Episode 77 – Taking Great Photos and Video

Show Notes

Tips:

1. Use a good Camera. If you want to invest you can get a great DSLR for video and pics for under $500, however, don’t underestimate the power of your smartphone, it can take amazing pictures. ( we do both!)

2. Use good lighting. You can purchase lighting from Amazon or used on Ebay. Some directional lighting. avoid heavy shadows or TOO much light. (also phone / camera has light / exposure settings)

3. Use a tripod – Your hand’s aren’t as still as you think they are, use a tripod it will help. also can get a mini tripod for a phone for under $20

4. Consider the background – generally white or light color background is preferred. Ironed sheet, big white paper. also consider scenes …. park, beach, wood table, trees, people

5. Clean everything. The product, clean camera lens, lint brush garments

6. Take test shots – upload them to a computer too so you can see them BIG… not just on little camera/phone screen.

7. Watch out for bad audio – sometimes you don’t realize audio is bad till you are all done. make sure room doesn’t echo a lot, make sure people aren’t talking in the background, get a directional mic if using a camera

8. Use post-production – if you don’t have experience editing photos may be a good idea to hire someone to help you clean up pics, lighting, noise, etc.

9. Editing software – Gimp/Pshop for images, Camtasia/iMovie for video

When to take pics/video:

New blanks or product offerings
Events you’re doing
Images/videos of customer jobs during and after
Changes to your store/equipment

Transcript

Welcome to the Custom Apparel Startups podcast, your best source for information, news, tips and tricks to get you off the ground running, and earn success with your custom apparel decorating business. So, get ready to soak up some knowledge!

Now, here are your hosts, Mark and Marc!

Mark S: Hey everyone, and welcome to episode 77 of the Custom Apparel Startups podcast! My name is Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.

Marc V: And this is Marc Vila, from Colman and Company. Today, we’re going to be talking about taking great photos and video for websites, ecommerce, content marketing, and social.

Mark S: All of a sudden, I’m very self-conscious about the way I look on video.

Marc V: We’re doing okay! I’ve got a preview, here.

Mark S: That’s always important.

Marc V: Yes! I think this episode is going to be maybe a shorter one. I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes. But it’s really just about hitting home on how to take, from looking really, really amateur, to coming up to the next level.

You don’t have to spend a lot of time and money, and you don’t have to have years and years of experience, and a degree, to make a huge jump.

Mark S: It takes just a little bit of practice, and checking your work.

The first thing I’m going to say is if you have to load film in your camera, then you may want to update, and use your phone. It’s not worth it.

Marc V: If your phone opens up this way, don’t use that.

Mark S: If you bought one of the little travel cameras, that you actually turn in the entire thing at the end of your vacation, and have somebody develop the film, then you probably don’t want to use that one, either.

Marc V: Yeah. I think, kind of starting off simply is just using a good device to take pictures and video and stuff. That’s kind of simple, but that’s kind of the common sense type of thing that we’re going to talk about in this podcast.

Mark, can you share with us, when should you be taking photos and video? Why is this important?

Mark: Sure. It’s really important. We just came off of two episodes that I really liked. I thought they were really good quality. That is how to kind of perfect your ecommerce store, How to Develop an Ecommerce Site. And also, Content Marketing. This kind of applies to both things.

The “when” of when you should take a picture or take a video, the answer is constantly. First of all, your set-up pictures should be things like, if you have a retail store, pictures of your displays, pictures of your store, a picture of your employees, pictures of your equipment in the back room.

If you don’t have a physical location, then you should be taking pictures and videos of your equipment, while it’s operating. If you’ve got a four-head embroidery machine, or you’re heat pressing or peeling a shirt, then having a video of that can be gold, because it’s really interesting.

If you are completing a job for somebody, if you’re a member of the Custom Apparel Startups Facebook group, we have a few masters of this in the group. You’ll immediately see them, because they come on, and they take pictures of every cool job that they do.

You’ll see glitter vinyl and rhinestones and direct-to-garment printing, and t-shirt transfers. You’ll see five or six pictures of the shirts, in different stacks and settings, and things like that. Then, if they have the opportunity, you’ll see pictures of people wearing the shirts.

Marc V: Yeah, like a sports team wearing it, or a business, or at a charity walk, or something like that. All of this content that you’re creating, the video and the image content can be used for so much.

It can be added to your Google profile, so when somebody Google searches for “embroidery shop in New York,” and they find your shop, well, what does your shop have? It’s not just the fuzzy Google image picture, but it’s a whole bunch of other pictures that you took and uploaded.

It could be your Facebook page or your website. It could be just things that you email to your customers, things that you have available on your phone, that when you’re talking to somebody at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, and they’re like “What do you do?” “Let me show you some cool jobs that I’ve done,” and you flip through.

Mark S: Absolutely. You can take these pictures any time. You can actually see examples of all of these things, if you just look at Colman and Company, and ColDesi. You’ll see we put pictures and videos on our Google Plus pages, so it will show up on Google Maps. We put it on Yelp. We put it on our Google My Business pages. It’s on Facebook.

Everywhere you go, you’re presented with the images of the products that we sell. And if you’ll notice, the most popular social media services in the world right now – Instagram is all about pictures and short videos. Pinterest is all about pictures.

Even Facebook, if you run down your Facebook feed in the mornings, you’ll only stop at the posts with pictures.

Marc V: Yeah. And they’ve actually even made a change this year, where when you type in your post, you can change it to kind of a canvas-looking preview, where it makes basically your post look like one of those – a square large image, because images are more powerful than words.

So, let’s talk about how to go from taking a bunch of images that don’t look good, and not having a great way to share them, and turning them into something that is, I would just say pretty darn good.

I’ve messed with some really nice cameras over the years, known plenty of people. Cathy, our Art Director, has a really nice camera. It can be very complicated business. I took a couple of courses in school, on photography and such. It’s complicated business, to get that mastery of imagery that you get from that, that professionals do.

However, it’s kind of like – I would say it’s the equivalent of training for a 5k race. If you’ve never done it, and all you do is sit on the couch, you won’t finish it. Or if you do finish it, you will be on the verge of passing out, and you won’t be able to walk for the weekend.

Mark S: I do have a really nice couch!

Marc V: However, if you just get up and practice a bit, after a couple of months, you’ll be able to finish it in reasonable time, probably in the top 50%, maybe even. However, to get to world record-beating 5k time takes years and years.

That’s the same as this. The difference between not being able to take any good image at all, or everything looking like garbage, compared to looking pretty darn good, is not that hard.

