Booking A
Commercial Photographer
From Booking A Commercial Photographer To Receiving Your Finished Project. Everything Explained.
People are often confused about the process of booking a commercial photographer, how the photographer works on the day, how their photographs are stored, choosing the photographs for your project, when will they receive their photographs and how can they use them. So, we thought it might be useful to share how we do things. Every commercial photographer in Northern Ireland will have their own way of doing things but this is what we have found works best for us.
FIRST CONTACT FROM THE CLIENT
Most clients contact us by email, but we also receive many enquiries from messages via our Facebook page, our Twitter account, messages via our Instagram account and by telephone. We always try to respond to all enquiries within 24 hours. In the first instance we will confirm if we are available and point the client towards our website so that they can view previous commercial images we have shot, what our commercial photography pricing is and also view our terms and conditions of work.
We then wait to receive a response from them. We have been told many times that we shouldn’t do this and that we should contact the client after a few days, then again and again until we receive a response from them. We aren’t really comfortable with doing that, but this would be the normal process for most photographers. We prefer to provide as much information to the client as possible, ask them to contact us if there is anything else we can help with, and then leave it up to them to decide if we are a good fit for what they are looking for.
CONSULTATION
Once the client has come back to us, we answer any additional questions they might have and offer them the option of a consultation. When we first started photographing commercially we would call out with every client and explain how we photograph. It’s quite rare that we do this now though as most clients seem to prefer to do everything by telephone and email, so generally we do a telephone consultation instead, however if you would still prefer to meet in person to talk through your options, this is still available. We won’t take a booking from a client until we have spoken through their options first. We think it’s important to have a chat with the client about how we do things to make sure that they are 100% happy with everything before we agree to taking their booking, as we feel this will help to make things run a lot smoother come shoot day.
HOLDING DATES
We often get asked if we can hold a date, unfortunately this is something we can not offer even if it is only for a few days. We often get multiple enquiries for the same date, wether its from commercial, wedding or portraiture clients. To try and be as fair as possible to everyone that contacts us, we operate on a first come first served basis.
CONFIRMING A BOOKING
Before we can confirm a booking, we ask our clients to make a deposit payment and complete a booking form. The booking form is important, it is provided by the company that provides our public liability insurance and we have to have a completed booking form for every shoot we carry out for our insurance to remain valid. For deposit payments we prefer bank transfer as the method of payment, although we can also take PayPal and cash payments if preferred. Once we have received the payment, we will send a receipt by email.
FINAL CONFIRMATION OF DETAILS
Around one week before the shoot we will contact the client by telephone or email , we will have a quick chat to confirm all the details so we can put a plan together at our end for when everything is happening. The day before the shoot we will send the client a quick message confirming the address for where the shoot is going to take place and our arrival time just in case of any last-minute change of plans.
MAKING FINAL PAYMENT
We like to be as flexible as possible when it comes to payment, so we only ask for our clients to make their balance payment within 28 days of the date their shoot has been carried out. As with deposit payments, we this can be done via bank transfer, PayPal or cash.
STORING YOUR IMAGES
Once we return from a shoot all of the photographs are backed up multiple times and stored in two different locations. The memory cards we used during your shoot are also stored away. We won’t erase them and use them again until all of your photographs have been edited and are ready to supply to you. A final online back up is also created as well. This might seem like overkill but we will do everything we can to ensure that clients images are protected.
EDITING PROCESS
As a first step all of the photographs from your shoot will go through a culling process. This is where we delete any photographs that won’t make the cut in terms of what we provide to you. For example, photographs that are unusable due to unwanted distractions and obstructions obscuring our view etc. Once the images have been culled, we have our own process for editing to get the images to fit in with our style of photography. We prefer natural, real photographs so we will try not to over Photoshop images or do excessive retouching etc unless the images or client requires it.
Once all the images have been edited, we will upload the images to a secure online gallery for the client to view at their leisure. This means that the client has time to think about and discuss about which images meet their needs the best.
We like to be flexible in terms of timescales from when we photograph your project until we provide you with your digital images and will do our best to meet our clients needs , wether it be from a quick turn around or a more leisurely paced turn around.