I've noticed some portrait photogs are offering the proofs almost immediately after a shoot and some giving, say, a 10 day turn-a-round. I guess I would feel more comfortable with a few days to organize, but is there a big enough up-side to immediate turn-a-rounds to try and pull it off.
Oh, and can anyone recommend any good references for posing portraits.
I have actually tried both. I currently have a turn around time of 1 week. But I have tried the 1 day turn-around and the 14 day turn-around. I really didn't see any difference in sales with either time. I actually like having a week to go through all the pictures and organize and edit any if I need to.
I feel like the quality I get out of Lightroom is good enough that I can show "proofs" almost immediately. I usually upload over night and fire off an email the next morning letting them know where to find the proofs.
And then ... I remind them that they are proofs. That nothing has been edited. That the final print will be "even better" than what they see online.
The thing is, I simply don't have time to edit every image they see. I take too many pictures. There aren't enough hours in the day. I don't charge enough to edit "proofs". So, as a general rule, the only images that I edit are the ones that they purchase. That way I'm being paid for my work. There are a few exceptions, where I happen to really like a particular image that simply isn't presentable without some editing. But now that Lightroom 2.0 is out, with local adjustments to the raw file possible, I probably won't even do that much.
As to any advantage posting now versus a week later. I can't point directly to sales, but I believe people are generally a lot more excited to see them quickly.
Especially weddings. I hand out cards at the wedding (see front and back) telling the guests where to go find the images. I figure I have only "so long" for them to hold onto those cards before they get lost or the people become disinterested. I don't want to leave that folder empty with nothing for the guests to look at, so I usually have my weddings uploaded within 24-48 hours.
Anyway, you're welcome to look around the site shown on those cards (or here's the link). I'd say that 99% of those images are un-edited. Like I said, I feel fairly comfortable with the quality I'm getting out of Lightroom.
We just finished a shoot and we do pretty much the same thing every time. We will sift through the images, do a raw conversion in Camera RAw which gets us pretty close to the proofed image as is. We will go through and remove big sensor spots and maybe a couple of global adjustments and then post them to view. No sense in editing fully 40 images when they will only purchase 4. Turnaround time for us with proofs is that night or the next day. Editied prints takes another 7-10 days.
I edit a few and show those along with the unedited ones (so they have an idea what their finished prints will look like). I schedule their preview session no less than 7 days after their shooting session (to give me plenty of time to get them ready). I show a video with music of their session first, then we begin looking at each image one by one and making print selections. I offer a 20% discount for orders placed on preview day - that often motivates the ones that would otherwise linger over decisions.
Oh, and the answer to your PM earlier (I did see it but was out most of the day) -- google Skye's Elite Packet 2008. Or here the thread was titled something like "Free Business Forms" :)
Thanks again everybody! Lots of good ideas here. Grand opening in less than a month and getting nervous. We are setting up our portable gallery of wedding and studio prints in our studio and inviting the public in for wine and finger sandwiches. Hopefully they'll leave with lots of biz cards and brochures. If successful, we are thinking of doing it once a week to show off other artists... thus bringing in friends and family of a different member of the community every week.
Thanks for the info Cindy... and great job with the orthodontist thing!
From shoot to show for most things I want a week. From order to delivery I want 3 or 4. It takes time to get frames in and if you get a bad print (your error or labs) you have time to fix it and still be on schedule. And if you tell them 3 weeks they'll call in 2 anway!