Mark S: Yeah. It’s so, so simple. You just have to follow a couple of the tactics and techniques that we’re going to talk about.

If you’ve already got a website or a Facebook page, here’s an exercise I would like you to do, because most people I talk to, like no one has ugly children, right? It’s the same thing with your website, or the pictures that you take.

I’ve been to some very large, older websites, in the awards and engraving industry in particular. If you look at that, if you search for “awards blanks” specifically, you’ll see pictures that were taken in the 70s, with bad lighting. It’s terrible.

So, what I would like you to do is pick a site that you go to, or that maybe you even buy clothing from, and split screen on your computer. Pick that site up, and then put yours up, and take a look at the difference of the photography. The closer you get to that retail look, the better off you’ll be. Right?

Because this is how people are making decisions on whether or not to buy your stuff. Especially if you’re selling online, all you’ve got is the picture.

Marc V: Yes, that’s true.

Mark S: So, you’ve got to make it good.

Marc V: Exactly. All of these things are things you can start doing right away, and make a huge difference in how it looks. Really, just make sure that you’re following the simple steps, just like everything else, when you want to go from good to great, good to better, there’s a few simple things.

Mark S: Let’s tell them a couple.

Marc V: First and foremost is really just using a good quality camera. You mentioned in the beginning, the disposable, something really old, a flip phone for the camera, you know.

I had a guy that was coming out to show me some concrete work that I was going to get done a couple of years ago. And he had a flip phone that he was trying to show me pictures on. I could see nothing! I’m just like “This is worse than not showing me anything.” So, use a good camera.

If you are the type to enjoy the gadgets and gadgetry of camera and photography, and you like it as a hobby, you can get a pretty good DSLR camera for under $500, that does 4K video and Super HD imagery, and you can put in all different types of lenses and fisheyes, and flashes. You can do a lot of cool stuff for not a lot of money, nowadays.

Mark S: Or you can take my approach. I’m holding up right now this weird tripod gadget that’s got my Samsung S5, that’s about three or four years old now. It takes amazing pictures and amazing videos.

If you look at our Facebook posts for ColDesi and for a compress UV printer, and you look at some of the videos – any of the short ones, they were just done on my phone. And all of the photos were just done on my phone.

Marc V: Yeah. It’s amazing, what you can do on the mobile.

A good exercise for this is, like Apple always does these campaigns. You may have seen them on TV. If not, just Google search for them. But it’s taken by an iPhone. What they do is they show an image of just like a river or some animals, or flowers.

Mark S: It’s amazing!

Marc V: Yeah. You’re watching on your big 60” TV, and it says “taken with an iPhone,” and that’s true. They went and they took these amazing images with just an iPhone. Or you could use a Samsung. Anything modern, within a few years, is going to take amazing pictures and videos.

If you are a camera person and you’re into that, then you’ll be able to dive even deeper, with a DSLR. But either way, you don’t have to spend a ton of money. But I guess of you consider it, either way, you’re out like $500. That’s how much a phone or a camera is.

Mark S: That’s true. One thing I will say, if you are using a phone, is to pay close attention to the image and the file size setting, inside your phone. Because for a while, I had it incorrectly set.

It had defaulted back to 640×480, and I just cranked that file size all the way up to the top, just because I like to have at least a 1280 image or better, so I’ve got something to work with, if I need to trim it down or make it smaller.

Marc V: Absolutely. An iPhone typically will come with settings just very high. But other models of phones, and there’s tons of phones out there, will have different options. The same thing with your DSLR camera. It might default at a certain type, when it takes a picture or a video. So, go ahead and pay attention to that.

Oftentimes, it doesn’t necessarily need to be a 4K video, to look amazing.

Mark S: It never does. I’ll say that.

Marc V: For what we’re doing, you know. For what we’re doing and for what you’re doing. When you get deeper and deeper and bigger, we have lots of folks out there who are photographers and videographers that can make a case for all of that. But they’re professionals. We’re just trying to help you get to the next level.

Mark S: And we’re not talking about print here, either. We’re talking about putting stuff online. So, no matter how good or how high resolution the original image is, you’re still only going to display it on somebody’s phone or somebody’s computer. So, keep that in mind, too.

Marc V: And it will be limited by what the – Facebook is only going to display a certain quality, and all of that. But either way, get a good quality device. You want either a newer smartphone, so either an Android or an iPhone would be the two we would recommend. Or go ahead and get yourself a nice DSLR camera, like a Canon or a Nikon, something you’re going to actually learn to use, too.

That’s an investment. Both of these are investments. If you don’t have either of them now, both of them are investments, and both of them will take some time to learn. So, jump on YouTube and find some good tutorials.

Mark S: I like that. And your next tip, I really appreciate you putting in here, because it’s one of the ones that I struggled with a lot, early on. It’s the lighting for the images and for the videos.

Because I’m not much of a planner. I like to just – something is happening, I will pick up my phone, and I will go and shoot it. Then, I’ll go back to my desk and I’ll pull it up on the computer, and I’ll see that it’s just way too dark.

Or one thing that you should look out for with lighting, is that if you are in an office with fluorescent lights, everything is yellow. I don’t care what you have. The type and the temperature of the light in the room makes a huge difference.

Marc V: Yeah. So, how do you solve this problem? For one, whatever device you’re using, whether it’s a professional camera or a semi-professional camera, or a smartphone device, either one of these typically will have settings and filters built into them, to help compensate for lighting. That’s one simple way you can do.

Your camera might even have like a fluorescent lighting setting, which will help to reduce some of that. That’s one thing you could do, right away.

But further from that, you could actually just purchase some nice lighting for yourself. Like we have some lighting that we’re looking at right now, that stares us in the face. What’s it like?

Mark S: You know what? I’m going to break the third wall! I’m going to go and I’m going to spin the camera around.

Marc V: Alright! Spin it around! Do it!

You have to see this on video, but this thing is – what? Maybe like 18 inches by 48 inches. I don’t know what it is. Or 24 inches.

Mark S: I think the whole camera, with a couple of lights, is $200. So, the first thing I’ll do is I’ll turn off this light, so you can see what the difference is. It’s not that great, but still, it’s worth it.

Marc V: Let’s see. Yeah. It dulls out where we are. Put it back on. You can see, it just adds a little bit more vibrancy.

Mark S: And we already have good light in this room.

Marc V: Yes! There’s already – what do we have?

Mark S: We have white LED lights.

