How can a professional photographer stay in control of their editing?
Why we lose control of our Lightroom Workflow
We've all been there. You get back from your shoot, set your bags down, and watch your images import onto your computer, and while you watch that progress bar, you realise that you've taken way more photographs than you anticipated.
It hits you just how long it will take you to work through all these images and get the final selections edited and ready for your clients.
Your backlog has been piling up over the last month. Let's face it; something has to change.
The temptation you face at this point is to outsource to a third-party company. They promise to cull your images down and colour correct them so you can finally send off the gallery to your clients! You're trading time for money and control over the final product.
There's a better way to work.
Your clients book you for your vision. Photography is an art form and a craft. It's about more than just pressing the button on your camera. The equipment you use, your eye for colour and composition, and the way you edit your work all come together to build something greater than the sum of its parts.
Your clients book you because they trust your eye. They have seen your work and love what you do, so they trust you to work with them. Leaving a piece of that puzzle to someone else will dilute your vision, at best, and at worst, can stunt your growth as a photographer.
Building a solid workflow allows you to design an efficient process that preserves your ability to shape the final images directly. This approach is the only way you can truly design the look and feel of your images over the years and organically evolve your visual identity.
Your editing style matters. Learning how to work smarter and faster gives you back control without needing to send those edits out to someone who cares far less about your work than you do!
Protect your brand
If you want to reach the pinnacle of this industry, the main goal is to produce work that's instantly identifiable as yours. A potential client has to pick your work out from a sea of other photographers. If you use the same editing company as another photographer, you're giving up an opportunity to stand out.
Spending time on your own editing process, understanding what your client sees, and making adjustments to make your vision clearer to them are fundamental parts of building a visual identity. Think of your editing workflow as something to craft with the same attention to detail as the photographs you make. The difference is your workflow can be more than just a performance art.
Together we can experiment to find your ideal look, then build systems that get there faster. It's all the creativity with none of the drawbacks.
Take back control
Your visual identity is something worth building. Like everything that matters, true growth does not come quickly.
By being dedicated to edit your own work, your committing to continually improving and refining the look and feel of your images to better match your brand, visual identity and your client's needs.
Outsourcing editing will only give you time back. And if thats the only thing you need, efficient workflow systems can fix that problem for you.
