War of Attrition: Shots Taken vs Shots Used

LeeHowell · April 15, 2010

This might be a bit of a personal question...Kind of like asking how many lovers you've had, or what your REAL age is :wink

But I'm new to DG, and I did a search, and didn't see anything come back on this topic. It's something I've always wanted to know, and it can serve as a icebreaker for me, as well as a growing experience for anyone wishing to chime in!

Lots of factors in the war of attrition and wedding photography...Burst mode comes in handy for getting the flower girl to stay still and have everyone's eyes open in the group photos...Or you just might not get around to deleting all the toss-outs before you load them up...

But take your last 3-5 weddings - Total up the number of photos you loaded onto your PC - Then total up the number you gave to your client as the finished product. Where do you stand % wise?

I'm embarrassed to admit my own number...I'm only giving my client 20% of all the images I took! Of course that still works out to anywhere from 300-500 photos per gallery...But I've got some definite room for improvement.

Feel free to share your # and any tips you might have on how to keep that # down in the future...Even though we shoot digital, doesn't mean we can shoot sloppy.:D

PhotoLasVegas · April 15, 2010

Approx 80% overall, but we only delete the "obviously bad" photos, and our clients know that ahead of time. We tell them that in posed photos, unless eyes are closed, they get the photo - it's not up to us to decide who looks "good", since we don't know for sure, and it's only our opinion. We've managed their expectations: "You're going to get about 10% 'WOW' photos, 60% 'NICE' photos, and 30% 'don't like' photos". Of course in our minds, we're thinking that we're giving them 800 photos, 10% is only 8 "wow" shots, and we usually have more like 50... so clients are always VERY happy!

When we take the formals, we take 3 consecutive shots (not burst, but manually, click, click click) in horizontal, and 3 in portrait. So every group gets 6 shots, and we usually have 1 or 2 that have eyes closed.

Reception photography, they get more like 90%, pretty much we delete only the ones where there's technical problems (flash not firing, OOF) and again the "obviously bad" stuff - shots of people's backs or obviously unflattering, etc.

We have a chapel contract where in an hour we usually shoot about 60-80 shots, and we have a little contest to see who can shoot an event with NO deletes - I've done it twice, with a bunch of 1-delete events...

LeeHowell · April 15, 2010

That's pretty awesome...I like that approach too! No need to hide it, and it certainly would save some time on the editing side of things...I always try to find one or two right group shots, but giving them a few to choose from is a good idea.

I like the challenge concept...I'll have to suggest that to some folks I know and see if they're up for it :-P

Qarik · April 15, 2010

my keeper rate is anywhere between 25-40%. Unlike the other poster I cull everything I don't like and do basic crop, WB, color, contrast, sharpening, etc every single shot. I am anal and won't let any image of mine hit the interwebs that I doesn't look good to me.

LeeHowell · April 15, 2010

I hear ya...That's similar to my post-processing work. I don't edit every single image in PS, but of that 20%, it's usually about 1/2 that make into PS for some form of editing....But I definitely prefer to keep the nasty ones "my little secret" :-P

Blurmore · April 15, 2010

I'm not giving you hard numbers...because...I'm too lazy...but for full day job (that I am editing) 8-10 hours I've never shot more than 1100 images or less than 600 images and I deliver 250-300 edited/CC'd/straightened/cropped/cloned/smoothed (if needed) images. For 4-5 hour jobs I deliver 100-150 images from no more than 600 images usually more like 400. For jobs I'm not editing I don't shoot the hell out of them, but rarely do I shoot less than 1200 images for an 8 hour job and less than 800 images for a 6 hour job. I've only ONCE had a company I was sub-contracting for say anything about my shot count, a particularly boring 8 hour job that I shot 900 images. They called and said "you only shot 900 images" and I said "How many of them were money?" They said "Well we didn't look at them all" I said "If there aren't enough keepers in the take call me, dock my pay, whatever." I haven't had any complaints from them since.

Surfdog · April 15, 2010

We have 2 photogs at each wedding that shoot approx 1000 shots each on average, and deliver approx 500-600 digital proofs to the client. I do basic editing on all proofs - levels, cropping, etc., because I also deliver a "web-sized" proof cd to each client with all proofs sized for the web (not for printing). Each image bears a watermark in the bottom corner with my website address. Clients post them on their myspace and facebook pages. (Mucho free advertizing.)

By the way, this is my 100th post. I am now a triple digit D-Grinner.

l.k.madison · April 15, 2010

Surfdog wrote:

By the way, this is my 100th post. I am now a triple digit D-Grinner.

Congrats!!

I heard somewhere that when National Geographic sent their shooters out back in the film days, they only expected 20% of the shots to be keepers, of course, only a handful made it to the cover/article/whatever. I strive for 20%, sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower, but that's my goal.

I tend to get trigger happy and I'll shoot the same thing several different times, and never change a setting so I have 3, 4, or 5 of the same shot. I did a "pre-wedding" shoot for a friend of mine who didn't get bridal shots done, so we did her preparation/First look shots on her wedding day and then a few from ceremony/reception. I shot 1000 + and I don't remember what hubby's film count was, but there's 172 in her gallery.

I do agree with not letting ANY photo out into the hands of the interwebs that I wouldn't be proud to have my name on, regardless of how long it took me to edit it.

zoomer · April 16, 2010

Typical wedding I shoot around 800 pictures and deliver about 600.
I delete all the pictures I don't like, eyes shut, people not looking, etc.
Probaby 150 or so are different versions of other pictures, different crops, different processing.

I also fully edit every photo I deliver.

Swartzy · April 16, 2010

As this was discussed a few times on other threads....it all depends on the shoot.

Like Zoomer, only edited images are shown and provided. I figure a typical number is somewhere in the 250 range. Giving the client 5 shots of the same scene/setting/look just seems like redundant work to me. Part of the sale is "uniqueness". When you think about it 250 images...that's a lot of photos.

PhotoLasVegas · April 16, 2010

K, just finished editing a 2-camera shoot... pre-wedding inside, outside wedding, and off-camera flash for the reception (makes a difference as these are almost always perfectly exposed vs. hot shoe which sometimes doesn't fire or severely under/overexposes)...

We shot 927 photos, 700 unique photos were delivered, every one of those was edited for straightening/cropping, color correction, exposure correction, plus we made copies of 40 of them to do our "special effects" on.

So client was delivered 740 total HiRes files, and in my opinion, 40 of them are "WOW" photos, probably 550 of them are really nice, and the rest are "ok".

We've "gotten over" the whole idea that every photo has to be an artistic masterpiece. You just aren't going to make a reception photo of the bride and 2 of her friends, or of a group of people dancing, into an art piece every time. Yeah, you can get creative with them, but many times you need to deliver the professional-level snapshot (ie. near-perfect exposure, nice composition, and that tell-tale shallow DOF that you don't see on a Point-and-shoot).

Personally I think there's a lot of (wedding) photogs that need to "get over themselves" - and realize the reality that there will be a mix of photos given to the client AND that sometimes the picture is more important than the art.

One other example, had a shot of the groom's grandmother, the ONLY shot where she was smiling, we secretly chased her the entire night.. unfortunately it was taken with a zoom lens and the hotshoe flash and was badly underexposed... but it was the ONLY one we got. So we "fixed" it, it's very noisy and typically we'd delete it - but we know that the client will appreciate having it, even if it's not perfect.

Before you delete a photo, think to yourself, "Is this a unique moment?" and "Am I deleting my clients memories?"... you have no personal ties to the people, but you have to be cognizant that you could be deleting a lifelong memory!

War of Attrition: Shots Taken vs Shots Used

Comments