Marc V: White LED lights. I think there’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight in the ceiling.

Mark S: And there’s what we’re talking about.

Marc V: How much is something like that?

Mark S: I think I bought a kit that included two of those, for a couple of hundred bucks. B&H Photo is where.

Marc V: I’ve seen you can get smaller ones, too. If you’re just looking to do just images of shirts, or just a mannequin you have, or images of shirts, you can get small of these things for under $50. They’re not that expensive.

You can get just LEDs on a tripod type of little lights, that are this big, that will project forward or project down. Or you can just go ahead and upgrade the lighting in the room that you’re going to take pictures in.

Like if you’ve already got lighting in the ceiling, say some sort of a track type of a thing in the ceiling, and it’s just got cheaper bulbs in it, you can even just upgrade the lightbulbs that you’ve got in the room. That can help, which is what we did in here, in the first place. We just upgraded the lightbulbs.

So, that’s the first thing you can do, is use good lighting. Too much lighting can also be bad.

Mark S: Yes, because you’ll be blinking. If you’re in the video, you’ll be blinking.

Marc V: It can also wash things out. If you have so much light, then you can actually – what you’re focusing on starts to lose dimension. If you’re trying to show a logo, and you zoom in close on it, there’s so much light, you almost can’t even see it.

Mark S: And all of this is actually just as important if you are getting a video or an image of a person, as it is an object. Sometimes, it’s easier to shoot an object, because the light can be more focused.

In shooting rhinestones, which is an art all by itself, we have used everything from high-powered LED flashlights, to kind of get the sparkle, so you didn’t have to add them in Photoshop. We’ve used light boxes, and things like that.

In the end, what we end up doing is just getting that big light that you already saw on video, and just trying it from a bunch of different angles, with my phone.

Marc V: And there’s a ton of tips online, too, if you want to do video.

I don’t know if there’s any noise in the background, but is there like a freight train coming through? This ground is vibrating!

Mark S: It actually could be. There is a railroad track.

Marc V: Yeah. I don’t know what it is, but the ground is vibrating. So, if there’s some noise in the background, -.

Mark S: It could be a tornado.

Marc V: Maybe there is a tornado. I don’t know. We’re in a closed room. There’s no windows.

The next thing we’ve got is what we actually kind of just showed, when you broke the fourth wall. Our camera is on a tripod. A tripod is a great thing to have for taking pictures.

For one, your hands are just not as steady as you think they are. You’re going to go take a picture, and you’ll move a little bit, and you’ll lose just a little bit of detail of focus, that takes your picture from looking good, to fantastic.

Mark S: Right. And you can tell in all of my videos that I do, when I am and am not using a tripod, because when I’m shooting a video, and remind me I want to say something about that, too. When I’m shooting a video, my hand is never completely stable.

I have thrown away whole videos that I’ve shot, that I will never get back again, just because I couldn’t quite hold my hand still, and I was trying to capture things in the moment, and not use a tripod.

Marc V: Especially if you’re going to zoom in closer and closer, it gets worse and worse.

Mark S: It makes a big difference.

Marc V: One is, there’s little tripods like this, you can get. You have to see this on video, if you want to see. Go to CustomApparelStartups.com, and you can find the video on that.

Mark S: Picture a Gumby toy holding up a phone.

Marc V: Yeah. But there’s all types of cool tripods you can get. They sell them everywhere; Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Amazon. These things for your phone, these little phone tripods, you can get them for $5 up to $50, depending on what you want it to do.

But for the most part, if you buy something under $20, you can take this thing, strap your phone into it, get it set up, and then lay your shirts down, or whatever you’re going to lay down. Then, all you have to do is just tap the button.

Or even further sophisticated, if you’ve got like a Smart Watch, too, that lines up with your Android or your smartphone, those even have little control buttons on them, so you can set everything up. You can smile, and you can take your picture with a remote.

Mark S: We’re going to weave our horror stories into this podcast.

Marc V: Let’s talk about one.

Mark S: One of the ones related to tripods is that just because you set up a tripod, and we use a big one. When we use a video camera, we use about an $1100 or $1200 Canon video camera, camcorder, for a lot of our higher end shoots and things that we do.

So, just because you have set up the tripod originally, doesn’t mean it’s level every time you use it. This tripod that we have right now is amazing. It’s like a broadcast TV quality tripod. I don’t even know where we got it. Most of the tripods are a little bit more budget.

If you push it down in one direction or another, the legs will actually sink in one direction or another. So, if you don’t get a good preview of the shot, and make sure it’s level, you will end up with a 15 degree crooked shot for a 10-minute video.

Marc V: And we’ve done that, for sure. We’ve filmed something, and we’re like “Is the whole thing crooked?”

So for one, you get a tripod, you make sure it’s nice and even, and it even leads into other things we’re going to talk about, about testing your shots and stuff. We can jump into that.

Mark S: I do want to encourage you here, too, in that, because we mentioned photographing rhinestones. Spangles are the same way. There are a lot of things you can do to make it look great. But I want to do a commercial for doing video, instead.

If you are in an environment where you can do video, rather than a picture, do the video. In other words, like if you want to do something on Facebook, if your ecommerce platform allows you to have a video, instead of just a still image, then do the video. Because the difference between an action shot of you moving a shirt around, especially if it’s glitter vinyl or if it’s metallic, like the bag on the wall.

If you can move that, and it catches the light, that’s a sale, because it is such a big impact. If you can take a video of your customer talking about the product that they’re wearing, like “I really love this shirt! I like how it sparkles, when I move around.”

Or “I really like working with Marc at Colman and Company, because of this.” If you get all of that on video, it’s ten times better than just a picture.

Marc V: Yeah. And then, while you’re there, though, you do both. What you do is you set up your shirts that you just made, or you’ve got your t-shirt printers printing a shirt, whatever it might be. Take a picture of it, take a picture of it, take a video of it.

Then, when it’s all done, you rearrange your setup, whatever it might be. Take a picture, take a picture, take another little video. The video can really just be you panning over them, holding them up, and maybe in the background, just saying “Hey, just made these shirts for such-and-such business. Thank you so much!”

Mark S: I feel like you just did my job description!

Marc V: And that’s it! So, it doesn’t have to be that complicated. But when in doubt, use a tripod. It will help you to get better, clearer things. It also helps you to free your hands up, to be able to actually do things, and interact in your video.

So, if you are lifting and holding up shirts, just to show the bling effect of rhinestones or spangles, or something like that, you’ve got both hands to do it, compared to trying to do one hand camera, and one hand -.

