Pin Up Patients

[Sara Ormsby]

Well... I don't expect many to read my blogs, but for those of you with the mental ability to follow my rambling... Yay!

Why is it when you know a photo shoot rocked, do the photos ALWAYS seem to take forever to get to you? Is it a mere exciting thing, or does it really take longer than it should? What if you got the picture right away that you thought would be a great shoot and they sucked, would you be willing to wait for them next time? If you waited almost three months for them and they were not even ones you would show your significant other, would you be just as patient for the next shoot? At what time frame do receiving photos from a shoot become excessive, a week, a month... I have trouble with patience so I always seem to be pushy, I don't mean to... At what point does a model become too pushy, if they ask once or twice in a reasonable time frame... And we are back on the time frame of photos... Anyone with half a brain knows that there is ALOT of work that goes into post-producing, but if it your job should it take that long? And while I understand that by legal right the photos belong to the photographer and you get paid to give me a finished product... Why is it that I can't have a couple for my own tinkering, I want to learn photoshop! If I don't have any none messed with shots then it doesn't leave me space to learn, but it does give me a great shot (most of the time). Which brings up another point about the original comment... If you walk out of a shoot knowing (thinking) it was a bad shoot, do you even notice that you haven't gotten your pictures in almost three months? Are you still disappointed in the photos even if you know (think) it was a bad shoot?

I am falling asleep, I should go now. But I'm not finished yet :)

[Wink Holliday]

Patience is a virtue, or something like that. But in all seriousness, I prefer to go into a shoot knowing when I'm going to get final images, and it should spelled out in the contract if I don't already have an ongoing relationship with the photographer.

You're right, there is a lot of work that goes into post-production. I've spent hours just going through photos to narrow down the selects, and that's before anything even gets opened in Photoshop. Multiply that by the number of shoots done in a week, and the time really adds up. But if you're waiting three months for photos, that's simply a photog who doesn't want your business. In my personal experience, an average wait from a busy photographer has been 3 weeks.

The best arrangement I've had is to walk out of the studio that day with a CD of high-res images for me to do with as I wish, providing I credit the photographer (of course) and note that they're unedited, or edited by someone OTHER than the photographer. Instant gratification! And all very nicely written down for my records.

While I do some of my own retouching in Photoshop with images that I've bought the rights for, to do so with images that I don't own would be unethical, not to say illegal, if done without the photog's permission. Poke around in the forums and you'll find a thread that addresses that particular sticky issue.