonally, it’s a lot of the same decision is how you mix a song together. Totally. It’s kind of crazy how much there’s an overlap there. So music is the thing that really fills me up, and is also separate from the stress and work but geography can be something
Dan Moyer
What do you mean, you’re telling me that like photographing weddings isn’t all perfect rainbows and sunshine, like even you get burned out and tired by it?
Sam Hurd
Believe it or not, it does happen. But actually nothing about a wedding stresses me out ever. It’s just the sometimes I’d say I should not have said yes to something when it was three weddings in a row and I have to drive 12 hours between numbers like that has been a situation that I regretted many times I gotta have to be up at 5am to catch a flight and then drive you know, that can be exhausting, but that’s mostly just physical exertion. You know, I need to be better about
Dan Moyer
Yeah, I want to go back to the workshop thing really quick, before we start to wrap up here a little bit. And I’m curious, like, you know, you’ve done a bunch of workshops, you know, lots of different places. And I’m wondering, like, what kind of the questions that photographers asked you sort of about this, this area of, you know, workflow and becoming more efficient. Do you get questions about that? Or have you got questions about that? And what resources you give? Yeah,
Sam Hurd
yeah, it seems like most people will firstly struggle with just having Lightroom run fast enough, where it’s not frustrating. And that’s understandable. Because there’s a few things like out of the box Lightroom really isn’t pre configured to handle 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of photos that wedding photographers have to deal with. There, there are just a few things that you need to do to make it run wild. And then but that comes with also needing a completely beginning to end thorough understanding of how Lightroom works, like what the catalog is, versus the smart preview sidecar file versus the standard preview sidecar file. And then what the hell is an XML file versus, you know, a raw file or a DNG versus any other kind of robot, like, you need a very thorough understanding of all these things. To understand why just minimizing your histogram in library mode speeds Lightroom up like it does a huge amount. But you know, having a very thorough understanding of every part of the inner workings of Lightroom helps surface those realizations, it’s often so silly and dumb like that. Yeah, so a lot of people struggle with that. And then I think a lot of people also struggle with just file management, like, how many copies of things should I have? And where should they be. And, you know, I’m always stressed that I’m going to be losing something. And the biggest it’s, it can become very complex to like, explain it a podcast, my backup and archiving and all that kind of stuff. But the end of the day, anytime you find yourself having to do something manually, like renaming something, or copying something from one drive to another, that is just an open opportunity for human error. That is where people accidentally format cards. And that is I in my opinion, where things are going to have the highest risk of file corruption or data loss is if you have to consistently rely on yourself to remember exactly what you need to do every single time. So you want a process that minimizes those steps as much as humanly possible so that you can just import your photos and know that everything down the chain is fine. Yeah, there’s
Dan Moyer
so much of that stuff that you cover in your in your Patreon. Like there’s one little nugget that I remember pulling out about, like how you master photographs. And yes, I actually wrote to you about that that was like a such a game changer that like oftentimes, the photos outside of Bella come out of Lightroom are just like, a little bit different and like not so punchy, and you just have this like great little video about like, re importing them and creating the preset that would actually export them and then automatically re import them. It was awesome. It that
Sam Hurd
extra step is still kind of annoying, I wish there was a more elegant way to do it. But yeah, you’re talking. So the way a raw file responds when you edit it for color or exposure or anything else is very different than the way a JPEG responds because a JPEG is that doesn’t have all the data, it’s a compressed file. So you’ll notice when you edit an additional set of color adjustments, or whatever tone adjustments that you want, to a JPEG file. Yeah, it just gives it this pop this final finish. And it’s the exact same thought process as something from the audio world mixing songs where people will take the original wav file of whatever the instrument or track is, and run it through analog gear outside of the box of their computer, but and get the saturation of actual tubes and stuff and a compressor or an EQ or whatever, and then re import it into their sequencer and mix it from there. So it gets this layer of sort of I don’t know how to describe it. It’s mastering. I mean, it’s literally in the audio world called Mastering where you take everything in your mix down to the left and right stereo tracks. And then you edit all of that together with its own compressed compression, EQ and all this stuff. So it just like gels, it glues it all together in a really nice way. That for me is exactly what’s happening when you export your RAW file as a JPEG and then edit the JPEG. Now it’s all related.
