Senior Portrait Question

[HastyPhoto]

How many images and or poses do you generally shoot and or give the client to choose from?

Thanks.

[Tomi Hawk]

How many images and or poses do you generally shoot and or give the client to choose from?

Thanks.
About 12 ... and I'm dead serious!

[HastyPhoto]

lol thanks

[HastyPhoto]

What size prints are most common for seniors and how many do the parents usually order or is that different for every shoot?

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Hey Bob, I generally an overshooter, but am trying really hard to back that off. For a
2hr session, studio & outdoors, usually about 150 images, but then I give a very hard edit and get that down to about 30. I don't give my clients anything, they come back to my studio for an ordering appt and they choose what they want off my computer screen. You have to control the sale, make suggestions and show what you want to sell.

Everything at my studio is A la Carte. I usually sell a Wall Portrait, 11X14 or larger to mom, then they order 8X's & 5X's for family and friends, the senior then picks 4 poses for wallets, some will add more poses for wallets, I also offer collages and albums if they wish and usually sell a collage or two.

My Sat ordering appt ended up being $1305. I'm not here to brag, just to share what you might be able to do, if your doing the right things. Some will spend only $300 and some will spend $1500, for me it all averages out in the end to some nice sales.

Best regards, Ernst

[fredroj]

+1 for Tomi Hawk......at most for me 15...but i at least shoot 150-200. my highest senior package pose is 6 poses....common prints are 8x10, 11x14...wallets. but i offer a la carte on various things(keychains, cut-outs, accordian books,etc.)

[Tomi Hawk]

+1 for Tomi Hawk......at most for me 15...but i at least shoot 150-200. my highest senior package pose is 6 poses....common prints are 8x10, 11x14...wallets. but i offer a la carte on various things(keychains, cut-outs, accordian books,etc.)
Haha, thanks .. I think .. ;)

I saw a thread last week or so where someone had a model from Model Mayhem, and he said for the .. ahem .. "TFP session" he did, that he shot like 650 images!!!!! :rolleyes:

There are others that claim upwards of 2000 images for ONE wedding!!!

I dunno man .. maybe it is just me .. but upwards of 200 images for a senior session? Good gracious .. I simply hope (and I'm not knocking ANY one here) but I sure am glad that my keeper rate is a high percentage ..

I just do NOT have that kind of time in post .. or, for that matter, shooting that many images of any given event ..
A friend of mine calls that style or format or whatever you wanna call it .. "Spray and Pray" .. Seriously .. 650 images on a TFP session .. that lasted 6 hours????

I apologize if I sound like I'm such a grreat photographer .. I'm certainly not trying to come off that way. There are TONS of photographers that blow me right outta the water. And they have half the years or less that I've put into all of this ..

I was taught to be verrry selective .. after-all, shooting 6x7 film is not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. And speaking of film, I wonder just how many images everyone who has never shot film, would shoot at any TFP session .. or senior sitting .. or, for that matter .. a wedding?

Yep .. I'm sure that count would be AAA lot lower .. well, if they really wanted to make any money that is ..

Please .. don't take this the wrong way .. I'm sure I'll be blasted by someone for claiming to have a good, high percentage of keepers ..
It's from shooting film for almost 30 years.

And just because we shoot digital now, is no excuse to exceed incredible #'s in amounts of images! Just imagine, if you will, that those 650 images of your model, or .. those 200 images of your high school senior were actual prints!
Just how long do you think it would take you to physically # every one of them, correlate them, and then put them into some sorta presentation?

I've found that, after many, manyyy, years of photographing high school students, that the more images that were presented, the more confused they were. They would always say, "Wow, they're all so good, and there's sooo many, it's going to be difficult to select". Give them fewer choices .. and do an insane bang-up job .. blow their socks off so to speak .. and they make that decision much quicker .. which of course, puts that $$$ in your bank account much faster.

My very first wedding I did for my mentor .. I shot 500 images .. He thought I was outta my mind .. read me the riot act .. and verbally abused me for an hour .. LOL! I also just saw a thread where someone mentioned how they chimp before they actually start the session .. by adjusting settings on flash or camera, or both .. and thennn they start the session ..

I would think (and I do the same sometimes myself) that this is a great way to take advantage of our digital gear .. we did the same thing back in the day with poloroid backs .. specially if the shoot was for JC Penny's .. or 7-up .. or some huuuge ass client that there simply was no room for error .. whatsoever!

Those were the sessions that we would definately shoot upwards of a couple a hundred images .. annnd .. that would take alllll day, and sometimes .. into the early evening !!!

Once again .. not trying to bang heads here .. but I recently had a model from MM .. where I shot like 62 images .. and was ready to call it a day .. as it was .. I was there for 3 hours .. and she asked when it was all said and done, that she wanted all the raws .. LOL! Annnd, "Why'd you shoot so few shots?" After explaing and reminding her that this was indeed a TFP session .. she said, "Well, all the other photographers give me my raw files, annnd, they take aLOT more pictures". .. Hmmmm

So .. I guess Im'a change my profession name to prostitute, instead of photograher! ;)

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

hehehe Tomi Hawk.

A good friend of mine, Kirk Volican shoots 6 images for every outfit a Senior brings in.

[Tomi Hawk]

hehehe Tomi Hawk.

A good friend of mine, Kirk Volican shoots 6 images for every outfit a Senior brings in.
Precisely .. I can't see shooting anymore then that myself ..
Unless of course she brings 39 outfits .. ;)

[msfvirginia]

I tend to shoot between 50 and 200 images in a regular portrait session, I tend to do 3 images per pose, so I have options to choose the best picture from. If any one blinks and I notice there was a blink, Ill shoot a 4th, 5th, etc. I haven't done a senior portrait yet, but Ill probably shoot about the same.

