I had no idea that so many people outsourced their pp work. Training someone on staff to do it for you is one thing to me, but something about sending it out to some corporation possibly on the other side of the country or maybe even world just doesn't sit right with me. It feels wrong for some reason. Maybe it's the thought that we charge people for retouching time when we list our packages and the cost of sending the work off is likely less than what we are billing them. Does that make us post processing middle men? Maybe part of it is that I feel like we owe more care to our clients and our craft to give it all the attention it needs to get it where it needs to be rather than just shipping it off and getting it back to add our flair to spice up the final project. I think about the old wedding photographer I know and how he would spend so many more hours on each wedding than I likely ever have...there was such pride and integrity in what he did that he would never think of shipping it off for someone else to handle. And 4-8 hours is too much to give to people who are giving us thousands of dollars for the preservation of their day?
I know I might be young and naive and idealistic and whatever...but just doing whatever we can to book more gigs reminds me more of assembly line Walmart ideology than the finely tuned work of skilled and dedicated craftsmen.
Not trying to offend anyone because this is just my opinion.
.I just never thought this really happened with the type of people found on here.
joelconner wrote:
I had no idea that so many people outsourced their pp work. Training someone on staff to do it for you is one thing to me, but something about sending it out to some corporation possibly on the other side of the country or maybe even world just doesn't sit right with me. It feels wrong for some reason. Maybe it's the thought that we charge people for retouching time when we list our packages and the cost of sending the work off is likely less than what we are billing them. Does that make us post processing middle men? Maybe part of it is that I feel like we owe more care to our clients and our craft to give it all the attention it needs to get it where it needs to be rather than just shipping it off and getting it back to add our flair to spice up the final project. I think about the old wedding photographer I know and how he would spend so many more hours on each wedding than I likely ever have...there was such pride and integrity in what he did that he would never think of shipping it off for someone else to handle. And 4-8 hours is too much to give to people who are giving us thousands of dollars for the preservation of their day?
I know I might be young and naive and idealistic and whatever...but just doing whatever we can to book more gigs reminds me more of assembly line Walmart ideology than the finely tuned work of skilled and dedicated craftsmen.
Not trying to offend anyone because this is just my opinion.
.I just never thought this really happened with the type of people found on here. ...Show more →
Im pretty sure you missed my point... I am outsourcing to gain back my 4-8 hours a day I spend editing. so lets say it is an average of 6 hours (right in the middle) and I edit 5 days a week. That is 30 hours of my life I just got back!
Do you not have a family, kids or wife? I do and I want to spend time with them. Right now with all of the shooting and work i do, they get maybe 1 hour a week and my clients get 80. Umm, yea sorry, no, that is not how life works. Maybe you do less work than I do and have the time to edit. but between 30+ weddings, 150-200 portrait, fashion and other sessions that all last at a minimum of 3 hours plus my day job that I shoot on average 20-25 sessions a week there or about 9-10 hours a day. With all that, I am lucky to sleep...
So tell me what is wrong with either having someone in house edit the photos or outsourcing to someone outside the company? NOTHING!!!! I still get the images back and I add my artistic touch to give it my style.
But you know what. The more I think of it. Why am I even bothering to explain myself to you. Your not my mother, your not my wife or my clients.In fact, my clients love the thought of outsourcing the basic stuff so I can spend more time making their large wall prints perfect and their albums even more stunning.
O and one more thing. You said your not trying to offend anyone. Obviously you were or you wouldn't have said it.
Good day!
No, I seriously was not trying to offend anyone...I was raising was I thought was a valid question. And, as I said...this very well could be just my opinion that is shared by no one else. I never claim to be the same as others. Our industry is one that revolves around artistry and personal custom service, and for me personally...I don't feel comfortable with sending work entrusted to me out to other businesses when it is something that is a vital and integral part of the customers' end product. It's not because I think the quality is lacking...I am sure these places do close to as good of a job as we could (probably better than I personally could). It's because I feel like my clients have the understanding that I am involved in every step of the process (even if I have not specifically said so), and for me personally, sending it off for others to do the first chunk of the work while charging them (most likely) more than what we are being charged feels deceptive to me. I have no issues at all with hiring someone and having them do it in-house...I said that. I have a few people who do basic editing for me from time to time. Yes, I know logically the end-result is the same, but it just feels very different to me.
I understand the reasoning behind doing it...financially and logistically it makes sense if you can pay less for someone else to do it than what you are being paid for it. It makes sense when you can save the time that you would rather be using for something else. I have another business besides my growing photography studio, and in that line of work, I do need to do some outsourcing from time to time. For that, though, it is simple promotional products and I let the clients know it is being sent out to one of my partners. I don't expect most people to do the same thing...but it is important to me to let them know that.
And I totally did get your point about wanting to get that time back to spend with your family...and I agree with you that it is important. It is my personal stance for our studio that unless dire need requires it, keeping things of this nature in-house is the way to go. If we have too much work to keep on top of it all? Hire someone to help. If we can't hire someone? Book fewer shoots. If my goal is to make $XX,000 per year from the studio and I have to charge $XX per working hour to get to that total dollar point based on 40 hours per week, then I either charge more and book fewer events or bring in more help.
Again...this is just my views on the subject. I am sorry if I made you angry. I don't expect anyone else to agree with me on this one...I know I am traditional in many ways...I am a fourth generation business owner, and that has an effect on many of my views.
