How to ask brides/clients to be patient?

haring

I am a wedding photographer. Brides always want me to select single photos and send to them before delivery date. I am not really talking about thank you card but other photos with family remembers.
I would love to do it for them and send them but the only problem that it really messes up my workflow. I allocate equal time for everybody's wedding. It is hard to pull the drives, go through the wedding photos, selecting them and editing them before final delivery while I am still editing somebody else's wedding. It takes a long time and this way I feel that I will never be able to meet my deadlines.

The best example is father's day. Everybody wants to have a photo with their father...

How do you do it? Are sending clients/brides photos after their wedding before the delivery date or you ask them to wait for the final product? If you ask them how do you ask them to be patient?

Foques

my contract outlines the timeframe within which I am to provide the images.
I've yet to have someone demand images prior to that date.

Qarik

foques wrote: »

my contract outlines the timeframe within which i am to provide the images.
I've yet to have someone demand images prior to that date.

+1

r3t1awr3yd

haring wrote: »

I am a wedding photographer. Brides always want me to select single photos and send to them before delivery date. I am not really talking about thank you card but other photos with family remembers.
I would love to do it for them and send them but the only problem that it really messes up my workflow. I allocate equal time for everybody's wedding. It is hard to pull the drives, go through the wedding photos, selecting them and editing them before final delivery while I am still editing somebody else's wedding. It takes a long time and this way I feel that I will never be able to meet my deadlines.

The best example is father's day. Everybody wants to have a photo with their father...

How do you do it? Are sending clients/brides photos after their wedding before the delivery date or you ask them to wait for the final product? If you ask them how do you ask them to be patient?

Definitely have the delivery date in writing on your contract.

The only thing I'd like to add to those responses is the part of managing expectations. You probably already discussed the coverage of the day in your contract and the details of the day itself, what you can and can't cover, etc. A delivery date for the images is no different. Let the bride/groom know ahead of time what to expect for picture delivery.

One thing I always do immediately after a wedding is quickly scroll through the pictures and pull a few teasers out. I try to ear mark them in my brain so I can remember them later. Say half a dozen solid, very likable images that they can use to get started on Thank You cards and facebook profile pictures and cover photos.

kdog

r3t1awr3yd wrote: »

One thing I always do immediately after a wedding is quickly scroll through the pictures and pull a few teasers out. I try to ear mark them in my brain so I can remember them later. Say half a dozen solid, very likable images that they can use to get started on Thank You cards and facebook profile pictures and cover photos.

I do that too, but I put them in a web gallery and send them a link so that they get to see some shots like the day after the event. I thought most folks did this. Maybe not.

Matthew Saville

To be quite honest, you should just build in some time for EVERY client to pull some teasers, and/or meet a small request. That's just the best way to make people happy in this business. You might be able to get away with sticking to your guns and replying to requests like this with "they'll be done when our contract says they'll be done"...However that will always work as a -1 point against you for each client that asks this and gets turned down, and sooner or later it might have an overall effect on your actual bottom line. Maybe, maybe not.

=Matt=

karloznz

This is a very good thing to be discussing - a great tip for a new wedding photographer like myself. Thanks for this constructive discussion about the Wedding Photography.

lightcatcher2014

I have image delivery date in my wedding photography contract as well. Once you clearly define when they can expect to see and have their images or wedding albums, then they will not ask earlier for it. Do you have this?

And may be you should look at your workflow and change it to pull few teasers out of the set, and post on your Facebook or send to the couple. It keeps them excited about seeing the final images and also gets their friends excited about their images to come. The trick for social media is to trickle bits of excitement every so days, so they come back and check. Wedding photography is an exciting moment, so don't plane the bride for being inpatient. You just need to draw a line and stick to the contract you had them sign.

Hope that helps,

jonh68

When I transitioned from pj to portrait work I retained my workflow of getting edits up and ready in a quick time. Now I can't do extensive edits but I do use batch programs that I can make exposure/WB/crops etc. If it's a one hour portrait session I will have a proof gallery up within the day of the shoot. For an all day wedding that would be impractical but I would still get the basic edits done in batch when I get home. I usually have something to show within days. I am finding my edit time is less when the clients pick their favorite pictures instead of doing extensive edits on all the pictures that are presented.

JonaBeth Russell

THIS ^^^

After shooting a wedding, I try to get batch edits and culling completed within 1-2weeks (usually it's just about a week from an all day wedding, but can be more if there was a second shooter). I do very minimal WB / EV / Crop / Straightening and post to a private gallery, where they can choosing their favorites. Once they've selected their favorites, I'll fully edit those, and it's done. No need editing hundreds of photos.

Matt's Camera

What Matthew said. Simply build it in to your workflow. I've been trying to do this as much as I can. Just yesterday I had a client email me with the same request for an image or two and it took me 20 minutes to pull 3 images, do a quick edit, and post them on by blog. By the end of the night, the bride had posted to facebox, and I had a gazillion hits to my website. Same thing will happen when I post the rest in a few weeks. The bride was super psyched to have such a quick response and yes, they know that it's supposed to be 4-6 weeks before final delivery. Would you rather have the bride sharing all the crappy phone photos that were posted the day of the ceremony or yours?

BrettDeutsch

I agree with Matthew too. Clients want photos right away, and a few teasers or special pulls shouldn't be so hard. This is a people business, and if you can't please your clients you're not going to survive very long in it.

Matthew Saville

Great to hear this feedback / input, guys!

I think that the best solution is to always consider the business benefits of doing exactly what a client wants / expects. Could it set you apart from your competition? Would it cost you much time / $$ to deliver that level of service? Would you lose out on anything by doing so, or not doing so?

In other words, obviously we can't just give away the farm because the client asks, I mean we gotta pay our bills and turn a profit. But if clients really want something, and it doesn't cost us much to make that happen, I say go for it.

=Matt=