Mark S: If you want to get really fancy, which we tried once – it just did not work for me. That’s if you’re doing motion shots, and when you want to use your phone, you can get a gimbal. It’s kind of like a tripod that you hold, that as you move around the handle, the camera stays still.

For example, if a big part of your business is athletic events, or if you are panning a lot, or if you do a lot of festivals, and you want to get group shots of your booth, and zoom in and stuff like that, it’s a neat idea.

Marc V: There’s also the selfie stick type of a thing, if you want to be able to take images, if you do events that you want to be able to take big selfies of everyone wearing it.

Don’t do that at Disney. You know, you’re not allowed to have them there. You can’t have the selfie stick there. It’s one of the things you can’t bring in. A knife, a gun, and selfie sticks are the three things that they have no’s on.

Mark S: I like the priorities!

Your next point, I really like, as well. And that’s consider the background for your photo or your video. I mean, look at this background that we’ve got here now.

Marc V: I like it!

Mark S: It’s amazing!

Marc V: Or it’s really terrible. It’s just our baby, so we think it looks good.

Mark S: Yes, it could very well be.

Marc V: it’s very true. Always consider the background. We’ve made mistakes with this plenty of times over the years and years, and tons of videos and images that we’ve shot. Just have something for in your background.

Now, a professional photographer can take an image and blur out the background, and do all types of things where they can almost make any background look great.

Mark S: But that’s not who we’re talking about.

Marc V: That’s not who we’re talking about. We’re talking about you are going to take a picture, and everything that’s going to be in the background is still going to be there.

You can do all types of other things to help promote your business, so do it in front of a sign that you have, or just do a plain white background.

Mark S: I’ve got two things that I’ll say about backgrounds. One is for pictures. We try to use, like right now on this table, we’ve got a black tablecloth, which makes a great background for a lot of different things. But if you are in a very linty environment, then when you take a picture of something, the lint will show up. Right?

So, if there’s anything on that black background, it’s going to show up. It’s a penalty that you pay, for using black. And we’ve taken a lot of pictures, and that’s the case.

The other thing I’ll mention is that we did a great video once, that we were very proud of. We showed it to the President and CEO of the company. The first thing he noticed was an orange power cord, off in the left-hand corner, in the background of the video. It’s not something we even thought about. But after you mention it, that’s all you see.

So, you have to really kind of like maybe take a picture of the scene that you’re going to use, and then have someone else look at it, as well.

Marc V: That’s a great idea. And you can do a couple of things with your background. If you’re going to take pictures of your products that you make, then you can use a white tablecloth or a black tablecloth, or you can just use some sheets.

Mark S: Especially if they’re small.

Marc V: Yeah. You can lay this stuff down. If have really clean white bedsheets on your bed, and you’re a stickler for having a really clean bed, and it’s just pure white sheets, you can literally fold down your comforter or duvet, push off the clothes. Lay your stuff right on the clean white bedsheets, and take a picture there.

Mark S: That’s a good idea. Yeah.

Marc V: That’s something that you could do in your house right now, assuming that you have that environment. If not, then go to a local store, buy some nice white sheets, or something to that effect. Put it on a table inside or outside, wherever you can get good lighting.

Put it down there, put your things down, and take a picture with just the white background. That allows a few different things.

For one, it just will focus on the colors and the object that you’re taking a picture of, because everything else is just white. And if you are going to do anything like post-production type of stuff, where you’re going to send it to an artist, they can easily remove that white background, and take that image and do whatever they want with it, if it’s for your website or a flyer.

Mark S: We were taking pictures in our webinar room, over at the Westshore campus the other day, and Cathy, our Art Director, was in to take some pictures of our compress UV printer samples. We really didn’t have anything white, that she wanted. So, she went into the other room and grabbed some white vinyl.

That made a really nice background. We just overlaid it on the table. It even went up the wall, a little bit. We used stickpins to put it up the wall. So, there wasn’t any other background. She would get an angled shot, and all the background was, was white vinyl.

Marc V: There are so many little creative things. That’s one you could do. The other is actually setting up just a nice shot.

Mark S: Yeah. Be interesting.

Marc V: If you have like a backyard with some woods or some nice grass, or some flowers back there, and you’ve got a picnic table, a wooden picnic table, you could take all of your pictures on that, with that in the background. And it’s interesting.

Mark S: Especially if that supports your brand. For example, if you do a lot of business with outdoors people and hunters and campers and things like that, hang your shirt design from a tree, and take the picture. Or throw it in the grass, or put it on a sleeping bag. Do something like that, so you have a little visual interest in there.

If you look at our background, we picked brick because it looks good on video. It adds some visual interest, and it will be really easy to identify, if you see videos of us doing a podcast, you’ll know it immediately, because this is what you see every time.

Marc V: Yeah. It reminds you of the brand. It’s also the same with anything else you would do. If you do sports, you can bring pictures to the gymnasium. Come really early, or stay after – talk to a coach or somebody who is there, that will let you be there.

Say “Hey, can I just take pictures with this on the gymnasium floor, or on the bleachers?”

Mark S: Put a volleyball in the shot, or put a Lacrosse stick in the shot, or lay it on the bleachers. Something like that.

Marc V: You don’t have to be a huge artist, or have any grand ideas with this stuff. Just take a bunch of things. Try them out, and you’ll see. A bunch of this stuff is going to look cool, and it’s going to capture peoples’ attention online.

Mark S: I guarantee, if you haven’t been paying attention to your video or your images, and the quality and the layout and everything yet, then just listening to this and thinking about these things, and trying any one of these ideas, is going to double or triple your photo game online.

Marc V: Yes. And it’s okay for it to not be perfect. This podcast is to help you just go to the next level, just take it to the next level.

The next thing, and you actually mentioned it with the black, is clean everything. Everything should be clean. Have a lint brush to lint-brush things off. If you’re doing it on a table, clean the table. If you’re doing it outside on a picnic table, you probably don’t [inaudible 00:30:04].

Mark S: Just make sure there’s no bird poop! But you know, one idea that I really like is taking short video clips of your equipment, like sewing out or printing a job for a specific customer.

If you are an embroiderer, and you’re doing a set of hats for a Little League team, then having a video clip of sewing out one of the caps, I think that’s a great idea.

What you should do is – I don’t know that anybody expects your entire shop to be clean, but if you’re going to take that video, just make sure that your machine is reasonably clean.