You have some great points and if that works for you that is awesome. I am happy for you and I feel similar to you. Without going in to it again (already did on another post) what happened to my family this year. Outsourcing my basic stuff will give me the family time I need to keep sane and to enjoy and watch my son grow. I refuse to miss his life like my parents did when they worked so much. but I also refuse to miss money and let my finances suffer because I am booking less.
So for my business, outsourcing small things that dont matter` is worth it. Dont get me wrong. The images are worth it. but if it is color correcting, adjusting for proper exposure and minor cropping that takes me time and that time can be used elsewhere. then I will do it. Then when I get the basics back, like I said before, I will make my touches to them if need be.
I think what really needs to be talked about is what do most people deliver to clients as proofs? Do you deliver fully 110% edited photos that you airbrushed, color corrected and cropped and did more to? Or do you deliver minor edited photos?
I have a friend who does not edit at all. he shoots raw and jpg. Delivers the jpgs as proofs with no cropping or editing. Then only edits the raws of the ones people order or put in an album.
joelconner wrote:
No, I seriously was not trying to offend anyone...I was raising was I thought was a valid question. And, as I said...this very well could be just my opinion that is shared by no one else. I never claim to be the same as others. Our industry is one that revolves around artistry and personal custom service, and for me personally...I don't feel comfortable with sending work entrusted to me out to other businesses when it is something that is a vital and integral part of the customers' end product. It's not because I think the quality is lacking...I am sure these places do close to as good of a job as we could (probably better than I personally could). It's because I feel like my clients have the understanding that I am involved in every step of the process (even if I have not specifically said so), and for me personally, sending it off for others to do the first chunk of the work while charging them (most likely) more than what we are being charged feels deceptive to me. I have no issues at all with hiring someone and having them do it in-house...I said that. I have a few people who do basic editing for me from time to time. Yes, I know logically the end-result is the same, but it just feels very different to me.
I understand the reasoning behind doing it...financially and logistically it makes sense if you can pay less for someone else to do it than what you are being paid for it. It makes sense when you can save the time that you would rather be using for something else. I have another business besides my growing photography studio, and in that line of work, I do need to do some outsourcing from time to time. For that, though, it is simple promotional products and I let the clients know it is being sent out to one of my partners. I don't expect most people to do the same thing...but it is important to me to let them know that.
And I totally did get your point about wanting to get that time back to spend with your family...and I agree with you that it is important. It is my personal stance for our studio that unless dire need requires it, keeping things of this nature in-house is the way to go. If we have too much work to keep on top of it all? Hire someone to help. If we can't hire someone? Book fewer shoots. If my goal is to make $XX,000 per year from the studio and I have to charge $XX per working hour to get to that total dollar point based on 40 hours per week, then I either charge more and book fewer events or bring in more help.
Again...this is just my views on the subject. I am sorry if I made you angry. I don't expect anyone else to agree with me on this one...I know I am traditional in many ways...I am a fourth generation business owner, and that has an effect on many of my views....Show more →
For what it's worth, I share these views down to a T. Different people choose to go down different roads though, so to each their own.
paparazzinick wrote:
I think what really needs to be talked about is what do most people deliver to clients as proofs? Do you deliver fully 110% edited photos that you airbrushed, color corrected and cropped and did more to? Or do you deliver minor edited photos?
I have a friend who does not edit at all. he shoots raw and jpg. Delivers the jpgs as proofs with no cropping or editing. Then only edits the raws of the ones people order or put in an album.
Here's my thought:
I shoot RAW+JPG in two cards separately, JPG is for backup purpose only.
RAW converting to JPG in high resolution and web size formats ready for normal prints order and web proof gallery, all images with color correction, exposure/contrast adjustment, and some with cropping...
Only those images for bigger prints and for the album will be heavily post processed in Photoshop.
As you stated someone shot RAW+JPG and using the JPG for proofing, that's pretty risky to give a bad impression to the clients, no matter how great you are, straight out in camera JPG image especially for wedding just can't compete with the image quality of the images converted from RAW with necessary adjustments which don't need lots of time for the workflow.
Nothing wrong with outsourcing in general, but the difficult part is you have to find the one at least at the same level as yourself regarding photography concept, the vision, the understanding of the wedding, the understanding why you took the shoots and what you want to show from a certain shot etc.... otherwise those outsourcing basic editing work have no difference than sending them to costco or Walmart, you know what I mean. Also I can't imagine what the results will be of ended with someone without any experiences of shooting weeding to edit your images even for proof only..
As you mentioned there's another post discussing outsourcing editing sometime ago, in that post I rejected the idea due to how they phrased and the attitude presented...
Any way, good luck for your finding, and hope your work will be well presented by the outsourcing party.
I have a person inhouse who does most of my post-processing. When we get busy though, we send it out for processing. We used to use a local guy, but he went out of business. Now, we use www.shootdotedit.com. They do a great job and are very consistent. The price is right as well.
The rule of thumb for outsourcing is that it's best to outsource until you get to the point that the cost of outsourcing regularly exceeds the amount you'd pay for an employee. Employees are a pain to train and then if work slows down or they're not working out, difficult to get rid of. My suggestion is to outsource whenever possible.
Postprocessing is the number productivity killer for most photographers. The more you can focus on the high-value tasks such as marketing, shooting and working on portfolio images, the more profitable you'll be in the long run.
