How Many Photos Should a Wedding Photographer Give Their Client? – Formed From Light (2024)

FAQs

How Many Photos Should a Wedding Photographer Give Their Client? – Formed From Light? ›

Conclusion. How many photos should a wedding photographer give their client? The short and simple answer is ~100 per hour of shooting or roughly 800 photos for 8 hour wedding day coverage.

While it's not mandatory, it's a good starting point to know and fall in line with industry standards. For weddings, you can expect to give your clients ~50-100 photos per hour of wedding day coverage. For portrait sessions, I find that clients expect more images the more they pay for the session.

To give you an idea, the average number of pictures delivered by a wedding photographer for one hour is between 50 up to 100 wedding photos. Most of the time I will deliver 800 to 1000 digital files for 12-hour reportage. For a 12-hour coverage, on a big day, I can distribute 1200 to 1400 pics.

It is common for photographers to provide a selection of edited photographs from the event or session, rather than all of the photographs that were taken.

Many photographers these days choose to share photos (or at least backup all images) via a cloud service where users can easily access the images. There's DropBox, Google, Amazon S3 and more, where you can store and share folders of images with anyone you want with as little as a link.

You can email them to your guests, send some through text, or you could also create a massive photo album on Facebook and tag as many of your guests as you can. While these are all fine on their own, they can either be too time consuming or feel a bit impersonal.

If you don't really care about having more than a couple decent images, you might not want to spend $4000 for a Wedding Photographer. If your Wedding Photos are very important to you, then you would be willing to spend more than $4000 for them.

Twenty or so decent shots are possible after thirty minutes of photographing, but after an hour, you can expect to have between forty and fifty shots from which to make your selections.

I have found that many couples find 9 hours to be the perfect amount of coverage. I allow my couples to add on hours after they book their desired wedding photography package. As couples build out their wedding timelines, they sometimes find they need an extra hour to have everything covered. That is totally okay!

How many photos should you get from a photographer? ›

A typical family of four, with kids under 5 years old, will usually receive between 35 and 60 finished images. Business Portraits & Headshots: It would generally be safe to expect to see around 15 finished images per hour.

Out-of-focus images are probably the most common of all mistakes in photography because it's such an easy one to make. One small move by a subject or misinterpretation by your camera and you're in for an unpleasant surprise when you review your images later.

Can we request few specific shots? There is no way to specify every single image you'd like to take through out the day but most photographers will take all the important shots and family portraits. If there are any surprises happening during the day, be sure to let them know so they don't miss it.

No, your photographer won't send you every single photo they took on your wedding day, but that's a good thing. You're paying a professional to document AND tell a story for you - which is a magical thing to receive back.

Under federal law, if there is no agreement to the contrary, your wedding photographer, or any photographer for that matter, owns the pictures that they take.

Your photographer will edit all the photos for you then if extra editing is needed you can ask. If you book a professional experienced photogrpaher they will ensure all your RAW's are backed up for you anyway, just in case you ask for some type of extra editing in future.

Instead, you should really think about the minimum file size you can get away with for your specific purpose. In fact, if the images are for social media distribution or even a website portfolio, small file sizes are your best option (generally between 50 and 500 KB).

Most of the time, no, they won't have a watermark. Occasionally, there may be an agreement whereby the photographer places a watermark on the photo especially if they think they might benefit financially from having it visible, but it is rare to do so.

In Part, Your Paying for the Experience

In some fashion, you are also paying for the client experience you get. Some couples want a professional to give them a personalized level of service, others just want a pro to come and give them good images. Many want both and in part, the cost is passed to you too.

How much of your wedding budget should be spent on photography? ›

You should save around 12% of your overall wedding budget to pay for your photographer and videographer. You can find numerous photographers and videographers that have different price points.

Restaurant tables set up for a wedding reception. If you've started to look at venues, you've probably already realized that $5K is a small wedding budget. You'll need to cut expenses and do some DIY, but if you're committed, you can definitely plan a great wedding under 5000.

What is the rule of thirds? The rule of thirds is a composition guideline that places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open.

There is a term called Pareto's Principle, or the 80/20 rule, which refers to situations where 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. This is a very important idea to understand when growing your photography business. 80% of your overall sales could come from 20% of your clients or products.

According to this sunny day rule, if you're using ISO 100, the shutter speed should be 1/100 and the aperture should be f/16. This rule generally produces the best-exposed front-lit photos on a sunny day.

If you're happy with the photographer's work, etiquette experts say a 15-20% gratuity is generally appropriate. Regardless of the amount you decide to tip, it is always appreciated and above your responsibilities as a wedding client to tip your wedding photographer.

