How many pictures do you give to client?

[OceanRider]

Hey all,,

Just shot a wedding and have 1150 total shots. How many do I provide for clients to look at?....Whats reasonsable? Cutting out the garbage lets say 500.....what do I give her 250?
Joel

[JaertX]

Give them every single one that they paid for! :)

(and not one more...heh heh)

[OceanRider]

Ya but 1150 X .19 cents at Wally mart is 218 beans just for proofs! I only charged 350 as it was only my 4th wedding. We are all on the cheap.

Joel

[sapearl]

I'll shoot about 500 or so (RAW) - pare that down to about 450 during the wedding day.... and further reduce that down to 400 by the time I've completed processing them and I'm ready to ftp the order to the lab. When I get them back, I insert them all in nice proof books.

IMHO I feel that's a pretty reasonable number. And even at that count, some of the group and portrait shots are a little repetitive. Give them TOOOOOO much of a choice and it just takes them longer to get the reprint order back to you. - Stu

[tim]

I'm sure I wrote this same thing earlier today. I shoot 100 per hour, and deliver 250-400 images, depending on the images and the clients wishes. I do digital proofs so it makes no difference cost wise. If they want printed proofs or a proof book they pay for them - with quite reasonable charges for proofs.

[Tiffany]

I'm pretty close to Tim as it turns out. An 8 hour day yields me about 800 images, and I pare that down to between 400-500 images that are presented to the B&G. I do digital proofs as well, and offer printed proofs or a proof book at an extra cost.

[RachaelSilvers]

I end up with 1000-1500 after a full day shoot. I shoot the getting ready, ceremony and reception, so usually a 7-10 hour day.

I edit the proofs down to 800-1000 and that's what the client gets in their proof books.

[jamiewexler]

I don't do paper proofs, but I do deliver on average 50-60 photos per hour of coverage. Who can complain about a-photo-a-minute on their wedding day!

[sapearl]

Did you say you do photo or video Jamie :lol: . Bump that up to a couple of frames/second and you'll have full motion video. - Stu

I don't do paper proofs, but I do deliver on average 50-60 photos per hour of coverage. Who can complain about a-photo-a-minute on their wedding day!

[jamiewexler]

Too funny, but when you think about it, that's only 480 images for an 8 hour event. Not too far off from what you deliver Stu, but it sure sounds impressive to brides!

[xandria]

I do all proofing online. I haven't had a client who wanted paper proofs yet, but if they did they would pay extra for the proofs. I shoot approximately 80-100 images per hour (includes posed and candids) and generally cut that in half for the final. It may be overkill but I usually take between 3-5 frames per pose, which has saved my butt a couple of times when I've had to "head swap" children in big groups or someone just can't keep their eyes open.

Since you charged a little money for the job, what was the original agreement? Did you promise paper proofs? If so, I would narrow the count down to your favorite 200, assuming you were shooting for at least 3-4 hours. That would be a bargain for the B&G at what you charged!

[tim]

I end up with 1000-1500 after a full day shoot. I shoot the getting ready, ceremony and reception, so usually a 7-10 hour day.

I edit the proofs down to 800-1000 and that's what the client gets in their proof books.

How long does it take for your customers to look at them all and decide on prints or what goes in the album?

[RachaelSilvers]

How long does it take for your customers to look at them all and decide on prints or what goes in the album?

Good question Tim! I kind of joke about being the anti-photographer. Chicago is flush with lots of chain photography studios and that was my main competition when I broke into the scene in 2001. So my philosophy and MO is this:

I don't have package prices, the bride and groom decide how long they want me around. I tailor an estimate based on their needs for the day so an hourly rate plus my ancillary costs for proof prints, proof albums, batteries, lab runs etc.

My estimate includes my shooting for the day, sometimes a 2nd photographer, 800-1000 proof images in nice proof albums, online proofing for 3-4 months and copies of high res jpgs after I take the online gallery offline.

I charge a premium for this and my particular clientele finds these components valuable.

They do not have to order any reprints thru me if they do not want to. Nor is the final album included.

They have ownership of all their proof albums and that's one of the reasons I use a premium style album to house them. It's more valuable and helps in the final album photo selection process.

If and when the clients decide they want to come back to me for the final album, I give them a formula on how to choose images to be included and a guideline of how many images to include based on their preferred album style and budget.

