Tripod and a wireless, remote shutter release. This frees you to place people by moving them rather than trying to get people to comply with your verbal requests. Also, this allows you to be in the picture.

Editing time should be charged by the image, not the hour. Also, you need to recover your overhead such as time spent with the client before and after the shoot which can easily total from one to two hours or more. We often spend more time talking with the client and travelling to and from the shoot than we spend behind the camera.

As we get older, our eye lenses yellow with age and can even have a slight coffee color. This warms what we see (more yellow). After your normal lens is removed and the artificial one inserted, the eye sees a cooler (blue) image rather than yellow (warm). Cataract surgery last 20 minutes and recovery of vision is in a matter of hours with some restricts for a week to a month. For those who wear classes, the artificial lens can usually provide 20:20 vision, if wanted, with the artificial lens. I have had both eyes done and went from 20:400+ to 20:20. No more glasses except for reading.

IMHO, even free shoots need a simple written understanding of expectations. Five minutes can eliminate hours of frustration (sometimes).

A2, F1, and EOS-3 are great. I still use the EOS3 occasionally.

The % of keepers is probably influenced by how long you have been doing photography. In the days of shooting chromes for publication, it was about 3%. Now with digital, it probably between 3 to 10%. It is not that the other 90 to 97% of the images are bad, its that they simply did not fully meet my expectation of what I envisioned. If I took images in what I call "machine gunning mode" where the photographer is constantly shooting at 6 fps, the keeper percentage would probably drop to 0.05%. Also, I can easily backup images on multiple devices if I am at 10% keepers but if I was at 50% or more, I couldn't. You need to cull your images if you shoot often. I typically shoot 500 to 1,000 images a week. I suppose that if I only shot 50 a week, culling would be less important on how I manage images.

I'd charge the $25 for 8.5X11 and $40 for 11X14. Very little adjustment is needed to the image to print both sizes. I'd have a copy of an image on both sizes to help people choose. I'd shoot every horse and horse with rider while there. You'd be surprised the inquiries that you get from people who didn't initially buy a print.

IMHO, never change more that one thing and that one thing is your camera or use your old one (or bring it along). That way you know where to start to make an adjustment. It is critical that you understand what the printer wants and if time allows, give them an image to approve as a standard that meets their needs. Then you'll have a visual idea of what the image should look and corresponding histogram.

Typically, on camera flashes function best with a lens not exceeding 125mm. Shooting test shots at the wedding venues before the wedding is beneficial. It helps you get an idea of what settings to use. Also, you can view the test results on your computer which can tell you as much or more than a histogram. It will allow you to see distractions in the background which might not be noticable if yu just started shooting at the locations.

Overall, your first attempt is a good effort.

I've used Red River double sided photo paper and have been happy with it. They have a variety of weights and finishes.

I suggest checking the scanner software settings. I haven't used my Epson film scanner for a while but as I recall, there was a setting for slide or negative, type of slide, preliminary or final scan, and number of times a slide is scanned to create the final digital image.

It depends on what you are going to do wth the scanned images. Are you going to print them or just put them on the web? If printing, a higher res scanner is in order assuming you want to do 8"X10" and larger.

I have the Canon 400mm f5.6 L lens along with the Canon 300mm f4.0 L IS. I use the 400mm on a tripod with and without a 1.4 xtender with a remote shutter release usually focussed on a nest or other single location. The 300mm is hand held and is used mainly for birds in flight. If you are mainly interested in birds perched on limbs (non flight), I would go wth the 400mm with a tripod. If you mainly want to capture birds in flight, I'd go with the 300mm IS. I would add a 1.4 extender with both which allows the 300mm IS to work with it.

If you are photographing birds, you should normally be using a shutter speed of 1/500 or faster. Even ducks in the water often splash and I want to freeze the drops of water rather than have them being blurry. Another way to help freeze action is to use a flash on high speed (Canon) along with a "Better Beamer". You should be able to attain this speed by increasing your ISO setting. the faster shutter speed reduces problems caused by camera shake and freezes movement of the subject. Often, bird photographer like to shoot with a shallow DOF such a F5.6 or wider to blur the background. Also, if using a tripod, remeber to turn off the "IS" feature. If focusing on a single point such as a nest, use a remote shutter release.

The Canon extender will not work in some ways with 100-400. Typically, the extender only work in full automatic with lenses F4.0 or faster. Autofocus only works with EOS-1D, 1v, and EOS-3 and then using only the center focus point. Also, the image stablizer will not work on all Canon bodies. With all the limitations, the Canon 100-400 F4.5 - 5.6L IS USM is supported. Any other versions of the 100-400 zooms are not supported at all.