Dan Moyer
So yeah, so people really deal or talk a lot about like, the Lightroom side of things. And they asked about like file management. And I feel like that sort of makes sense, because it’s sort of like loosely photography related. Leave it this way. I feel like a lot of people get into the photography world because like, somebody says, Hey, you’re really good at taking pictures. And then they’re like, you know, maybe we should start a business and then they start the business. And like that’s like the next thing while I’m taking pictures now I need to learn how to edit them and then you learn how to save them. And I feel like after that it’s like you know when you’re at it for a while, and you start saying, well, I need to find like sort of a little bit of this balance. And I need to do things a little bit more efficiently because I’m spending, you know, this time when it could be with my significant other up late at night. And that’s when you’re saying, you know, really start just asking yourself, like, what is the sticking point? And then, and then sort of take a deep dive on that one? Individual topic? Because you just said before, like, you know, with Lightroom, you have to really understand, like, what’s the difference between all these things? So was that you, you know, diving into like, okay, Lightroom sucks as it comes out of the box, I need to figure out all of these different things and just start like diving in and looking at every part of it. And what turning yeah, that’s that was your process
Sam Hurd
exactly that some of that was motivated by travel, because I needed a really small, lightweight computer, I had like a MacBook Air way back in the day. And so is how I don’t want to bring a big old chunky, 16 inch laptop. It’s just it’s so uncomfortable on a plane, whatever. What is, how can I possibly get Lightroom to run the fastest it possibly can? On the smallest computer that I can travel with? And I figured it out. And so yeah, it all just kind of evolved from there. And some big things that Lightroom or Adobe did to Lightroom super helpful, like the introduction of smart previews in general, like super helpful, I’m so glad they did that. Still, I’m convinced most of the companies that exist for photographers, like app creators, and even a lot of the camera manufacturers don’t have actual working photographers, working with them at the like, Inception point of how something is designed and thought through. Like they they get feedback from photographers after a lot of like, the critical foundations of whatever it is an app or set. And by then it’s like too late to really do sweeping changes that, you know, they just they really need more photographers, like weighing in early early in the r&d phase of whatever it is, they’re making. One
Dan Moyer
last question before we probably start to phase out but is there anything that like a problem that you had? At one point or, or a problem that you solved the sort of like, gave you maybe give yourself like a little mental high five or something that was like particular sticking point that you’re just like, oh, I finally figured it out.
Sam Hurd
But one school I love is called Narrative publish. Yeah, that’s, that’s a tool that once I started using, it definitely feels like a high five every time because blogging. I’m very comfortable with computers very like computer oriented, but my website uses WordPress as the host, which is great. It’s fine. Like it does a lot. But it’s such a pain to assemble a simple blog post in WordPress, it’s shocking. Narrative totally took that pain away. Like it’s so easy to blog, and it’s so nice to just like, I can knock it out in 10 minutes and there’s nothing. That’s that’s one thing. A lot of them are going to be tool related like that. I’m trying to think of like, technique or Oh, I just got a new roller bag. I meant to bring this up when you said the word roller bag. I frickin in love. I don’t know if you bought one yourself yet. If you saw my post about it on Patreon. Is it the one
Dan Moyer
that like opens like oh, like yes, top doctors like, oh, look so cool.
Sam Hurd
Shimoda that’s the brand. They make a roller. They’re mostly, they mostly make backpacks for like, adventure. People. Yeah. Not wedding photographers. In fact, I don’t even see it on there. Okay, they do. So it’s called the carry on roller V two. And this is how all roller bags should open from the top. Just like a doctor’s bag. Yeah, no flap that covers everything. And then you can’t tell if it zipped or not. And then somebody who’s not you. And a wedding reception will pick it up and move it out of the way and stuff comes tumbling out. And then they don’t tell you they put it back in. You know, that’s bad. This Shimoda roller carry on bag. Yeah, opens like a doctor’s bag from the top. And so it’s got a nice chunky handle. And everything else about it is well designed and thought through but that thing. I’m very I don’t know how I even found it. I was just like, constantly looking for the best bag. Because yeah, one one still doesn’t the perfect one. Still haven’t found. This is the closest I wish I could send Shimoda some notes and just like, change this. Make it better.
Dan Moyer
I saw your journey with the shoulder bags like you just constantly going off to one and then there was like an Amazon rip off of the Peak Design one. Yeah, it was nuts. Okay. All right. This is the actual final question. Obviously, a lot of the workshops and stuff that you do you talk with and I’m sure you’ve talked with a lot of turnovers on Instagram and all these different places. What’s like outside of Lightroom what’s like one area of of business or their photography that you suggestive Tarvaris so there is like an easy place to clean up and gain some time back or gain some efficiency.
