Behind the Lens
What Happens After the Shutter: Editing and Delivery
December 1, 20266 min read32 Productions · Douglas, GA
Clients see a shoot day and a gallery. What happens between them is most of the work, and understanding it explains both the turnaround and what you are actually paying for.
Culling
A session produces far more frames than are delivered. The first pass is selecting — eliminating the blinks, the missed focus, the near-duplicates, and choosing the strongest version of each moment.
On a wedding this is thousands of images down to hundreds. It takes real hours and it is the step that determines the quality of the gallery, because a gallery with weak images in it is a weaker gallery.
Color
Getting color right — consistent across the whole set, accurate skin tones, a look that holds together — is what makes a gallery feel like one body of work rather than a collection.
Mixed lighting makes this harder. A reception with tungsten uplights, daylight through windows and LED string lights is three color temperatures in one frame, and reconciling that is craft.
Retouching
Different from color. Retouching addresses specific things — a blemish, a distracting element, a stray hair. It is done selectively on delivered images rather than on everything.
Worth being clear about expectations here. Removing a temporary blemish is normal. Fundamentally changing how somebody looks is a different request and should be discussed rather than assumed in either direction.
The most common misunderstanding is that editing is a filter. Consistent, accurate color across hundreds of images shot in varying light is skilled work, and it is the difference between a professional gallery and a phone album.
Why turnaround takes time
Because the above is hours per session, and because photographers have multiple sessions in the queue. A gallery delivered in two days either had very few images or skipped steps.
Agreeing turnaround in advance prevents the most common source of client frustration in this business.
Delivery
- An online gallery you can view, share and download from
- Web-resolution files for social and screen
- Full-resolution files for printing
- Clear print rights, so you know what you may do with them
- A stated period the gallery stays available
Back up what you receive
This is the advice photographers give and clients ignore. Download the full-resolution files and put them somewhere that is not one device. Galleries expire, phones get lost, and hard drives fail.
The number of people who lose an entire wedding gallery to a dead laptop years later is not small.
Print something
Files on a drive are not photographs until somebody sees them. The clients who are happiest years later are the ones who ordered prints or an album.
32 Productions delivers galleries with print rights and can handle prints and albums directly. Call (912) 592-3376.
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32 Productions covers photography, videography, weddings, events and business content across Douglas, Coffee County and South Georgia. Tell us what you have in mind.