I show unprocessed pictures and only process the ones that gets picked, this helps save me some time. I know a few photogs here would shudder at the idea of showing unprocessed images. I usually show an example of unprocessed/processed at the beginning so they know what they see isnt what they are going to get exactly.

On a side note I shot like 3000 pictures last year at a ballet recital. :) that took a while to do color/exposure corrections from raw to jpg and watermark and upload. :)

[msfvirginia]

On a side note with seniors, if you want to sell a photo book to the client, you will need a fair number of pictures to cover the pages / collages.

Whats the average number of pages for a senior book? WHCC starts at 20 pages but you probably don't have to use all 20 pages.

[HastyPhoto]

Thanks for the info everyone, I have alot of work to do before I actually try and start a legit business. Shooting some freebies for friends kids etc, learning and or mastering outdoor lighting and posing etc. Just bought myself 3 books I've been wanting to get for awhile now so they along with more in feild practice and images for my portfolio I'm hopeful by next year I can be on my way pretty good. Heres the 3 books I just ordered and I'm almost done with light science and magic (:


Doug Box's Guide to Posing for Portrait Photographers

Master Guide for Photographing High School Seniors by Dave Wacker

Lighting and the Dramatic Portrait: The Art of Celebrity and Editorial Photography by Michael Grecco

[Tomi Hawk]

On a side note I shot like 3000 pictures last year at a ballet recital. :) that took a while to do color/exposure corrections from raw to jpg and watermark and upload. :)
"A while?" Wheww .. I could only imagine .. :rolleyes:

Here's a thought .. and seeing as how no one chimed in on it yet, though I did ask ..
Just how many images of that ballet "recital" WOULD you have shot .. if you were indeed shooting film? ;)
And I would like you to answer by NOT saying, "welll .. if I was paid more .....

Irregardless of payment .. please, let me know ..
And I've come to the conclusion that every young photographer today, who shoots 2000 images of every wedding, hunnndreds of images of every senior .. and thousands upon thousands of images of "other" events ... will be blind, wearing coke bottle glasses, and won't be able to see past their noses by the time they're 50!

Sorry for the rant .. but 3000 images of ANY event is just way too much .. that is of course ...... in MY OPINION!

And when I said I only shoot 12 poses of every senior .. I'm not freakin kidding!
Maybe ... mayyyybe if she's drop dead gorgeous .. and might wanna pay some more, I'll shoot upwards of 40 .. but seriously, I haven't got that kina time .. to shoot AND post process .. THAT many images .. period!
With that being said .. if I got a sitting fee of 250 bucks .. perhaps I'd be willing to do more .. But, I get a sitting fee of 40 dollars .. the average, AVERAGE senior turns around and re-orders upwards of $700 an order!

Some are more and yet, others are less .. and that's all I do .. they can change as many times as they want .. but when I feel I got The shot(s) .. it's time ..
Maybe some include a certain "time frame" .. and others include a certain "amount of images" ..

But dudes .. 3000 images ??? LMAO! Have fun at the computer man! Oiiiii !!!

[msfvirginia]

If I was shooting film, I would probably shoot a roll per set. There was like 20 sets of performances at the ballet recital, and I tried to get closeups of each kid, and a few of each kid because I was shooting at iso 1600 @ F1.8, and all the movement, it would have been easy to get the subject out of focus from them moving forward or backward. And its pretty easy to go through the images and erase the ones that are out of focus or are just boring. Then I sorted the pictures, erased the jpgs of the images I kept, and went through the raw's and adjusted the exposure and tweaked the color. I didn't do each picture by itself like I normally do, just do a few, paste the settings to similar shots, etc. I didn't even crop the images, I just created an action that would paste a watermark copyright pattern over each image, add my author info, and resize to web size. The hardest part was I used two canon camera's, and I had to share memory cards for parts of it, and I didnt realize it would reset teh file number in the camera, so I had duplicate file numbers, and I didn't separate the sets by taking a blank image. So it took a while to sort them and rename them. Looking back there's a sort feature in windows that would have made that easy assuming the camera clocks are close to accurate.

But I don't see anything wrong with shooting a few hundred pictures at a wedding. Memory is cheap, loosing special images is expensive.

But I don't process or I only do basic processing before the client sees the images. This saves me a lot of time. Then I properly process the images to be sent to the lab.

[Ernst-Ulrich Schafer]

Good books Bob, but be sure to add some marketing/business ones also. Lots of photogs out there can take pretty pictures, you need better marketing/business skills to suceed.

[jhuckelberry]

Tomi, you keep asking about shooting with film, but it doesn't matter. We don't anymore (for the most part). It doesn't matter what people would have done back in the old days.

If you go back and read, he said he only presented them with like 15 pictures. He didn't show them all 200-300. It's not spray and pray, b/c over a 3-hr shoot I could easily have thousands of images if I was shooting "spray and pray).

I end up shooting around 200 shots over a 2-3 hour span and then go home and sort through it. No, it doesn't take "awhile". I do my initial purge where I delete closed eyes, mis-focus, bad expressions. Usually only takes about 5-10 minutes. Then I go back through a second time, getting rid of poses that just didn't turn out or they looked uncomfortable, etc. Another 10 minutes. Lastly I'll go back through a third time (usually later in the day once I've stepped away for a bit) and for any of the duplicate poses I pick the better one and generally come down to just 2-4 poses from each outfit, giving me somewhere around 20-30 pictures (sometimes will be more poses per outfit if they only had like 2 or maybe 3).