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No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk
Today's Guest: Mike Long of Times Two Studios in Portland, Oregon
Today's Host: John Bentley

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ANNOUNCER: Welcome to No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk brought to you by No BS Photo Success Photography Forum. Dedicated to the portrait and wedding photographer who has the passion and desire to grow. Now here's your host, John Bentley.

JOHN: Welcome to No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. I'm your host, John Bentley, and today we have Portland, Oregon, photographer, Mike Long, of Times Two Studios. Welcome to the program, Mike.

MIKE: Hi, John, how are you doing?

JOHN: Hey, not to bad. You're out there in Portland, Oregon. You have a photography business, but you sound like you're from overseas.

MIKE: Yep.

JOHN: Well, how did you end up in Portland, Oregon, Mike?

MIKE: It's a real long story. The short version is I married my wife 8 years ago. She was born in southern California and we'd often discussed moving to America, because she was brought up in England too. But for some reason or another, we never got around to it, and we just kept talking about it, and one day our friend said, look, either shut up and get over there or stop talking about it. So we came over here.

JOHN: Alright. Well welcome to America. Let's talk about your studio, Times Two Studios. You have a partner with that business, don't you?

MIKE: That's correct, Craig Ferroggiaro.

JOHN: Ok, how long have you and Craig been together. We've been working together pretty much since I arrived in America. I met Craig in San Francisco where we first lived and we were retouching for the advertising industry and over the course of a couple of years, we worked together on lots of projects for advertising agencies and realized that we worked very well together and both had a dream to work in a full time studio and we, I'm not really sure, neither of us can really remember the exact conversation that happened to suddenly move both our families to Portland to start the studio, but here we are.

JOHN: That's funny how things work out at times, huh?

MIKE: Yes.

JOHN: Ok. Let's talk a little bit about you. Why did you get into the photography business in the first place?

MIKE: I have been retouching pretty much since I left school at the age of 16, and I wound up running the retouching department for England's largest magazine publisher, and we saw a lot of photos from lots of photographers and a lot of them weren't very good. I would regularly shout and moan and scream and say these photos are rubbish, I could do better. And one day, one of my co-workers had enough and said, "Well then go and buy a camera and prove it." So I went and bought a camera and realized it wasn't quite as easy as I had once thought it was, but it did start my obsession with photography and over the years I dabble in everything from weddings to most sports to music and finally settled on unique portraits being where I really want my photography to go.

JOHN: Well we're going to talk about the retouching aspect of your business in the second section of this interview. First of all, let's talk about your studio. What is your primary type of photography?

MIKE: I think first is portraiture, commercial and for the general public. We also do weddings and we have some great ideas for wedding photography bringing the fashion aspect of photography to the general public for weddings. But portraiture is where both Craig and I really think we excel and both have different styles of portraiture. Craig used more traditional soft kind of portraiture and mine is much more colorful and kind of pin-ups is where my main focus is going for next year I think.

JOHN: You know, I was looking at your website and looking at some of your portraits, and you do have an unusual way of doing things. It's almost, I don't know, you have kind of a little outrageousness about yourself.

MIKE: Yes.

JOHN: For lack of a better word. You definitely have...you want people to do something kind of unique and different or out of the ordinary, don't you?

MIKE: Yeah, it's more about bringing the unique character of the person out during a session. I see many portraits that to me seem bland and uninteresting and don't show what the person is really all about and it doesn't necessarily need to be outrageous. It just shows what's going on inside that person and the way that you achieve that is by talking to them. I see so many photographers that just sit somebody down and just snap pictures and to me that's not what being a photographer is about. It's not just about holding the camera and taking the picture, it's about connecting with the person you're taking the picture of, finding something about them, making them talk, hearing what their life story is, and then you can capture that. It just so happens that most the people I take pictures of are quite outrageous people and that comes out in the photos, but we can also be quiet and unassuming and dignified as well. That would be a different type of portrait.

