Why shooting is only half the work

Folks that know very little about photography (which is totally ok!) might think that photographers get to their computer, load the images, and then share them with clients.

Others that know a bit more about photography probably know that there is some editing involved - but that's it, right? Nope!

To explain the process, I'll use an example of the work that's involved after a 1 hour shoot:

LOADING
Loading the photos normally takes a few minutes.

CULLING
Culling is the picking process, which would take 20-30 minutes. Not every photo taken turns out to be useful (see why here). If I took 100 photos, maybe only 25 would be usable.

EDITING
Editing usually takes 20-30 minutes, but could take longer depending on what I need to edit. 

SAVING
It's important to me to keep images backed up...in three different locations! Loading these images to my external hard drive, Google Drive, and another online resource for clients usually takes another 10-15 minutes.

SHARING
Not only do I have to share the images with clients (writing an email that includes how to access the images and what to do if they have any questions), I also have to send an invoice and update my project organization list - all which takes another 5-10 minutes.

As you can tell, there's a lot of post-processing work involved...about 90 minutes of work added to a 60-minute shoot! And that's not even mentioning the other administrative tasks, email communications, meetings, walkthroughs, and marketing/networking!

I like to share this information so that people understand more about image turnaround time as well as photography pricing. Luckily for my clients, my turnaround times are pretty rapid compared to most photography industry standards.

Happy Friday!
​Autumn