One of the key elements when you are shooting on location is speed. Not necessarily during the shoot itself, but if you offer Destination Boudoir Photography session you know that from the moment you put your camera down, the race begins. Import your images, edit them, post process and prepare them for the viewing session. Timing is crucial if you want to maintain a great customer service, showing the photos face to face and making sure to deliver an outstanding boudoir photography experience.
What are the things to consider regarding your images post process while on a destination boudoir photography session?
The Friday to Sunday Routine
Generally we schedule the viewing session a week after the photo shoot. This time is quite important for us to work on the images and prepare them as we like to show them. We work on the editing process, which is a key to show your customers only the best images, the colour correction and the post processing of the photos. Then we prepare a slideshow to present the images, and we are ready to go. We don’t like to rush the process; we mainly do it to make sure to create a spotless work, but there is also another reason for this time. We like our clients’ expectation to build up in the seven days.
Destination Boudoir Photography sessions change things, especially for the way we like to do things. We ditched any online viewing session years ago and we are not interested in having them back; therefore, the seven days routine becomes a Friday to Sunday one. With the shoot on Friday morning, we aim to show the slideshow on a Sunday morning. 36 hours to do what we normally do in 160, but we are on location!
In house post processing VS External Retouchers
Our post processing is divided into an in-house part, where we prepare the images in our recognisable style, and one outsourced. Despite aiming to a very natural look, we need someone to take care of cleaning the images we produce.
Do you do your own retouching?
We decided to outsource the process to have time available for other tasks. Owning a business is a challenging task, and we have many things to focus on. Retouching the images is a very time consuming process, that we do not want to spend too much time into it as there are many other things that require our attention.
Either way, if you do your own retouching or if you outsource it, you need to understand that being “on the go” means having challenges to overcome.
The in-house retouching challenges
For one, if you are traveling, having a large screen on which to retouch your images is a luxury. If you have a 15′ laptop it is a great start, but many finds that being able to travel light is paramount (as we do), so a 13′ is what you get. And what about your graphic tablet? If you are used to it, you shall have it with you to get your usual quality results. The drawback is the weight you need to carry with you.
Bottom line is that you will have to compromise on something, if not on the monitor size, on the tablet or the computer power. This means more time to retouch your batch.
The outsource retouching issues
Do you outsource the retouching of your images? We are sure you considered the connectivity implication. If not, that is one element not to forget as it is vital for the success of your Friday to Sunday routine.
When exchanging images with our retouchers, we make sure to send and receive them the best file possible. It means avoiding jpg files (as jpg is not a lossless format) and focusing on sending RAW files and receiving TIFFs. The downside of this is that the files to upload and to download will be significantly larger than a JPG. From our studio, this is not an issue; while on the road, this may pose serious difficulties.
In Venice we completed the in-house editing part few minutes after five in the afternoon, and then the slow process of uploading images started. It took us almost seven hours to upload the RAW files to our retouchers, and three to download the final images. These are times that shall be taken into consideration while being on location!
The bottom line is that if you want to offer Destination Boudoir Photography sessions, your post processing routine will change and you should be prepared to the new one. There are tradeoffs you can do to be able to provide the best experience to your customer. The keyword to me is “be ready” and prepare everything you can in advance.