Marc V: You know what we would do sometimes, is somebody would be sewing something out in our showroom, and we’d think it was really cool. We would take a little picture or a video of it, and we’re like “Oh, this design is so cool!”

Then, we would realize that underneath it, in the cart, is just all of the work that they’ve been doing.

Mark S: It happens all of the time. Pieces of backing.

Marc V: Pieces of backing, thread pieces, scissors and tweezers, and there’s a cap frame, and there’s a bunch of things. There’s some practice hats that they were sewing out, that didn’t come out well, so they kind of just chucked them underneath there, just to practice with later.

All of this stuff ends up in the background, and it’s like “Oh!” Again, it’s not that that first video wasn’t good enough, but emptying that bottom tray out, sweeping it off, wiping it with a paper towel, and then neatly putting up the cap frame and neatly putting up the hoop, and taking it again, takes that from just being not good or just okay, to being really very nice.

It’s the little things.

Mark S: I think one good exercise to do would be to get your shot all set up, like even if it’s a quick one, like that I prefer. Get it all set up. Get to the point where you’re about to start recording or about to take the picture, and then take one more look and say “Is there anything that I can do, to make this just a little bit better?”

Marc V: That’s great.

Mark S: I think if you get into that habit, your pictures will all be a little bit better.

Marc V: Yes. If you just try to change one thing. Can I move the light a little bit? Can I change the setting on my camera? Can I clean something up? Would this be better, if I went and grabbed the tripod real quick?

Think about all of those things, and if you make one change to it, you’re going to improve your shot.

Mark S: I think that goes right into the next one that you’ve got down here, which is take your test shots. That’s the best advice. That goes with video, too. In particular, we’re going to tell some more horror stories.

But taking a test shot, uploading it, don’t just pick a shot, and then look at it in your camera. Because that’s the best it will ever look. Right? If you’re looking in the camera display screen or on your phone, it’s never going to look better.

I mean, you’re zooming in. It’s on the device that you took the picture on, so all of the colors are going to be perfect. Take that, and if you’re doing a picture, upload it onto your computer.

Marc V: Yeah. Or right there, just email it to yourself. Then, go to your laptop or your desktop, open it up. Email it to someone else, if you have somebody who helps you out with stuff. Maybe you’re taking pictures while somebody is in the office, doing your bookkeeping for you.

Email it to them, and say “Hey, about to take the pictures. How does it look?” And you get an opinion of someone else, or you get to see it larger. What you’ll do is you’ll see the little mistakes. For one, you’ll realize that once it’s on the computer screen, the lighting wasn’t as good as you thought it was going to be.

Mark S: It happens all the time.

Marc V: Or it’s actually a little bit fuzzy, and you didn’t realize why. Maybe that fuzziness can actually just be you didn’t take the last step. You didn’t clean. You didn’t clean the lens. You’ve got a fingerprint right on it. You’ve got some oil from your Italian sandwich that you ate before, and you touched your lens. Now, you’ve got olive oil on it.

These are all things that happen.

Mark S: I love your scenarios! The olive oil, that’s good. It’s never happened to me, but I guess it could.

Marc V: Oh, it’s happened. It has to happen! So, clean everything up. Take test shots.

And then next, we can move on probably to watch out for your audio.

Mark S: Yeah. It kind of goes to the test shots thing. What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to take your picture or take your little video clip, and then see how the audio sounds, especially if you are speaking over it.

When I do a shot of an embroidery machine running, normally I’m behind my phone. I’m looking at it, and I’m talking into it. Well, if I’m behind it, and it’s designed to pick up the audio that way, then it also gets people walking through the showroom.

Marc V: Yeah. And I’ll tell you what. This is the thing that I think that we have made the most mistakes on, and also have made the best improvements on, over years. There are so many videos that I watch, where I’m like “I love this video!” The audio does not sound good. It’s a great video, though. But the audio sounds tinny, in even our earlier podcasts.

Mark S: You can find all of those on YouTube. Because we’ll use them anyway!

Marc V: Just go back like 30 podcast episodes ago, even.

So, what do you do? You make little improvements for the podcast. We’ve got a really nice microphone we’ve upgraded to. And we’re not even at as high of a level as we could be. We could still improve.

Mark S: Always improving. For example, someone has got to stop somebody from banging on the table!

Marc V: Yes, for one! That’s one. But watch out for bad audio.

One of the things, as you mentioned, is just background noise. If you’ve got a phone out, and you’re taking something, it’s going to pick up a lot of noise. It will do pretty good about just picking up your voice, but if there’s another voice behind you, the phone might recognize it as “This should be in. It’s another person talking.”

It’s not smart enough to realize that that person is just yelling in the background, to their sister on the phone. So, you could ruin your audio that way.

Also, the room you are in could have echo.

Mark S: Which you will not hear, but it will be picked up by your audio device.

Marc V: Depending on what you’re using. A smartphone is generally pretty good at just picking up the main subject’s voice. It’s smart enough. The artificial intelligence in there recognizes it. It’s pretty darn good.

But if you’re using a higher-end camera, that microphone is designed to pick up all of the sounds.

Mark S: As much as possible.

Marc V: Yes. It’s designed that you could go into the woods, and take videos of birds, and hear all of the chirps. It’s designed for that.

Mark S: Just another great example. You must have a random list of things!

Marc V: I work on it. I’ve got thousands!

Mark S: So, I think audio is really important. Not just for the podcast, of course. But if you are taking a video, and you’re using higher-end equipment, one of the things that we did was we found that even when using a higher-end camcorder, if we are six feet away from the equipment, in order to get a good group shot in, then a lot of times the audio was fine, as long as someone was looking at the camera, and talking.

But as soon as they turned away to look at the DTG printer, or to fold a shirt, or to do anything, the audio dropped off by 50%. So, what we did was we went to a Lavalier mic system, which is great. I highly recommend it.

Then, several things would happen. Someone with a beard would put the mic too high, and you’d get scratching every time. Also, we had this great time when we were doing a webinar. It was an hour-long webinar, and it was going great. We had a couple salespeople that were mic’d up, and they would come in and out of the room, and say we were needed.

It wasn’t until after everything was done, that we realized that one of the salespeople left their mic on.

Marc V: Oh, when they were out of the room?

Mark S: Yeah. They were just having conversations, like you would in an office, and some that you should not have in an office. And that ended up on the final video, and there was nothing we could do about it.

