Reply To: Hmmm…. this may be scary

[MBChamberlain]

Yeah, that little article shows my inner geek a little doesn’t it. It’s actually not nearly as complicated as it looks, the text explains the progressive breakdown of the tool into its component bits, then I offer a couple conclusions on it.

Erika, I would advise against putting every image you shoot on a disc. Remember that your clients don’t know thing one about photography, they will inevitably pick the worst photo in the batch and show that to all their friends. I give my clients very limited options to choose from, this not only ensures that they fall in love with the best possible photo, but it also avoids confusing the clients. Back when I was shooting commercial I learned very quickly to pre-edit my film before I took it to the client. It is better to show the client 10 stellar images than 10 stellar images mixed in with 20 pretty good images, 20 ok images, and 50 what the heck was I thinking images. It not only serves as a sign of professionalism, but clients will assume that every photo you took was amazing, and these are the best of the best.

My culling method is as follows. I look through all the shots, and either “pick” or “reject” them out of hand. Sometimes it is technical, and I’ll toss a photo for being a half a stop over exposed or because the model turned her head slightly and killed the Rembrandt lighting effect I was going for sometimes it is for stuff like blinking, a rouge reflection, etc. Basically, if I don’t see anything that makes me want to give them another look, away they go, this eliminates 50-60 shots out of 100. I then mark all the images 3 stars out of 5 and go through them a second time. I take a little longer on each image asking up to 4 or down to 2, the twos and threes get rejected and unless it is an event when the threes get relegated to a backup list, usually stuff that will get used as filler for wedding albums and stuff like that. Eliminating another 20-30 shots. Then I go through the 4’s carefully and graduate them up to a 5 if they are really stand out as technically, emotionally, and artistically sound. This leaves me with 8-10 images on average from a shoot, and those are the only ones I shot my client. I will sometimes include a few of the fours if there is a pose or a shot or two I think the client will want to buy. This works very well for me, I can get through all the major processing for a wedding (700-1000 shots) in a little less than two hours so I can work more efficiently and devote my time to the most important images.