Sam Hurd
One of the easiest that you want to take care of as soon as possible in terms of like when you’re actually a business now versus just doing it as a side hobby, even as a side hobby. Have a company between separate checking account, if you’re not confident enough to open a business checking account because you haven’t like become an LLC, you’re not officially a business yet, whatever open a second personal checking account if you have to, and keep all your business purchases and transactions related to the your business in that account. And then everything else for your personal account that is so nice to have a card or business card for personal, your accountant will thank you. And you just can pay yourself out of the business checking account in batches, whenever you need it to your personal stuff, but keeping them completely siloed and a separate things makes tax time way easier. And yeah, just in general, you should, you should do that. And it’s such a pain to do. If you have been like shooting for a couple years and like, kind of have things all over a bunch of different credit cards or something, or debit cards or whatever. That yeah, try and siloed into one, one place for everything. So
Dan Moyer
wow, is that something that a lot of photographers don’t do or that you
Sam Hurd
I didn’t for first first three years, you know, I wasn’t like making enough to be full time I couldn’t open a business account because I was working for the Press Club and doing weddings on the side. I wasn’t an LLC yet. And then I’ve just dragging my feet because I was so used to pit paying, you know, to get credit card points on one card, I’d put everything on that personal and business related and then I’d have to like parse through that every month to explain, you know, yeah, so yep, that’s the simplest thing that popped into my head. There’s a billion examples I could probably give you one that you know, is working with a CRM that really makes sense for your brain. You know, something that will manage your contracting and invoicing and all of that I use something called the shoot Cue. Cue. Oh, yeah, I’m on the in the refreshed newer version, which is not as good as the old one. Oh, it’s not it’s almost there. It’s good enough. I’m switching because the old one launched in like 2005. And it’s becoming noticeably slower. Gotcha. I put it on some some cheaper servers. Yeah, I originally
Dan Moyer
had shoe Q and now I’m with tavae. But the episode prior to this one was with Kohli James who’s just like absolutely amazing. Dub Sado expert, and I had a good conversation with her about, you know, the differences between all of them and stuff. And she loves she’s like, they’re, they all just are awesome. There’s a couple that she really likes, but let’s get episode because I thought she was gonna be like, no, no, go with this one. This is the one you want to go with. She’s like big into dub Sado. But yeah, there’s like, she’s like Tavis, the most powerful one. That’s awesome. You ever shoot you?
Sam Hurd
Yeah, shoot, you created a whole new version of itself. I totally rewritten from the ground up. And even they couldn’t redo the elegance and beauty of the original shoot Q, which looks awful. Now, don’t get me wrong. Like you don’t want to use the original. But it did everything I needed. I’ve never had to think twice about so many different parts of my client booking process with the original sheet.
Dan Moyer
Q. Have you ever seen the app notion? mess without yet?
Sam Hurd
Yes, I’ve heard of it. I’ve never used it.
Dan Moyer
That’s really cool. So I started messing around with it. Okay, yeah, there’s like, it’s like a, it’s like a place for everything. So I can describe it. There’s like Trello and like all these different boards, but it’s got like this one look to it. I just started messing around with it. Because I, I need something for all of the little projects that I have, like, like, having my notes was really good. But then I just found that my notes, scroll was just getting so long and forever. And I wanted nested pages and different ways to view things I can put like my whole life in there like and I can have like just a little section for my my ideas and I can have like a drop down table that has like different statuses and it’s really fascinating. I feel like might be interested in if you haven’t
Sam Hurd
messed around. Check it out. Yeah.
Dan Moyer
Awesome, man. final parting thoughts.
Sam Hurd
Thanks for having me. Have a go shoot an engagement session. Oh, sweet, okay, and like an hour and a half or something. Awesome.
Dan Moyer
So a little bit about your, your Patreon and where people can follow you. And like all
Sam Hurd
my Patreon feed is patreon.com/sam hurd. It’s linked through my Instagram and my website, which is Sam hurd photography.com Instagram is I am the SAM. Patreon is where I post the good stuff. In terms of insights. It’s sort of like an ongoing stream of a workshop I would so good describe it. Thank you. That’s always highly valuable a lot of work into it. It’s it’s been interesting to see both the Patreon platform and my approach to how I use it evolve over five years because I’m not really following another photographers model on how to do it, and what how it should be used and all that. So it’s been it’s been an adventure, but yeah, that’s
Dan Moyer
awesome, man. Thanks so much for being here.
Sam Hurd
Thanks, Dan.
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