Kalin Ivanov is a pretty busy guy. He’s an IT tech, plays Elwood Blues in musical productions, and is a very successful photographer. His trick, he does all those things for Viva Las Vegas where he takes all of the wedding pictures for the very popular Vegas chapel, edits and loads them to their PhotoReflect account, and makes pretty good money doing it. (We are "trying" to be coy in saying Viva Las Vegas is one of PhotoReflect’s most profitable and prolific users. Recently they have announced that they have published their 5,000th online event.)
ExpressDigital: So Kalin, thanks for your time, it has been hard getting a hold of you. I guess you’re pretty busy?
Kalin Ivanov: Totally. It is pretty busy. Normally we can expect around 400 weddings a month, most of which I shoot and edit with an assistant. This week has been particularly crazy. There is this Scottish-Vegas group, called Glasvegas, that started their tour with a secret MySpace production at our chapel. I can always say that at this place there’s never a dull moment but it goes double for this week.
ExpressDigital: No doubt. You do some pretty wild stuff.
Kalin: Well, we are proud of our more traditional weddings, but our theme weddings are a lot of fun. Darth Vadar officiates the Star Wars themed wedding. The Egyptian Wedding features two men carrying the bride in a caravan… Really we do pretty much everything you can imagine.
ExpressDigital: Do you have any favorites?
Kalin: My favorite is the Blues Brothers themed wedding because I get to play Elwood Blues. It is nice to sing and dance for a couple on their big day. The most popular… hmmm… I think it is the Pink Cadillac Wedding. Elvis drives the bride and groom into the chapel in a 1964 pink Cadillac convertible to the tune of Space Odyssey mashed with That’s All Right Momma. Smoke, lights, the works while Elvis escorts the couple out of the car, serenading them the entire time and getting all the guests dancing before officiating the vows. It’s pretty exciting. All of the productions are pretty exciting.
ExpressDigital: How do you do it? I mean, you’re wearing three hats and getting good work out, in, did you say four days?
Kalin: Yes. I publish all the events to PhotoReflect in less than four days. When you do 10 to 15 events a day and at least 50 on the weekends, we have to take advantage of any technology solution that will help us.
ExpressDigital: You use PhotoReflect, but do you use DARKROOM?
Kalin: Yep. We use DARKROOM Professional Edition. Version 8.9 has been great for us. Thank you ExpressDigital for putting that out!
ExpressDigital: Really? But you don’t need DARKROOM Pro to run your PhotoReflect account?
Kalin: But I recommend the investment to anyone. DARKROOM Pro does three big things for me that now I cannot do with out. I use the advanced photo editor. I use the automatic Digital Download feature and I sell a lot of Digital Delivery disks. I’m pretty sure DARKROOM Web and Core doesn’t do all of that.
ExpressDigital: You’re right. Only Pro Edition has the advanced photo editor but you could always use Photoshop if you wanted to.
Kalin: Oh no no no. I have to edit about 30 pictures in 10 minutes. Photoshop won’t let me do that. We’ve taken Photoshop completely off of our computers. DARKROOM doesn’t work with the original files so making quick or elaborate enhancements and repairs happens pretty quickly. Then it takes one click to put them online. We’ve been using DARKROOM since version 8.6. Thank you for giving us that feature in later versions. It’s been a great helper.
ExpressDigital: You said you use version 8.9 for the Digital Delivery and Digital Download features?
Kalin: Yes. The digital products are our biggest sellers. We’ve seen a big boost in sales being able to sell digital downloads on PhotoReflect and Pro edition automatically fulfills the orders for us -–so I don’t have to email or find the photos in the archive [ED: like in Web edition where users have to fulfill orders manually]. Thank goodness.
ExpressDigital: You sell a lot of digital pictures? A lot of photographers worry that it cuts into their print revenues. Are you worried about that?
Kalin: Well, for us it has been a big profit maker. We charge $35 for each downloaded picture to overcome the potential loss of our print revenue. But the fact is, while everybody might want a couple of 4x6s of their wedding day, everybody wants at least one digital image. It has completely increased our per sale average… by a lot.
ExpressDigital: Do you print in house?
Kalin: Yes. We use two Noritsu DDP 411s to print pretty much everything that is smaller than 20x30. Pro edition helps with that too. Anything larger than that we use Labtricity for. We’re currently looking at a new lab partner that does canvass wraps, through Labtricity of course.
ExpressDigital: Do you sell packages?
Kalin: Nope. Everything is ala carte.
ExpressDigital: What are your most popular prints?
Kalin: Everybody buys 4x6s. Then there are a lot of 8x10s. Then it varies a lot. Except for the digital stuff.
ExpressDigital: Oh yah, you said you sell a lot of Digital Delivery products. What do you sell?
Kalin: No bells and whistles. They choose what they want on a disk. We sell a 12 image disk for $350, a 24 image disk for $500 and a 36 image disk for $650. I’m glad they are popular because it would take about 70 4x6 prints to equal a $350 order.
ExpressDigital: What advice can you give PhotoReflect users reading this?
Kalin: I’m pretty sure we are a strange client for you. I guess some tricks we’ve learned lately has been to discontinue printing and giving proofs away. They’re not environmentally friendly and expensive on us. We do everything online. Unless they insist, we don’t sell anything in person or on the spot. So, PhotoReflect handles, pretty much, our entire photography business....
** I also would say that I take tons of pictures. But again, we are a little weird. The weddings are no longer than 30 minutes and the picture taking session is about 10 minutes. So we just shoot like crazy and quickly edit only the best pictures before putting them online.
** We don’t do any marketing. We have a pre-recorded announcement that plays before the wedding when all the guests are seated telling them to go to vivalasvegasweddings.com and to find the pictures using the groom’s last name. That’s it and it seems to work just fine.
** Oh, and we have enabled the client card creator feature in PhotoReflect. A lot of people use that to make thank you cards and Christmas cards. It’s a nice feature that gives us a little unexpected boost.
ExpressDigital: What are your most popular pictures?
Kalin: You would think group shots would be popular, but they’re not. Close ups of the couple are the biggest sellers so I try to shoot as many of those as possible. Also, candid pictures taken outside on a nice day with no flash are also very popular. I guess that’s not too surprising, but I love them too, I get to be a little more creative.
***
We loved the last statement --from someone that is Elwood Blues when his camera is down. We had a great time getting to know Kalin and Viva Las Vegas (I’m actually booking my vow renewals with them right now). Learn more by visiting their website. See larger images of only a few of their 5,000 online events by clicking here.
Learn how to set up your own Digital Downloads with these step-by-step instructions.
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