How long should I wait for online gallery images

jlander98

I've been quoted by one photographer that it will take 7-8 weeks to see gallery images online. Is this a normal timeframe?  I was hoping it was within 4-6 weeks.
Thanks!

fallbride1109

We had ours waiting for us when we got back from our HM 10 days later.  I don't think this is the norm though.  When you meet with photographers, ask them what their policy is.

drphoto

Just depends on your tog and the amount of work they put into the photos.  Let's make a couple of assumptions.  You have them there for 8 hours.  On average they are going to take 1000-1600 images during that time.  First they should download, backup and burn archival DVDs.  Roughly an hour to do that.  Next, they are going to cull the images deleting all the blinks, bad poses, duplicate poses, bad exposures, blurs and shots of their feet.  While this is done, each photo should get rated.  It takes me about 20 seconds per photo on average, that 8.8 hours just to go thru the images and get ready to work.  They should have around 600 great images at this point.  Next each image should have adjustments made to white balance, color density, noise, contrast, clarity, vibrance, crop, and sharpness,  as well as, adjustments for lens distortion.  If they automate everything (bad) it'll take about 40 seconds to make all of those adjustments to each image.  That's another 6.5 hours.  If they adjust each image manually (good) your probably looking at 80 seconds per image or 13 hours.  Finally, they should do artistic work to the images skin smoothing, removing birthmarks, fixing dead grass and whatever else is needed to create the initial set of "bloggable" photos.  That can take upto an hour per photo for about 20 images.  If they pre-design your album add another 4-6 hours on to the tab.  Total time, roughly, 47 hours, if they are doing their job correctly.  If they are a busy pro shooting all week then I would expect 4-6 week turn arounds.  What you could ask for is their "epic" images -- maybe 4-8 images fully editted in 72 hours after the wedding.  Now clearly if you're only paying $600, that's about 12/hour so it's not likely that they're putting that much work into your wedding. 

Hope that answers your question,
Corey Schwartz
www.desertridgephotography.com

lorifrank2003

I second that... we had our wedding photograph disks in our mail box when we returned from our HM.  I see your Atlanta, check out my wedding photographer.  He was fantastic www.chrisbrock.org