When To Expect Your Images

After Your Session – When To Expect Your Images

Believe it or not, there is a lot more that goes into taking, editing, and delivering your images 🙂 Here are five factors to consider on when to expect your images.

How Busy is Your Photographer?

Some Photographers have a handful of clients, and others are much busier – but it goes without saying that you are probably not their only client. At any one time, a busy Photographer may have several sessions to shoot, edit, and deliver. If it is wedding season, your Photographer may have several thousand images to go through. This takes a substantial amount of time. At any one time, I have no less than 1,000 images to get through; and when I am VERY busy, I can have 10,000 or more images to edit.

when to expect your images

Full Time vs. Part Time

If your Photographer does photography on a part time basis, there is a good chance that the majority of their sessions only take place on the weekends. They may work a full-time job where they cannot schedule weekday sessions and they only shoot and edit images on the weekends. A full-time Photographer not only takes sessions on the weekends, but also schedules sessions during the week. What does this mean for your images? If weekday sessions come up, this takes your Photographer away from the computer and it adds more images to their pipeline. So while they may have initially had several hours to sit in front of the computer to edit images, they now have less.

when to expect your images

Editing Images Takes Time – More Than You Think!

In general, there are three to four phases in between shooting and delivering your images: shooting the session, uploading/backing up the images from the session, culling the images, editing the images, uploading the images finished images.

Shooting the session: a typical portrait session will last between 30-60 minutes. Depending on the type of session (I shoot WAY more images of sessions involving children), I may shoot between 500-1,000 images. For weddings I typically shoot 3,000-5,000 or so images.

Uploading/backing up the images: after shooting the days sessions, the images need to be uploaded to your computer and backed up. On an average weekend where I do not have a wedding, I will have between 4-8 sessions. During the holidays, I have had as many as 12 sessions in one weekend. What does this mean? On an average weekend, I will have a minimum of 2,000 images to edit; and on a busy weekend, I can easily have 5,000 images.

Culling/Editing the images: By far, the biggest amount of time in the process is culling the images. This is the process of going through each of the images and choosing which will be edited. On a good day, I can cull around 500 images/hour. After I have culled the images, I upload them to a company that handles the white balance and exposure correcting of the images. This saves me a little time on editing. They will typically deliver the images in 3-5 business days. From there, I still need to run the images through Photoshop – which takes an hour or so for a typical 60 minute session.

Uploading and Delivering the images: Once the images are done, the final step is to upload and deliver the final images. For a 60 minute session, this may take 30 or so minutes. For weddings, this will take several hours.

when to expect your images

How Many Days Does It Take to Get My Images?

Like we discussed earlier, this depends on how busy your Photographer is. For a busy Photographer, they may be processing multiple sessions at a time.

For a portrait session, 5-7 days would be fast; 2-3 weeks would be average; and 4 weeks would be a relatively long time to receive your images. This all depends on the Photographer and their work flow… believe it or not, Photographers want to get you your images as soon as possible! But it takes time.

For a wedding, 2 weeks or less is fast; 1-2 months would be average; and 3 months would be on the longer end. Weddings take a VERY long time to shoot, edit, and deliver!

when to expect your images

A Tip on Getting Your Images Sooner 🙂

If you want or need your images faster than the typical time it takes, I would recommend mentioning this to your Photographer several days before the start of the session. This may entail an extra fee – but the sooner your Photographer knows this, the better. Letting your Photographer know this after the session has already ended or emailing them while they are still working through the images is not recommended. Many times they simply cannot accommodate a sudden change in their workflow.

Hopefully this information is useful to understand all that goes into shooting, editing, and delivering your images and when to expect your images 🙂