What Happens After My Fort Worth Session?

I was asked a really good session question recently: How long does it actually take to edit a photography gallery?

I think most people know that photographers edit their images, but unless you’ve been on this side of the camera, it’s hard to know what that really means. Your session may last an hour or two, and then a few weeks later a beautiful finished gallery arrives in your inbox. There is quite a bit happening during the time in between, and I thought it would be fun to take you behind the scenes and show you where your photos go after we say goodbye.

When the Session is Over

As soon as your session is over, I bring all of the images into my editing program. And when I say all of them, there are a LOT! I photograph all of those little in-between moments along with the images I know we need, which means my first job is carefully going through everything and choosing the strongest photographs for your gallery. Once I’ve narrowed those down, I give them a light edit and create a soft proof gallery for you. You’ll use that gallery to choose the images you want me to finish. Just getting to this point can easily take an hour or longer.

Once your selections come back to me, the detailed editing begins. This is where I spend the largest amount of time with your images, usually another three to four hours for a single gallery. I hand edit each photograph, starting with my base edit and then paying close attention to the things that make an image feel finished. Skin tones are especially important to me. Different lighting, clothing and surroundings can cause skin to pick up unexpected colors, so I make small adjustments until everyone still looks natural and like themselves.

Color is another big piece of my editing process. My work here in Fort Worth has a warm, earthy look, but creating that style isn’t as simple as adding warmth to an image and calling it finished. I’m looking at the entire gallery together. I want the colors, backgrounds and overall tones to transition naturally as you move from one photograph to another. Sometimes an image looks beautiful on its own, but when I see it beside the rest of the gallery, I realize it needs another adjustment. So back into the edit I go!

Then there are all of those tiny things you probably never knew were there. Newborns may have flaky skin. A child may have shown up with a fresh bruise or scratch. There might be a flyaway hair, something distracting in the background or a small detail that keeps pulling my eye away from the people in the photograph. I work through those individually, along with subtle adjustments to eyes or teeth when they’re needed. My goal isn’t to make people look like different versions of themselves. I simply want those little distractions out of the way so the people you love are what you notice first.

By the time I finish a gallery, I’ve usually spent around five hours on the editing process alone, and sometimes it takes even longer. I may finish an image, come back to it later and decide I want to change something. I’ve been doing this long enough to know that sometimes stepping away and looking at a gallery again with fresh eyes makes a difference. I would rather take that extra time than send something out simply because I technically finished it. Which brings me to another question photographers hear quite a bit: If editing one gallery takes around five hours, why can the turnaround time be several weeks?

All about editing your session

The simple answer is that I’m caring for more than one gallery at a time. During busy seasons, I may photograph several families, newborns or maternity sessions in a single week. Each session goes through the same process of culling, proofing, client selections and detailed final editing. Five hours multiplied across several galleries becomes a significant amount of editing time, and that work has to happen alongside photographing new sessions and everything else happening behind the scenes at Paula Goforth Photography.

There are emails to answer, sessions to prepare for, a studio to keep ready, products to order and upcoming clients to plan for. I’ve learned over the years that I need to leave room in my schedule to do each part of this well. I never want your photographs to become something I’m trying to finish as quickly as possible because another task is waiting. So when you’re waiting for your finished gallery, I promise it hasn’t been forgotten. Your turnaround time gives me the space to sit down with your images and work through them carefully. These photographs are going to live on your walls, fill albums and become part of your family’s history. I want to feel good about every image I send to you, and I want you to be excited when you finally get to open that gallery.

Ready to book?

The camera may stop clicking when your session ends, but my work on your photographs is really only getting started.