Every now and then I meet or hear of of people who are shocked and surprised about the price of custom photography. So, I thought it might be worth giving a glimpse into our world (the children’s portrait photography world)….how it works from an inside perspective.

It’s true, if you have no other experience with photography beyond your local mall, then the world of custom photography will seem foriegn and outrageously expensive to you. I was in the same boat just two years ago before I went into professional photography…I was also one of those people clipping out the $9.99 coupons and running over to the mall.

However, that was ironically one of the things that pushed me into professional photography. I was completely frustrated with the gamble I was taking when I walked into those places. Will my photographer be patient? Will she understand my daughter’s moodiness? What if there is some hair in my daughter’s face, can it be removed? Etc etc. We had so many negative experiences, I actually walked out once because the photographer was just standing behind the camera and not attempting to do anything with my daughter. Another time I had a photographer that kept taking cell phone calls during our ”session”.  It was so frustrating. Plus, all of those things combined with the heat of the overhead lighting system…and I vowed to never do it again. From that point on I would take my own kids’ photos.

As moms we go through SOOOOO MUCH just to get pictures taken…choosing the outfit, coordinating a time that our child is not cranky, bringing snacks along “just in case” of a meltdown, etc. It’s stressful to go through that and not even know if you will end up getting a good photographer, or good pictures. When you hire a custom/private photographer, you generally do not have to worry about much of that!

We do this because we enjoy it. It’s a passion for us. Generally, I do not think we would ever end a session unless we were sure we had some great shots. However, beyond the one-on-one service and complete customization of your session, one of the biggest factors contributing to the price of customs photography is the editing that goes into your images (especially for newborn sessions)!

Personally, I won’t even show clients the photos that I do not edit. I want everything that I present to be a finished product.  Most custom photographers offer in the range of 10-30 finished and edited images for you to choose from. Some photographers will just burn a CD of SOOC (straight out of camera) images and give you about 200 or more, but that’s personally not my style.

Ok…so enough rambling! Here’s an example of what the “editing” means, and why you may not necessarily want SOOC images, or hundreds of pictures to choose from. Do you really need to see photos taken at 3-second increments? No, you just need to see the best, not necessarily EVERYTHING that was taken.

Here is something SOOC…my client never saw this picture, it did not make it into my editing “cut”:

It has potential, but to me the baby is too stretched out, I prefer them to be curled up and cozy looking, so I never even took this photo into editing. Plus, I think the naked-ness combined with the stretched out pose makes the baby look almost abandoned. Like she doesn’t belong there, like someone should go and pick her up and hold her close! So, I tried something else….swaddled to make her cozy and moved in closer:

This one has potential. I wouldn’t present it SOOC because there are still things wrong with it, but I might consider this one to be edited. And here’s what editing means:

I could probably stop at this step and the image would be pretty presentable, but I’m going to take it another step further because I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I try not to have any distracting features in my images, nothing that my eye is drawn to except for the preciousness of the baby. In this image, my eye keeps going to the creases in the baby’s forehead. She looks a little stressed (when really she is just reacting to the bright sun coming in from the doorway). I’m going to attempt to smooth out some of them and lessen their appearance (healing tool in Photoshop, clone tool, and some dodging/lightening of shadow areas):

I could have definitely stopped there, but I sometimes take it another step further and play with some actions I have. This one is a velvet cream action and I really like how it makes it all look more ethereal and dreamy.

And just one more obsessive step further…

And that’s pretty much the finished image!! I may take it one step further and present an alternate orientation for a different feel…which would be like this:

And that would it. Times about 30 But I love it!