Booking A
Portrait Photographer

From Booking A Portraiture Session To Receiving Your Finished Images, Everything Explained.

People are often confused about the process of booking a portrait photographer, how the photographer works on the day, how their photographs are stored, choosing their final photographs, 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 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
Most people contact us by email, but we also receive enquiries from messages via our Facebook page, 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 direct the potential client towards our website so that they can view previous photoshoots that have been carried out by us, what our photography package options are.

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 potential 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 potential 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 we would have called out with every client and explained how we would photograph them on the day. 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. We won’t take a booking from a client until we have done this 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.
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. 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 client we photograph for our insurance to remain valid. For deposit payments we prefer bank transfer as the method of payment. Once we have received the payment, we will send a receipt by email.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Once a booking has confirmed however we always encourage our couples to contact us if we can help with anything else, sometimes couples will come back to us and ask us to suggest ideas for themes and locations for their photo shoot, other times they will ask us to recommend other vendors, such as hair dressers or makeup artists which we are always happy to do.
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 at the latest by the proposed day of their photo shoot. As with deposit payments, we prefer bank transfer as the method of payment, although many times or clients prefer to pay in cash while the photo shoot is being carried out.
STORING YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS
After photographing you 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 FOR PHOTOGRAPHS
As a first step all of the photographs from your session 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 from the shoot that are unusable due to maybe a misfiring flash, poor framing etc. Once the images have been culled, we will upload them to an online gallery for you to view them and pick your chosen images for us to edit.

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 never over Photoshop images or do excessive skin retouching etc, although if you prefer a bit more retouching than we would normally do this isn’t an issue.

Once all the images have been edited, we start work on getting them to you in your chosen format.

In terms of timescales from when we shoot until we provide you with your final images our normal turn around time is within 2 weeks, although if we have them ready sooner than that we will of course get them to you asap.