Pictures & Listing Chins

So, if you've ever talked to me about wanting to see pics of a chin, you may know that I'm not always able to drop everything and get pics for you.  Sure, I try not to delay too long, but I wanted to make a quick post about pictures, so you can all get a glimpse into my life.  Little bit here about listing the chins as well, since they sort of go hand in hand.

Prior to writing this, I took pics of 10 chinchillas.  Took about 2-3 hours to get enough pics (assuming some of the pics taken were what I was looking for).  In total, I took 179 pics.  Of those 179, 19 were pics of cage cards and other identifying info.  Cause you know, if I take pics of just chins, I eventually will need to know which chin those pics are of, so I can list them.  So before I take pics of a chin, I first take a pic of their cage card, and any other info I may need to go along with the chin.

So, 160 pics of actual chins.  Here's what a lot of the pictures look like:

The pics don't look like this cause I suck at taking pics.  No, the thing that's useful to remember is, these are animals.  They move around, they play.  The bounce off the cage walls.  As a result, when you click the button to take a pic, and they move... pics are blurry, or slightly out of focus, or just a tail, or waaaaay too close, or whatever...

Same animal, the pics that were chosen for the website (and cropped, and such):

When people ask for pics, I usually tell people, depending on what else is going on here, I can usually get pics in a day or two.  Sometimes that's too long for people, and by the time I've gotten pics a day later, they've found a chin elsewhere... I don't know if maybe some other breeders / rescues drop everything to get pics, but it takes time.

Some breeders post one pic of each animal.  I assume this must work for them, because they do sell plenty of chins as well, but my customers will see the 7-8 pics on the website, and ask for more!  If I ever have only a pic or two of an animal, you can bet it was being difficult while I was taking pics, haha, but that's actually why I try to take numerous pics, so I ideally don't have to take more later (unless the chin is here awhile, and then I may take updated pics).

Of the 160 pics, would you like to know how many pics made the cut, and will actually appear on the website, after being cropped and such?  77 pictures.  That's actually not that bad, almost half.  Works out to about 7-8 pics per chin.

Now, so the 77 pics are saved to my phone.  I need to then transfer them all to my computer.  I've tried different apps to use to transfer pics, and haven't had much luck, so I email them, five by five, to myself.  Then I get on the computer, open those emails, download the pics.  Each chin gets it's own folder, which has it's pics, along with its ad (once written), and any other pertinent info for that chin.  The pics are moved to that folder.  To do this for 10 chins is about 20-30 minutes, not too bad. 

Where the time comes in, is listing the chinchilla.  Between writing the ad for each individual chin, and posting the listings for each chinchilla (on my website, facebook, and the various other sites that I use), it takes approx. 30-45 minutes per chinchilla.  That doesn't seem bad, until you get someone who's like, "oh I saw all the new ones you added to the website (in the list at the top of the page), I can't wait for you to list them, can you get them all posted today?"  It's kind of funny, actually.  Either there's people who want pics of one chin, or pics of alllll the chins. 

Now, for today's example, I took pics of 10 chins.  But... I have three more babies downstairs that need pics, plus some adults.  Plus I have a few more recently weaned kits, those need pics as well.  So, this whole process repeats itself, relatively often actually.  But going back to the time thing.... for 10 chins, at 30-45 minutes each, that is 5 - 7.5 hours of time needed, just to get those 10 chins up on the website / facebook / other places.

I'm not complaining about that, don't get me wrong.  I'm just explaining.  It all takes time.  The average person asking for pics of 10 chins... they're not going to get all 10.  (Psst!  Honestly, between you and me, the people who typically ask for pics of that many chins don't usually adopt any.)  So, if I'm going to take the time to take pics...  I will spend the time to get decent pics, ones that I can use, when listing the chins on the website.  That way, whichever chins the person is not interested in, I can use those pics without having to take more.

Just a glimpse into today.  That is all.