Simon Ridgway Photography

In the movie world, the term “post-production” is used to describe all the work that goes into turning the raw footage into the finished film that you see in the cinema.

Its the same in the world of professional photography.

Shooting the pictures is just one step in the process of getting the image from the digital camera and into print. Here is the post-production workflow that I carry out on ALL of the shoots I do. Note that this doesn’t include things like high-end retouching, CMYK conversion, compositing etc. This is just the standard list of things which must be done with the digital image files after the shoot is complete.

1. Take the memory cards and copy the image files onto the computer.
2. Make another copy of those files in a different location as a backup before starting work.
3. Batch caption the entire shoot with generic information to enable the pictures to be found again at a later date.
4. Work through the entire shoot, editing down to the final selection for further processing.
5. Once the final selects have been made, add additional detail to the captions for individual images where necessary.
6. Take each selected image and make adjustments to cropping, sharpening, exposure, white balance, colour etc.
7. Check each image at 100% magnification for digital dust spots and remove them.
8. Backup the finished images.
9. Take the final, adjusted, captioned images and convert them from the camera’s RAW format into either a TIF or a JPEG of the correct size, for delivery to the client.
10. Deliver the finished images to the client via FTP, email, web gallery or DVD.
11. Upload the finished images to offsite storage system.
12. Reformat memory cards ready for re-use.

As you can see, there is plenty of work to be done by the photographer once the shoot is complete. This work comes under the heading of “post production”. Some photographers will split it up into items like “digital capture”, “file processing”, “digital delivery” etc.. The work requires a level of skill and experience to do well and also requires expensive computer equipment and software. All of this time and equipment must be paid for and the cost of this will either be quoted separately as a “post production fee” or will be taken into account at the quoting stage and rolled into an all-in price.

Some clients will insist that this work is not necessary and that they will not pay for it. Well, the work is only necessary if you want to receive a professional service and a professional end-product. If you just want the photographer to dump all his RAW images files on a DVD for you to deal with then no, I suppose its not necessary. But, trust me, that’s a bad idea unless you REALLY know what you’re doing.