JOHN: It seems like, do you use your sense of humor to kind of loosen people up a little bit?

MIKE: That's the most of it, yeah, and especially for young lady models, you can kind of flirt with them a little bit, not too much, but just relaxing people, getting to know them, and that's one of the reasons why when we do wedding photography, for example, we like to do engagement sessions, because then we can connect with the couple way before the wedding, get to know them, be friendly so that on the wedding day, you're not just some idiot taking their picture, you're their friend taking their picture and they're much more likely to relax and have fun with you and give you a nice relaxed smile rather than that cheesy photographer wedding smile which nobody really likes.

JOHN: Sure. Now let's talk a little bit about weddings. Certainly that's a totally different animal than the portrait studio. What are you doing differently as a photographer for a wedding as opposed to a set kind of portrait situation?

MIKE: We try and handle the wedding day as a mini-fast portrait session broken up into different areas. So we will take, both Craig and I handle different duties on the wedding day. We'll take the guys and the girls separately and we'll do mini portrait sessions with the guys and the girls probably using natural light and then we'll meet up again at the ceremony and that we handle like a quick event and it's kind of like a sports event, because you never know what's going to happen and you can plan a ceremony to the minute, but something always happens that's unexpected so you have to be ready for anything, and we handle that like you would handle a sports or football game. But the whole day is kind of free flowing. You never know what's going to happen. You have to be prepared and we just carry the right equipment, big lights and have fun.

JOHN: Speaking of, I've certainly had fun talking to you about the photography business. Mike and Craig's website is www.timestwostudios.com if you want to go there and check out some of their work. They've got some interesting photographs on their site. And we're going to take a break here. We'll be right back with Mike Long of Times Two Studios. You're listening to the No BS Digital Photography Shop Talk; No BS Photo Success. We'll be right back.

ANNOUNCER: This program is sponsored by NO BS Photo Success Photography Forum. Visit them on the web at www.nobsphotosuccess.com. NO BS Photo Success dedicated to the portrait and wedding photographer who has the passion and desire to grow.

ANNOUNCER: VTalk Radio.

ANNOUNCER: www.morephotos.com helps professional photographers manage their digital images online in over 20 countries. They can help you with domain names, websites, shopping carts, and online proofing solutions. Please visit them at www.morephotos.com. Mmorephotos.com the online sales solution for professional photographers worldwide. We now return you to the NO BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk show with your host, John Bentley.

JOHN: Welcome back to the NO BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. I'm your host, John Bentley. We are speaking with Portland, Oregon, photographer, Mike Long of Times Two Studios. Welcome back to the program, Mike.

MIKE: Hey.

JOHN: Now we've been talking about different aspects of your photography business, and you told us any number of things about the portrait business and the fact that you are in weddings. You did touch commercial a little bit. It looks like you do or have done a lot of commercial photography too. Is that true?

MIKE: We've done a fair amount. Mainly apparel, shoes, uniforms for sports companies, that kind of thing.

JOHN: Now you also have a gallery of places photographs.

MIKE:Yeah.

JOHN: How do you use that in your business? How do you use pictures like that to make money or is it just for your own pleasure, or?

MIKE: It comes from personal pleasure, but it can be used in many ways. Partly as stock photography. Also fine art print sales which my business partner, Craig, has had quite a lot of success with. His view of the world as he sees it through his camera. He is very distinct and I don't think I've seen fine art pictures like that and he's had a lot of success selling those in very high end stores which is one aspect. It also helps you with composition for other types of photography so going back to the wedding photography, if you can capture fine art scenic picture well that helps you on wedding day to capture the day with a different eye.

JOHN: Now you have an affiliation with the NO BS Photo Success site. Tell us first of all how you discovered them and what you have learned from their site.