So, audio is just really important. Sometimes, a noisy environment can work in your favor, because it’s supposed to be there. Like if you want to do video clips of someone wearing the football uniforms that you created, playing a game, then you want to hear the crowd cheer. But it’s the idea that you should be able to choose.

Marc V: Or if you’re like at a biker bar.

Mark S: Don’t! Man, I was so proud of you not going there! You’re going into a biker bar, and you’re going up to this girl.

Marc V: Yeah. The audio is a challenge. It’s definitely, I’d say, harder than just the video or the pictures. It’s harder to fix.

So, simple things to do are, if you’re doing a mobile device, typically it’s going to do as best as it can. It’s never going to be awesome, but you have to be cognizant of the direction you’re standing in, and how far away you are. Because a mobile device is not going to pick up the audio from you, if you’ve got it on the tripod, seven feet away.

It will pick it up, and it will be audible. But it’s not going to be great.

One thing that happened is Stephanie was shooting some video in this room, and we’ve got this really nice microphone here. There’s not a massive amount of echo or noise, or anything like that. It sounds pretty good, I think.

But she was just using just the nice camera that we have, the big Canon camera that we have. She set it up, she did a quick five minutes. She’s learned a lesson already, about checking. She learned number six – take test shots.

So, she did like three minutes of just “Hey, check this out.” She took the SIM card out, went back to her computer, plugged it in, and the audio was all over the place. The video looked amazing, but the audio had background noise. There was an echo, there was like a tinny noise.

You could hear some people in the hallway. Somebody in the hallway said “Hey, can you grab that off of the printer?” I don’t remember what it was, but it was something like that.

She was like “Oh, my God! What do I do? Your guys’ podcasts sound so good in that room. What happened?” We took a look at it. She was like “I also shot some with my phone, and it didn’t do it. How is this $1200 camera picking up all of this noise?”

We said “Well, it’s supposed to. It’s part of what it does.” What we did was we got $100, and we bought a directional little boom line.”

Mark S: Which we didn’t have before.

Marc V: It’s like six, seven inches long. It plugs right on the top of it. Now, it’s only going to pick up the audio in that direction, the direction that the lens is pointing.

Mark S: Which is great.

Marc V: Which is great, as long as you don’t walk around to the back of the camera, and try to talk into it. Right?

So, every time you add something or change something, you have to consider is what it’s limitations are.

Mark S: And the first thing we’re going to do when we put that on, is test it.

Marc V: Exactly. Actually, I’m going to be doing that today. We’re going to bring it in here, we’re going to plug it up, and I’m going to stand in front of it and say a few words. Stephanie will, and maybe we’ll get a third person in. We’ll take a few shots.

We’ll load them all up onto our computers and our mobile devices, and listen to them. We’re going to listen to them on both, by the way.

Mark S: Let me just pause here for a second, and address the terrified people that are listening to us.

Marc V: Okay.

Mark S: Your voice sounds find. I just want to say that. It’s your voice. Everyone hates their own voice.

Marc V: 100% of people.

Mark S: I’ve got like 500 YouTube videos of me talking. I can’t stand it! I cannot stand it!

Your voice is fine, really. I don’t care if you don’t like your accent, or if you have a high-pitched voice or a low-pitched voice, or if there’s something about it you don’t like. It really doesn’t matter. Just get over that. This is you.

You are talking to customers all of the time, I think, and they’re buying stuff from you. So, don’t be afraid to put your voice on video.

Marc V: Your family members have to listen to your hours of rants on Thanksgiving, in that same voice that you can’t stand.

Mark S: So, take pity on them!

Marc V: So, get over it. Another thing is, they would joke with me when I used to sit in the office and edit video, with a bunch of people in the same room, because I wouldn’t always use headphones. I would edit a podcast.

In the beginning, I was editing all of the podcasts and I was editing all of the videos. So, the podcasts would be playing all day. There would be like one podcast playing, and three videos, and it’s all me talking, or and you.

So, the joke was “Marc loves the sound of his voice. All he does there is just sit all day, and just play.”

Mark S: It’s not true.

Marc V: No, but you get used to it.

Mark S: Although you do have a great radio voice. It changes. It’s completely different in person, I have to say.

Marc V: I don’t even know what that means!

Mark S: Watch a video of Rip Taylor. That’s the way Marc sounds, when he’s not on the podcast.

Marc V: Yeah. So, just get over the sound of your voice. It sounds fine.

The more you take video, and the more you listen to yourself on camera and on audio, the more you just get used to it, and you realize that’s you. The reason is because the voice that you hear when you’re speaking – let’s get a little science on this.

All of that noise that’s being projected from your vocal chords goes through your skull and your jaw and your ear bones, so you sound different to yourself, when you’re speaking.

Mark S: You may just have a bad skull!

Marc V: That’s just it! So anyway, don’t be afraid of that. But pay attention to your audio. If you’re having really bad audio, some little things to do.

You can get a different microphone, if it’s possible for you to do that. You don’t have to invest a ton. If you put $100 into something, you could notice a big difference. There are microphones available for mobile devices, as well.

There are microphones that are wireless. There are wired microphones. There are all types of setups you can get for your computer. You can spend a lot of money, or a little.

Make sure you get something you’re going to be able to learn how to operate. Look at the environment you’re working in, too. If you’re working with nothing on the walls, and a wood floor, you’re going to be more likely to echo, than in a room where you’ve got lots of drapery and pictures and carpet. So, trying to change your environment might be enough.

Mark S: We’re in a very small room, and we’ve got these clothes hanging up, which helps a little bit. Then, we’ve got some sound baffles mounted on the wall.

Marc V: And there’s carpet.

Mark S: And there’s carpet. So, all of those things will reduce echo.

Marc V: Yeah. You can always just change your environment, and find out “Oh, wow! It makes a big difference.” Or if it’s not really windy, and you go outside, and you live in a quiet area, sometimes just out on your back porch is good enough.

Mark S: We should do our podcast outside some time.

Marc V: Outside here is terrible!

Mark S: Let’s talk about post-production, then.

Marc V: Post-production. What we mean by that is getting it edited by a professional.

Mark S: Yeah. Or learn to do that part yourself. For example, we have some inhouse professionals. A lot of times, when I take pictures – not of the samples, like the DTG shirts – but when I take pictures for the website, we send it off to Cathy, our Art Director.

She is a professional, and she does amazing things with picture.

Marc V: Yes.

Mark S: If it’s a video, then 99% of the time, we’ve purchased a software called Camtasia, and we do the editing ourselves. So, we do our own post-production on video, and we have a professional do it on images.

