Kyle Hepp

April 12, 2011

Before we get into this Q&A I have a big thank you to say to you all first. So many of you have emailed to tell me how much you love Moment Junkie — not to mention all the comments I see on there from people in Chile, photographers, bloggers, friends, etc. It’s incredible to feel this much support for the project and I really don’t have the words to say how much I appreciate it. I love Moment Junkie and it’s nice to know that you do too. So thank you! And thank you again!

Now on to the questions. The first FAQ is just something that seems to come up in pretty much every conversation we ever have.
Most people, upon hearing of our travel schedule, hit upon one of two immediate reactions — the first is:

“That’s AWESOME.”

And the second is,

“You’re INSANE.”

So my most frequently asked question is 50/50:

“Isn’t it so great that you get to travel so much?”

And

“Don’t you get sick of traveling so much?”

I think that both Seba and I would have totally different answers to those questions. He’s a little bit more of a homebody than I am. Even when we’re in Santiago, I like going out, I thrive on meeting new people and socializing, the busier I am, the more efficient I get. Seba needs stability and order in his life. He tires of being on the road far easier than I do.

I love traveling. For me, truly, the only downside is leaving behind my fur-babies. I used to get sick of living out of a suitcase, but now that I’ve learned how to pack more efficiently, I don’t mind. It forces me to limit the amount of clothes that I own to a pretty bare minimum, so I only keep around outfits that I love and everything else gets the boot. I think more people would benefit from cleaning out their closet like that

On to the next question(s). I think I was linked to by a travel forum or something because one day a few weeks ago my traffic spiked but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, and then I got like 3 emails that day asking about travel finances. I doubt it was a coincidence. People wanted to know:

“How can you afford to travel so often?”

Well, first of all, our line of work allows us to travel. Someone else said that their must be a “secret,” to being able to travel so much. Another person said we must “spend half your income on airfare.” When clients abroad inquire about us shooting their wedding I include the cost of travel in the quote. If we weren’t traveling for work, I doubt we’d be able to go as many places as we do.

When we go to Europe this June, we actually tried a different tactic. We decided we wanted to back so I told my photographer friends that we would be there in June in case they had any dates they were booked for and could refer us. I charged the going rate for European wedding photographers, which was a gamble. I knew that one booked would cover our plane tickets and two booked would cover the whole trip’s expense. So obviously if one booked and I couldn’t get a second, I had to be willing to eat the cost, if need be. Fortunately we’ve booked two weddings and I couldn’t be more excited about them — after Skyping with both brides, I’m convinced we’re a perfect fit, even from a million miles away. So that worked out really well. And then of course, while we’re there, we’re going to take advantage being in the area to go to Edinburgh, Scotland, and Barcelona, Spain — two places we’ve never been and are dying to visit!

We are NOT made of money. Not even close to it. But every time someone hires us for a wedding somewhere cool, we do take advantage of being in that destination, since our airfare and lodging are already paid, to be able to tourist around or even continue on traveling to places nearby. We do prioritize and save up our money so that when these opportunities occur, we can say, “Sweet, we’re booked in England and France, so while we’re there, taking advantage of the fact that we already have the bulk of the trip paid for through weddings, let’s go to Spain and Scotland and we can afford the side-trips because we have money saved.” But for the most part, we don’t spend the money that we’re making as we’re making it, on travel. We budget and save. There is no secret. Sorry.

Next up my friend Lindsey asked,

“What is your reasoning behind not watermarking your photos? Do you ever worry that people will steal them?”

Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but there isn’t much reasoning behind anything I do. People do steal my photos. Photographers from a photography forum in Poland actually emailed me that a guy had stolen Emily and Rodolfo’s entire wedding and had them on his blog with Polish names like Rodolfsky and Emiliana. No, I’m kidding, those weren’t the names on the Polish site, but he really did re-name them and pretend he had shot their entire wedding. I’m usually just flattered if people want to steal my photos. But if they’re using them in any way that will harm others (like this guy was trying to pass off to potential clients that my photos were his photos so I emailed his host for copyright issues and they took his site down) or I’ve seen weirdos who are not my clients, but use my client’s photo as their Facebook profile picture, then I usually just harass them until they stop.

As for the watermarking, I just don’t like the way they look. I used to use a watermark, but I found it was too distracting and took away from the photo. And people stole my photos then anyways too, so it didn’t really matter.

Then the lovely Deidre asked:

“I know editing pictures is a huge part of digital photography (I assume kind of like properly exposing the film would be part of developing pictures by hand if we still used film). I only use iphoto to edit my (not so fabulous) pictures do you have any “must do’s” so I can be getting the most out of my photos?

And if I was considering getting a new point and shoot camera – do you have any suggestions of ones that would take better pictures than others – or are they all about the same?”

Well, as for point and shoots, I haven’t used one in many, many moons — not because I’m too snobbish to use a point and shoot, but simply because it’s an extra expense for something we don’t need (I’d feel silly and a little bit wasteful taking out a little camera to take travel pictures when I have at my disposal such a very nice camera!) and we prioritize any and all extra money to traveling. However, a new camera just came out that tempts me Oh. So. Much. It’s the Fujifilm X100
and basically it has a ton of the capabilities of a large DSLR packed into a point and shoot sized body, making it an excellent choice for traveling and taking awesome photos without having to lug around a giant body and lens. It looks pretty drool worthy and I’m kind of obsessed with getting one eventually (eventually after the price goes down).

And to get the most out of your photos, I’d say that the most important thing, still, is exposing properly. Most point and shoot cameras have ways to use the manual controls. If you can figure out how to do that you will have WAY more control over the way your photos come out. As for editing, I don’t do much to my photos and I’ve never used iPhoto, but I’d guess that you could probably adjust saturation and contrast, which is pretty much all you need in any program!

And I receive this email on a pretty regular basis, and just got it again, so I’ll write up a new answer because it’s an ever-evolving process.

“Do you use Lightroom only to edit your photos or do you use Lightroom and then Photoshop?”

I actually do not use Lightroom. I use Capture One. In my opinion, it is hands down the best software for the raw to jpeg conversions. I adjust the white balance, if need be, and I up saturation. After I export to jpeg from Capture One, I then go into Photoshop, up contrast and sometimes add a little grain (a lot of grain for my personal work, a little to no grain for my client’s work, depending on the mood or feeling I’m going for with their session/wedding).

Here’s a pretty easy to answer question, so maybe I can stop being so wordy.

“Where is your new apartment?”

Bellas Artes. But I’m not going to give out the exact address obviously, because there are too many crazies on the internet!

I think I’ve answered almost all the questions from the survey now, except the business ones. So many people have questions about how we market and things, but I don’t feel very qualified to answer those because there are a TON of good business blogs out there that explain things way better than me. But maybe I’ll answer some of those questions in the next couple of weeks while we’re not too busy shooting weddings.

And holy hell this post is LONG.

Oops. Sorry.

But even if it was too long for you to read, do you at least like the new formatting style? We’re working on good changes for the old bloggity blog — new comments, new formatting, and the next gargantuan task I need to conquer is the archive systems. I’ll let you know when it’s awesome