“And we need the pictures delivered the next day!!!”
A business conference organizer will sometimes want finished pictures delivered the day after the event. It’s no problem to deliver a handful of images the same or following day, if the event needs them for a press release or its social media. But when a day-long event expects hundreds of pictures to be delivered the next day, or even the next morning, then there’s going to be a problem.
Let’s do some simple arithmetic. If you’re expecting 100 finished pictures and the photographer spends a minimal editing time of three minutes per image, then that’s 300 minutes — five hours — of work. If you’re expecting 200 or 300 photos then that can amount to a few days of work.
It is possible to batch process a few hundred pictures in several hours but you will get only very basic corrections.
But editing will take much longer if: you want the hair hanging in your CEO’s face to be removed, the weird shadows caused by your lighting to be fixed, the emcee’s crooked tie to be straightened, all the on-screen PowerPoint slides to be corrected for colour and brightness, the on-stage signage to be straightened, and proper captions added to each image.
Photoshop doesn’t have a magical button that fixes everything in one click. There’s no enhance button.
Conference photographers normally quote a delivery time of five to ten business days.
Polishing Your Business Image
A good rule of thumb is that one hour of photography requires *at least* one hour of editing. I use two hours of editing per one hour of photography.
If you need something retouched, removed, or altered, then this could require ten minutes to an hour of extra work *per photo*.
When planning photo coverage of your business event, always budget a reasonable amount of time for photo editing. Adding exclamation marks to an e-mail won’t speed things up.
If you want lots of pictures quickly then an onsite photo editor will be needed. This editor can continuously edit photos as the day progresses. I’ve done this at a few events. Pictures can be edited and delivered very quickly.
A photographer’s job is to deliver the best pictures, and not any and all pictures. Rarely, if ever, will a professional photographer give you unedited or unfinished pictures at the end of an event. A professional will have the finished pictures ready in X number of business days.
Think of unfinished pictures as a first draft or an unedited manuscript. Just as a manuscript needs to be edited for spelling, grammar and readability, photos also need to be edited, or polished, so they send the right message.
Business pictures need to be polished because your corporate image demands it.
