Recently we’ve been hearing more and more of our couples comment on the length of time it takes for us to deliver their final wedding photos. Our couples, their families, and their friends are all talking about how little time it takes before the final images are delivered and available for viewing. We had no idea that what we do is uncommon. Our couples tell us all the time how “jealous” their friends are because our couple’s photos were delivered so much faster.
A huge part of what we provide to our couples is an amazing experience, not just photos on a DVD. Having to wait 4, 5 or even 6 weeks after your wedding to see your photos just seems like too long of a wait to us. So we’ve made it a priority to deliver final photos much sooner than that. Our promise is to deliver final images as soon as possible following a wedding, and in most circumstances that comes down to about 2 weeks. However, so far this year we’ve delivered photos to all of our weddings in less than 10 days, most of the time just one week after the wedding day.
(No post is complete without a photo or two, so we’re throwing in some beautiful detail shots from our most recent styled shoot for fun.)
Why? Well… why not? Why would we put a priority on anything other than editing, perfecting, and finalizing our couple’s images? Yes we always have a “to do” list a mile long, but at the top of that list every Monday morning is “edit last weekend’s wedding”. Frankly, it’s so FUN for us to do! One of the hardest things for us is to NOT open up Lightroom on a Sunday morning after a wedding to work on the photos. We just can’t wait to see them all, and look at how everything turned out! It’s hard, but we restrain ourselves and hold off until Monday morning. Then we get to work.
The question has been asked “How do you do it?”. First of all we do not outsource any of our editing. Everything is done in house. Every photo is edited individually, and we put a lot of time and attention into this process. Nothing is rushed, there’s no real point in delivering photos quickly if the editing work is sloppy. We take our time, but we work efficiently. Much of our work is done in camera, while we’re shooting, leaving minimal adjustments to be done in post production. There is always room to grow, and in 6 months we may look back at our editing process and wonder why we ever did it this way. But right now we’re in an awesome groove with our work flow, and our couples are happy. That’s really all that matters to us. So we’ll keep doing what we’re doing, and we’ll continue to hope we can be a small blessing in the lives of the people we work with. If that means we fall into the “workaholic” category… that’s just fine with us. We want to blow our couples away with the experience we give them.
Speaking of delivery… how do we deliver final images to our couples? Two ways. A flash drive (DVDs just don’t cut it anymore) of full resolution, fully edited images is packaged and mailed to our couple’s home inside a gift box with a hand written note from us. This flash drive is the first way to archive your photos. Secondly, an online viewing and sharing gallery is set up (for couples who’s package includes this feature). This is called PASS and it’s one of the coolest additions to the wedding photography industry in recent years. PASS is an online photo sharing system, and couples receive their very own custom link featuring all of their wedding photos. These galleries house the high resolution digital photos. The same day we put the packaged flash drive in the mail, we send out an email to our couples with a link to their PASS gallery. So they don’t even have to wait for the UPS guy before they can view their photos! The link can be shared with your family and friends, and then our couples don’t have to worry about sharing their flash drive with relatives who want to see the wedding photos. No emailing photos, no passing around a flash drive. Just share the link and your friends and family can download (for FREE we might add) any photos they wish. Pretty darn cool right?!
This video will explain in a much nicer/cooler way how awesome PASS is.
PASS – A new way to share your photos from Showit on Vimeo.
So we hope this post gave you more insight into our final image delivery methods, and why we do it in this way. Have a great Wednesday!
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