Marc V: Sometimes, it’s worth it to pay somebody, as well, if you want to do that. Especially if you’re going to invest in a new website, and you’re spending a lot of money on it, you might find that it might just cost you a couple hundred dollars to find a freelancer to take all of your images, clean them up, get them the right size, make them good, take your images.

Mark S: Definitely don’t be afraid to do that.

Marc V: Yeah. Don’t be afraid to do it, especially when you’re already investing. Would I spend hundreds of dollars to get all of my Facebook pictures? I would never do that. That doesn’t make sense.

But if it’s a website that you’re investing in, and you’re putting a couple thousand dollars into it, and $200 more means getting your pictures looking better, it’s probably worth it to do that.

And the same thing with video. This is a story I have, that I think is terrible. I don’t even understand. Maybe you can explain it to me. How can like a car dealership or a law firm, that they do these local commercials that are so terrible?

Mark S: They’re so bad!

Marc V: The audio is terrible. The video is grainy. And I’m just like “How is the video so poor? What did you take it with?”

Mark S: I will tell you. First of all, it’s because the owner of the business, or the General Manager, always insists on being in the video. Strike one! Secondly, a lot of these big video production companies invested in their equipment five or ten years ago.

Marc V: Okay, yeah.

Mark S: And while my phone might be $600, they need to spend $10,000 or $12,000 on a new camera, or that’s what they think. So, that’s what happens.

Marc V: So, if you’re going to get a commercial that you’re going to pay for, for example, or you’re going to do some online ads -.

Mark S: Don’t be in it.

Marc V: Well, you could be.

Mark S: I’m just kidding. But your voice is going to sound funny!

Marc V: You’re voice is going to sound terrible. It might be worth it to spend some money.

We did a podcast six or seven ago, with the folks from BelQuette. 71, I think. The microphone was plugged in, and the power cord, we had a lot of power. Apparently, the building that they were in, there was a lot of noise in the electrical, whatever that even means. I don’t know.

Mark S: We ended up with a buzz.

Marc V: There was a buzz in the background. It wasn’t even acceptable. So, we hired somebody that I think we paid $25, who was a guy who happened to own software to help fix that. That’s what he does for a living, is he fixes audio like that, and he does a bunch a day. It’s software that does it for him.

He invested in software that cost $1,000. He runs it through, and he charges $20 to $50 to fix audio for people. That’s his business.

So, you can always get your audio fixed. If you happen to have shot something really good, you can try that. You can try to get your video fixed, too, by a professional. If you get something ruined, or something is bad, sometimes a professional can really fix it up.

Mark S: Yeah, and let’s just specify one more time that that is not usually necessary.

Marc V: Yes.

Mark S: Sometimes it is. But for example, one of our listeners did an event this past week, and took some great pictures of her booth, just with people in there and everything like that. You know what? You could tell that somebody just took the picture, but it was great.

The idea is to advertise that you’re at an event, or that you were at the event, and it was successful. Or if you want to send this picture, “Hey, do you remember we went to this event together?,” on social media or something like that. It was absolutely perfect for that. Complete waste of time to send that to somebody, to get it cleaned up.

Marc V: Yeah. You just take the picture, and you put it online. Use your judgement on this, naturally. These aren’t rules you have to follow all of the time.

Mark S: Let’s go through a couple of little editing software, as kind of a final thing. If you do decide to take your own pictures or to shoot your own videos, and maybe you’re a perfectionist, or maybe you just want to take it to the next, next level, so you want to bring that editing inhouse. What would you suggest, for image editing?

Marc V: For image editing, Photoshop is the big one. That’s the big brand one. It’s a subscription service. It’s another thing you pay for.

Mark S: Every month.

Marc V: There’s also Gimp, is a free software.

Mark S: Yeah. If you have a Digital HeatFX system, you’ve got a print optimizer, or you have a direct-to-garment printer, you already own Gimp, and you can download it for free.

Marc V: Yeah, it’s free, and it’s a great piece of software that allows you to edit images. We actually hopefully will have some good training on how to do that stuff, too, soon.

Mark S: I hope so, too. We’re working on a couple more courses.

Marc V: We’re working on some courses, one for editing images and art, and stuff like that. Hopefully, that will be coming out really soon.

But yeah, you want to get a piece of software where you can mess with it a little bit. You can take the picture, and you can tweak the lighting a little bit, you can crop some things out, maybe add your logo as a watermark.

Mark S: I like all of that.

Marc V: All of that stuff is very easy to do. Don’t get caught up in these things.

Mark S: No swirls.

Marc V: Yeah. Don’t go too far.

Mark S: Seriously, pull up those retail sites, and you will look. There aren’t any special effects. Don’t get deep into filters and things like that. You use this software to help make the product or the person that you are photographing look better, or to stand out more.

Marc V: You can do some background blurs, or you might do some adjusting to the lighting or the exposure. There’s a lot of things you could do with image editing. You might have a little bit of fun; you make some of the images black and white, you make some of the images black and white, with some color accents.

There’s a lot of fun you can do, but for the most part, you’re going to edit images or photos. It’s really just about taking the image and, like you said, you started off poor. Now, you’re doing these practices, and you’re getting good. Then, you bring it into editing software, and you can bump it up one extra level. It’s all about leveling up just a little bit.

Mark S: It’s kind of the same thing with video editing software. Samsung has some. You could use iMovie, famously. You can use video editing software on your phone. You can step up to something like what we use, which is Camtasia, a fairly inexpensive video editing software. There’s Adobe Premiere, if you want to get that subscription thing going.

But it is not difficult to learn to use, especially if you’re already a graphics person. You know, you’ve already got some of the layout skills and some of the language down. What I’ll say, though, is just like with the images, you don’t want to go over the top, with special effects.

What we use video for is, you’ll see 100% of our videos, unless it’s specifically like promotions, we use a cross-fade for a transition. We do not use swirls and boxes and fall-aways. It’s just distracting from the message.

Video software is a great place to add titles, so you don’t have to do it outside of it. It’s a great place to trim off the beginning and the end of the shots. I advise you to just use it in as simple a way as possible, to make the video better.

Marc V: Also, maybe you’re taking some video of your shop, some things you’re doing, some images. And then, all of a sudden, somebody walks in, and says “Oh! I didn’t realize you were shooting a video of this stuff!” “No problem!”

Then, you can finish it, and then, you go into your editing software, and you just chop that ten seconds out. You could do little things like that, too. I agree, don’t get too complicated with it. Don’t get too fancy.