Since they have ownership of all the proofs (I use actual 4x6 photos) they do not feel inclined to include 8 photos of great Aunt Matilda in the final album.

Most of my clients place orders for reprints thru me (b/c it's easy and my prices are reasonable) within 3-4 months of the wedding while the online gallery is available.

Most of my clients schedule the initial final album consultation around their one year anniversary. Which is good since the 1st year anniversary gift should be paper ;)


To get a sense of it you can check out some of my more recent weddings:

www.rachaelsilvers.com/galleries/tokarz
(my asst was still shooting film at these, I did digital)

www.rachaelsilvers.com/galleries/potish

www.rachaelsilvers.com/galleries/kirkpatrick

www.rachaelsilvers.com/galleries/tanner
this was my very 1st 100% all digital wedding. I shot solo.

[xandria]

Rachel, not to be obnoxious, but do you put the 4x6 prints in a 1 print/per page album or in albums that will hold more like 4 photos/per page? I only ask because I recently printed 1,029 4x6 prints and the stack of prints was over 8 inches high. That just seems like a lot to hand over to a bride to proof. It seems overwhelming to me.

[RachaelSilvers]

2x2 so double facing pages would have 4 total.

I guess it all depends on style that also helps determine how many proofs. I wouldn't expect a more traditional photographer to deliver 1000 posed portraits :)

When shooting film I would average 2-3 rolls of 36 exp per hour. I was easily racking up 30+ rolls on a 10 hours day with myself and a second photographer.

Now 800-1000 is my ballpark as we tend to shoot a little more with digital and edit as we go to eliminate the outtakes.

Check out my Tokarz gallery, it has 1000 photos and I think it's a great representation of the entire day and nnot overwhelming. The wedding was July 8th and I got the images edited and online by August 20th and handed off the proof books to the bride on August 21st. The proof books I used for this wedding each held 200 images so she got 5 volumes and was so darn excited!

She emailed me 2 days ago with a $200.00 reprint order for herself.

So as for timeframe, I think it all plays out nicely.

[twinsrus]

I don't do paper proofs, but I do deliver on average 50-60 photos per hour of coverage. Who can complain about a-photo-a-minute on their wedding day!

Do you deliver them a slideshow on a CD or some other method. Would you mind descrbing your "proof" book? Thanks, Jamie!

[sapearl]

I think they call that..... what's the phrasing I'm looking for.... hmmm... .MARKETING! Yeah, that's the spin. And another fantastic pitch tool I'll have to steal, er... I mean borrow. :lol:

Too funny, but when you think about it, that's only 480 images for an 8 hour event. Not too far off from what you deliver Stu, but it sure sounds impressive to brides!

[jamiewexler]

Do you deliver them a slideshow on a CD or some other method. Would you mind descrbing your "proof" book? Thanks, Jamie!

I actually deliver them online via photoreflect.

[SHANGHAi]

With two photographers and about 20 gigs of memory, we on average shoot about 12-14 gigs worth of stuff on a 10mpx camera (Nikon D200's unfortunately, I know lol) That's about 1400 or so pictures. After deleting the ABSOLUTELY horrid ones, we end up with about 1200, give or take and resize and upload to web for preview. The client gets all the unedited jpeg's along w/ an album.

[sapearl]

Hi Liang - interesting reading your post; that's certainly a lot of shooting :D . It looks like you shoot everything JPG, and then print all 1200 as paper prints - did I understand that correctly? Also, do you have your own proof display gallery or do you use a commercial service.

BTW - that's a lovely avatar you have there! ;)

With two photographers and about 20 gigs of memory, we on average shoot about 12-14 gigs worth of stuff on a 10mpx camera (Nikon D200's unfortunately, I know lol) That's about 1400 or so pictures. After deleting the ABSOLUTELY horrid ones, we end up with about 1200, give or take and resize and upload to web for preview. The client gets all the unedited jpeg's along w/ an album.

[SamiP]

I shoot in a one day about 600-700 pictures and deliver to customer about 400pics in a cd. I also offer proofed prints for a extra money.

Plus there is "the official" wedding pictures. I show to customer those pictures about 40 and deliver only proofed pics. If they want those pictures in a cd, I charge a lot of money then ;)