When To Take Your Photos... Golden hour is well known as being the optimal time of day to take wedding photos. Golden hour occurs in the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset. These are the times of day where the sun is at its lowest point and features soft, diffused lighting.

Wedding photography is notorious for being a demanding, high-stakes genre, and as such, it is natural that with that comes a fair amount of stress.

The rule of thirds is a composition guideline that places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open. While there are other forms of composition, the rule of thirds generally leads to compelling and well-composed shots.

Rule of 500 (or 300)

When taking an untracked photo of the night sky using a camera on a tripod, this rule tells you how long you can expose before the stars begin to trail. You take the number 500 and divide by the focal length of your lens. For example, if you have a 20-mm wide angle lens, then 500 / 20 = 25.

What is the 90 10 rule in photography? ›

I always operated with the 90/10 rule: 90 percent of the job was what the client wanted, and then 10 percent was something else that I wanted to explore artistically.” Those 10-percent images ultimately opened doors as clients appreciated what he was able to produce outside the confines of the must-have shot list.

Most professional photographers don't give out their unedited photos. I expect it's because, like me, they consider photos straight out of camera to be like half painted paintings.

A professional photography doesn't want to give you the raw files because they are not the final images, they may not look great, they won't have been edited to match the photographers style, remember you have picked a wedding photographer because you also like their style of photography, you like the way the photos ...

Start by acknowledging your client's concerns and expressing empathy. Then, explain how getting the raw files will not solve their concerns. You then go on to restate your boundaries, as it is important for the client to see that it is your business practices and this will gain you their respect.

Script: Request something that wasn't in your contract

LOVE that idea. But you can also ask your client to respect your “no editing” preferences even though this isn't in your contract. Your client, of course, won't be obligated to honor this request; but there's no harm in asking.

When you hire a professional photographer for your wedding, how many pictures do you get? If you hire a professional photographer to document your wedding for eight hours, you may expect to receive between 400 and 800 final images. The perfect number of guests for a wedding is between these ranges.

Your photographer will spend hours with you, capturing all of those beautiful moments and giving you memories that will last a lifetime. Typically, part of hiring a photographer is offering them a meal as a show of your appreciation. Feeding vendors is pretty standard for most weddings.

Who owns the photo the photographer or the client? ›

Generally speaking, the copyright belongs to the person who created the image – in the case of a photograph the person who took it (i.e. the photographer.) There are some exceptions to this – for example if the photographer is an employee (for example in a large studio) the copyright belongs to their employer.

RAW files are unedited and therefore are not an accurate representation of your work or your brand. If you are taking on clients, it is vital that you deliver to them only your very best work.

Photographers typically keep photos of their clients for a minimum of 90 days and up to a full year as part of standard practice; however, if this is important to you, review the contract and ask your professional.

A reasonable offer might be about 50 to 75 images for an hour-long event.

In order to keep your guests engaged and interested in your slideshow, we recommend making it around 5-10 minutes long. This equates to between 60 and 120 photos. If you choose to include video clips, make sure they're on the shorter side in order to keep the momentum of the slideshow going.

Business Portraits & Headshots: It would generally be safe to expect to see around 15 finished images per hour. Indoor portraits of any kind: Indoor portraits almost always mean brinhing our own light sources, which will slow the pace of the session considerably.

Know how long wedding photos will take.

For the best results, photographers agree that wedding party portraits take about 30 minutes, family portraits take about 30 minutes (if you're sticking with only photographing close family), and couple portraits take between 45 minutes to an hour.

However, a good rule of thumb is 25-35 pictures per average length song (about 3-4 minutes) It works best to select a sequence of pictures and a song to match in order to break down and manage the project so it all flows together smoothly.

Groom meeting the bride at the end of the aisle. Lots of pictures of the bride and groom at the altar throughout the ceremony. Wide shot of the wedding guests taken from the couple's point of view. Wide shot of the entire venue from the back.

While the megapixel count of your photographers camera is somewhat important, anything over 20 megapixels is probably more than enough.

What is the best size to deliver wedding photos? ›

Pro tip: Giving a wedding photo as a gift? We suggest you size them at or under 8" x 10". Adding in a frame and mat, this would make your final frame size about 15" x 17".

4 x 6 inches.

This is perhaps the most common photo size in print. This size of photo fits perfectly into a 3:2 aspect ratio. If you take a photo using this ratio, you shouldn't have to crop out any of the image to make it fit. This size is ideal for framed photos, greetings cards and postcards.

For this reason, it makes sense for many photographers to watermark their professional photos as a form of advertising without any additional cost. Watermarking wedding photos creates an undeniable connection between the artist and their product.