MIKE: I first discovered NO BS Photo Success through one of their founders, James Hodgins, quite a few years ago on a different forum, and he pointed me to No BS and said this is a fun forum, come and check it out. At the time that's when I was living in England as a wedding photographer, and it really helped me at the time to get my marks together and learn a few tricks about wedding photography. When I left England and came to America, that kind of went on the back burner for a few years, and then when Craig and I got our studio up and running, we rejoined No BS and at that time we were then starting to get our retouching business sorted, and I consulted with James and said, "Hey look; this is what we're doing, is there any way you can help us out?" And he said sure become one of our preferred vendors and we now offer our retouching services to all the members of No BS and we tend to offer Photoshop tips and advice and help photographer's work flow.

JOHN: What do you find to be the most common problem that you run into with a common retouch?

MIKE: I think the most common problem that digital photographers have is the feeling that they have to do it all themselves. Years ago, you would shoot, take your film to a lab, the lab would process it and give it back, and that's how pretty much most photographers did their work. Unless they were really keen about doing black and white processing. Now every magazine and every website is telling you that because you have a digital camera you have to have Photoshop or you have to do everything to every picture and that's really not true. Less is often more and I see the biggest problem is that people go out and buy lots and lots of plug-ins and action to Photoshop and try and do everything to every picture and that often ruins a picture. So I think people just need to take it back a step and go back to the traditions of photography of getting it right in camera first and then maybe enhancing it a little bit.

JOHN: So just really kind of minimal Photoshop work afterwards is really what you're after isn't it?

MIKE: It can be minimal. Some of my work involves lots of Photoshop, but people tend to go overboard with lots and lots of different things on a picture without really thinking about what the picture needs. Every picture requires something different to bring out the best elements of their photograph and sometimes some pictures don't need anything done to them. Sometimes they may need a lot. People think they need to go overboard.

JOHN: Now I was looking at your gallery and there was a picture in particular that kind of jumped out at me. It was somebody walking on a railroad track, and it...now was that picture...the effect you have kind of an affect around the side where it's kind of out of focus and yet it's focused right in the middle. Is that an effect you that you got on the camera, or is that something you did in the studio later?

MIKE: That one was done in post production. Yeah, that was slightly blurred effect around the edge.

JOHN: Yeah, that's a nice affect. And you've got a couple other ones that were kind of unique. What are some of your favorite types of affects that you use on photographs?

MIKE: At the moment, I'm very much into using cross processing on a few images, but not full strength. I dull it down a little bit. It gives the skies especially a really nice strange color to them. I've been using Andy Armstrong's Color Monkeys for those. They're really good. He's got a good product there. Besides that most of my pictures, my own personal stuff just involves a lot of hand retouching. Especially the portraits. Good old fashion hand retouching, but yeah.

JOHN: Now you've been doing the retouching service for No BS for how long now, Mike?

MIKE: We've been...Craig and I have had our retouching service for about 18 months.

JOHN: And you're getting a lot of people inquiring about that?

MIKE: Yes, No BS has been very good to us as far as new clients. We've had 4 or 5 in the last year that have been regular clients for their wedding processing, and we're getting new inquiries every day.

JOHN: Now can people send a photo to you and just say, hey, what do you think of this, is there something I can do to make this better? Do they do that?

MIKE: Yes, they can and that happens on a regular basis. I think with a lot of the early photographers and people who are knew in the business. They tend to misunderstand how expensive that can be. Single images that need a lot of hand work can be quite expensive to retouch especially the ones we handle for No BS in general is handling a whole wedding and retouching mass pictures in the whole wedding to make it look good.

JOHN: Great. Well we want to thank you for joining us today on the No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk, Mike.

MIKE: Sure.

JOHN: Hey before I let you go, why don't you give your website address real quick for us.

MIKE: Sure. It's www.timestwostudios.com.

JOHN: We have been speaking with Portland, Oregon, photographer, Mike Long, of Times Two Studios here on the No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk. I want to thank you everybody for joining in today and have a great afternoon.

ANNOUNCER: No BS Photo Success Digital Photography Shop Talk is powered by www.vtalkradio.com. Radio for the 21st Century.



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