Definitely, what you can do on your mobile device is really good enough to get started, for sure. You don’t have to do anything on the desktop. You can crop out stuff like that. You can do special little effects, like if you wanted to change the lighting, change the exposure. If it’s a little dark, you can adjust that stuff on the phone. It’s easy.

Mark S: But here’s one really important tip that I will give you guys for videotaping stuff. That is lots of long pauses. If you know that you’re going to edit, like for example, when Stephanie does a video in particular, or when we work with Don Copeland on the compress, they are good in front of a camera, and they know what to do.

So, normally there’s no editing involved at all. It’s just at the beginning and the end of the shot. But when I do something, I’m a little bit more scattered. What I try to get them to do is to pause in between, if you’re changing directions or changing shots.

For example, if you are going to do a walk-through video on your retail space, or an intro to your booth at a trade show, then you want to have somebody take a video of you introducing yourself and the company. Then, you want to pause. On my phone, literally there is a pause button that you can hit.

Marc V: That’s cool!

Mark S: Then, you want to go and stand in front of the next thing that you’re going to talk about, and hit the record button again. If you’re using an actual video camera that doesn’t have that feature, then do your introduction, and then don’t talk while you’re moving. Go to the next place, look at the camera, and talk. Then, go to the next place.

Those are things that will make your life a little bit easier.

Marc V: It’s also great for when you need to do editing later.

Mark S: That’s really why I do it. Because I’m editing my own video, and I just look for where there’s no sound, and you know that’s a scene change.

Marc V: That’s perfect. And it’s okay to, I also say, to just keep rolling. Keep rolling. So, if you say something, and you make a flub, or you say something that doesn’t make sense, or whatever it is, just pause. “Alright. I’m going to say that again.”

Say it again. Now, it makes sense this time. Then, you can edit that afterwards. You can cut it out. It’s much easier than having, like Stephanie, when she first did a shot, she had like 40 clips for this video. She was like “Well, I messed up here. This one, I changed scenes.”

I said “No, you can make that one long clip, because we’re going to edit it.” Then, we just take one clip, and we chop the parts up, delete them, and then squoosh them together, with some fades.

Mark S: I don’t know if I’ve ever left it in the edits, but I clap before I start every podcast recording. One of the reasons I do that is because back when we were doing all of our own editing and everything, I could look at that, because we were always recording pre-roll, which means we’re talking about getting set up, and making sure the levels are good, before we start.

So, I look for that clap mark in the audio, which kind of spikes up, in the video editing software, and you know where to cut.

Marc V: Some of that stuff, in the end, is a little higher level. It might not apply to everybody.

Mark S: But nobody listens to the end, anyway.

Marc V: True. They skip. They listen to like 30 seconds.

Mark S: Eight minutes.

Marc V: Let’s recap really fast, and we’re good to go here.

Use a good camera. Use good lighting. Use a tripod, when it’s necessary and possible. Consider the background that you’re going to be shooting your video or your images in. Make sure everything is clean, including the camera and the lens.

Mark S: Buy a lint brush.

Marc V: Yeah, exactly. Bring a lint brush every time you’re going to take pictures of your garments. Take some test pictures, some test video. Listen to it on another device, is a great tip, too, like your laptop or another computer.

Mark S: And if you can have somebody else take a look.

Marc V: Have someone else take a look. That’s a great thing, too. Watch out for bad audio. It can be tricky, but just changing your environment, or getting a better microphone, or getting closer to the camera or further away, or speaking less loud, or raising your voice more, all of those things will work.

Mark S: Work it out.

Marc V: Use some post-production, if you need to. If you took some really great video, and it needs to get fixed because of bad lighting or audio, sometimes a professional can do that. Or just edit stuff yourself, when you need to. You took a bunch of video, and you’ve got eight minutes of video, but really only three of it’s good, edit it on your mobile device, or get a simple editing software that you can learn.

The last one is just the editing software for both images and video, to help take it to the next level. And then, I think just the tenth tip for me is don’t get buried in any of this stuff. Any one of these steps is an individual rabbit hole that will take you into another universe.

Mark S: Product shots. We’ve spent days on product shots, just making [inaudible 00:58:14].

Marc V: Yes. You can spend hours watching just videos on how to get great lighting. You can buy a DSLR camera, and spend hours trying to learn it. Everything. Editing video, you can spend hours and hours and hours just learning the software.

So, be careful not to get caught in these rabbit holes that these things can turn into. Remember that these are just little things. You’re trying to take your level of taking pictures from taking kind of fuzzy pictures that are dark, that don’t look good, into nice clean crisp images that look nice and clear.

That when you share it to somebody via social media, email or just showing it to them on your iPad or something like that, when you’re selling, that it just looks nice. That’s it. It looks better.

Mark S: A couple of reasons why I love doing this particular episode is, first of all, I want to make sure everybody knows that I think that more is better than perfect. If you can take 50 pictures or 50 videos, and it’s 80% amazing, then that is better than doing two that are 100%. Because your audience will probably not notice the difference.

The other thing is, I think everyone will be much more forgiving, when they’re watching our videos and listening to our audio, because they’ll know! They’ll be like “Oh! I didn’t realize there was that much to it!”

Marc V: Yes, it’s hard sometimes. It’s a challenge, but going from poor quality to good is not that hard. Going from good to like movie level, is not what you’re trying to get to, because we’re selling t-shirts.

This is something that’s completely a side-track, but we’ve got like a minute. So, I figure I’ll say it, that what happens with folks when they make t-shirts, is they take a picture zoomed in to like a piece of this t-shirt that is a millimeter, and they’re just like “I messed up my shirt here.”

Then, I say “It’s a t-shirt!” You’re selling t-shirts. It is a t-shirt. As soon as you wash it, it’s going to get messed up anyway. Somebody is going to stretch it, because they like to put on clothes that don’t fit.

Mark S: Just relax a little bit, that’s all.

Marc V: Yeah, exactly. When you take these pictures and videos, relax a little bit. You’re not selling movies. You’re not selling video production. You’re selling t-shirts. You’re selling hats.

So, just take some nice pictures. Share them with folks. Take a few of these tips, and you’re really going to create some awesome stuff that will yield to more business!

Mark S: I love that! Okay, that’s it.

Marc V: Fantastic!

Mark S: This has been Mark Stephenson, from ColDesi.

Marc V: And Marc Vila, from Colman and Company.

Mark S: You guys have a good business!