How many proofs do you show?

[sarahgirl777]

I just did my first senior shoot and in about 2 1/2 hrs I took about 250 pictures. Now this was my first shoot so I spent longer and took more photos than I would probably do on a regular basis, but I had a real hard time narrowing it down to a manageable amount. I ended up showing her 50, but I'm thinking less would have been even better. If you do Senior Portraits, how many do you usually show the client? Same questions for family portraits etc. If you have lets say a family of 4 and you take family pic's and individual pic's. How many do you think you'd try to narrow it down to for them to choose from? Any ideas or discussion on this topic would be appreciated.

[RexK_Cozumel]

normally when I do a modeling shoot I take a lot more than 250 pictures. usually between 100-1000 depending on the length of the shoot, natural light w/ reflectors or strobes etc etc. If I am creating the lighting I end up with a lot fewer pictures but almost all of them are useable images. With natural lighting I shoot off a lot more frames but end up with a lot of throw aways. What I will do is go through the images and delete any images that are not up to snuff due to technical aspects. IE inproper exposure, OOF, odd shadows, distracting backgrounds, poor composition, etc. Then I will go thru the images that are left and rate each image 0-5 stars. any 3 star and above goes into proof sheets for closer review. all images under 2 star gets moved to a sub-folder for later use. After reviewing the images that are 3-5 star, if there are enough images that I think are keepers then I will delete the 2 star and under images. If I dont have enough I will go thru those images and see if any can be salvaged thru post processing.

Usually if I am doing a controlled lighting shoot. IE I am using multiple strobes, reflectors, umbrellas to control the lighting scene I will only shoot 100-200 images but I end up keeping 30-40 finished images. If it is a natural light type shoot I will usually shoot close to 1000 images and again end up with 30-40 finished images.

Oh and I will keep any 3 star or above images for future use if I want to process differently or whatever. but I try to start with the 5 star images and then work down I will not process all the images so I usually have about 20-40 images left over from each shoot that are unfinished. I try not to process too many photos where the model is wearing the same outfit or has the same pose but in different locations or is in the same location but different poses. I try to limit myself to only 4-5 images that look similar before I move on to different ones. which is why I end up with a decent number of keepers but are not finished.

How this helps. This is by no means saying that my system will work for you but it is what I do anyways.

[steelese]

My last bridal set I took somewhere between 4-500 pictures in about 2 hours. From that I showed 36 images. I picked 10 that I thought where the best and a really highlighted them, and the others were a just in case kind of thing. Needless to say the ten I highlight were picked.

My work flow is pretty regimented. Once I get to my office after the shoot I copy all of my pictures to my hard drive. I then push a copy over to my external drive. From this point I can work.

I then quickly delete everything that isn't even worth looking at. Pictures of the lens cap, feet, underexposures, the wall, you know the crap you usually get into the shoot when your not thinking (man digital has made me lazy). Then I take that folder and copy it over again to the backup drive and delete the original copy. Yes I delete because I don't want to look at them.

In Lightroom I then go through and give every picture that meets the minimum qualifications of lighting, exposure, composition and positioning one star. Then go through those and pick the ones that are exceptional and give those a second star. From those, if there is one that is, I give the portfolio worthy ones a third star.

So I set aside those then, and then pick about 20 more that are interesting, or funny and entertaining, or characteristic of the couple. Those go into a second pile and I use those as ice breakers. I don't necessarily show those to buy them, I show them to set the mood. When you show them pictures that entertain them they relax and can make more rational decisions about they good ones.

So there you go.

[sarahgirl777]

Both of you seem to use a star system, I'm gonna have to try that. I think I ended up showing her some just because it was the only one in that location/ pose that I semi liked, but now that I'm done I think I could have eliminated a few more that I really don't think were of the quality I'd like to show, not bad by any means but not the "wow" I'd like to hear or see.

[candleman]

i use the star system for picking which are worthy of the PP and "highlighting" to the client.
granted i only did one wedding .. but thats my method too.
only problem is i HATE the PS organiser! its such a pain to delete files once they are imported to PS. ggrrr..