Hello there photog!
We received these question from Jennifer: “When doing photo sessions lasting for about an hour- I am curious on how many photos you edit for the Client.”
This all depends on what you’re shooting. I am primarily a wedding photographer, I aim to give my clients 50-100 images p/hour that I shoot. That would be the edited images, I would give to them.
For my portrait sessions, I aim to do 20-30 edited images for a hour session.
There is no right or wrong or answer for this question. It will depend on your posing skills and how fast you can transition poses to get a variety of shots. At one point in my career, I would go through all the images and take out the really awful ones, if they were blurry, etc. However, the rest, I would let them go through and pick out the ones they like! This was an interesting way of doing things because it allowed me to only edit what they ACTUALLY wanted!
Here’s how that process would work. I would get home from a session, upload the entire thing to the cloud and another copy to my computer. I would still keep that session on cards in case something happened to my computer.
- Lightly cull through the images (get rid of bad lighting, blurry, etc)
- Upload the culled images to a web gallery
- Send the web gallery to your clients
- Have them favorite their photos they want edited
- Edit those images
- Upload to a new gallery – that only has the edited images (this is the gallery they are going to share with friends/family)
It allowed me to get the images to my clients a lot faster because they weren’t waiting on me to go through them one by one. If I wanted to go ahead and edit some for my social media, I would pick whichever ones I wanted even if they weren’t the specific ones favorited by the clients!
Pro Tip: I would stray away from saying unlimited images on packages. Especially, if you know your image delivery is on the low side for the amount you give to a client.
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Question from Jennifer: “When doing photo sessions lasting for about an hour- I am curious on how many photos you edit for the Client.”
Tabitha: I give about 35.
Rachel: Between 30-50 .
Kendra: 25-50.
Kat: I edit all the photos that I like. I’ve given one client 30 images and another client 150 images – both for an hour shoot. If a client is willing to “work with the camera” and I’m able to get more shots (different poses, different locations, clothing changes) then I want my client to have all the photos.
Reva: 20-30. it depends on the flow of the session
Alyssa: It depends on what package they purchased. For instance, my hour long sessions are $275 and they receive 10 fully retouched images.
Selena: I edit up to 45 MAX if it’s a really good session. I then let the client choose which 25-35 they’d like to keep
Christina: I show them between 70 and 130 unedited images after editing my favorite three. Then they know what I can do editing-wise and can pick their favorites. People pick the images I edit based on how many they want to purchase. It ranges from 10-30 most of the time. Keeps me from people asking to see “the rest” and I also don’t waste time editing pictures the client doesn’t want.
Lesley: 50-ish, generally. Though yesterday’s shoot yielded some really good shots, so I did 53. It depends on how successful the shoot is for me.
Derek: As Kat already stated depends on the shoot. If I don’t like the shot it won’t make it to be edited. The better the client is and the more good shots taken will justify what I will work with.
Kari: About 30 fully edited images. If they get too many they get overwhelmed.
Lavish Lens: I am also like Kat. I don’t mind giving my clients 100 photos if I get that many great ones. If its a tougher shoot, then they’ll be lucky to get 20-30
Marci: I say ’20-30′ edited images but i usually end up giving between 40-50 for an hour session
Jen: Depends on the package they choose. $150 gets them 8 images and $250 gets them 15.
Sondra: 10-20 I charge by file for my CDs so most customers end up buying 5-15 files.
Zoe: My most popular package for an hour shoot is $300.00 with 10 images. I then charge $20.00 per extra image. I normally edit about 30 images for the client to choose from.
Tom: I provide 15-25 edited images.
A Vinyard Image: LIke Kat said. My shoots last anywhere from 45-75 min and they get anywhere from 25-100 images. Depends on how well the shoot goes. Here’s where I differ from many photogs (prepping for some not happy responses) I know I did the photo work, but its the clients face. If they did a good shoot they deserve to have the pics of themselves. This probably comes from my background as a model when I would hate not getting images of myself bc its the clients property even though its my face. So in that case the client was a company, and in this case the client is the person who hired me. Just my two sense (cents) lol : )
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