Outsource my post-production?

[JacobPhoto]

Well, don't ever think that I will need it but I'm stuck and went out of my deadlines..

Can anybody share experience in outsourcing their editing process? I'm interested in your own real experience and some basic rates.

 

[table1349]

Sorry, this probably won't help but I don't outsource my work. When you do you loose control.

With that said, in the old days in the business, we would out source to whom ever the customer wanted if they were wanting it outsourced. Otherwise done in house.

 

[sscarmack]

Time management.

 

[JacobPhoto]

Half a year ago I thought the same.. but now I understand that I can't be in two places at once. If you want to grow your business you need to entrust part of your work to someone else or you'll always stay a craftsman in photography.

 

[JacobPhoto]

Time management.

How many shoots per week do you have? Time management, however, is not a panacea.

 

[table1349]

Quality not quantity. Are all the clients picking that many photos that you don't have time to process the ones they selected? Working harder will only get you so far, you have to work smarter.

 

[JacobPhoto]

The main part is wedding packages, especially in high season. Plus some portraits and events on weekdays. I found some post production services but they offer annual contracts which are unsuitable for me.

 

[table1349]

The main part is wedding packages, especially in high season. Plus some portraits and events on weekdays. I found some post production services but they offer annual contracts which are unsuitable for me.

Are the couples getting disks with edited photos or are they picking individual photos for print? While everyone wants their photos before you even took them there is always going to be a reasonable amount of wait time from snap to finished product. What is your time spread from selection to finished product?

Unless you can find someone to work in-house with you that you trust with your work you may need to look at either your structure or if you are that busy, the number of shoots you do. Quantity lasts only so long with average quality. Great Quality will follow you around and attract those that desire quality. It would be nice is some of the wedding photographers would hop in. We did very minimal wedding work and only at our choosing. We did portrait and commercial photography mainly with more than enough business to keep us going.

 

[astroNikon]

on another note

If you are in such high demand with 100% utilization.
You could try raising your prices a bit. More revenue. maybe if you raise them enough your increased revenue will be above any lost clientele revenue, which would provide you more PP time. Then you could hire a 2nd photog who could also edit and learn your specific nuances which are indicative of your quality output. Rather than outsource to some place far away and cookie cutter the output.

 

[Vtec44]

Well, don't ever think that I will need it but I'm stuck and went out of my deadlines..

Can anybody share experience in outsourcing their editing process? I'm interested in your own real experience and some basic rates.

The thing about this forum is that it's geared toward hobbyists, so it's always tough to get a helpful answer when you're asking a business question. People have a lot to say on here, but you just have to filter out what's useful and what's not.

I'm a wedding photographer. I limit myself shooting between 20-30 weddings a year because that is about as much as I can handle when doing my own editing. I've been recently thinking about outsourcing part of the editing, and have friends who are outsourcing and loving it. You can elect to have the company to go as far as you need, and most can closely match your style (ie exposure, straightening, WB, etc). You still have to go through the final quality check but it saves you a lot of time by not doing some of the repetitive things. Color correcting is always time consuming for me. You should try it out. IMHO, it's a great option to have. Time is a valuable commodity in our line of work. It can be put to better use like marketing, networking, learning new business strategies, etc. instead of editing.

 

[JacobPhoto]

It has NOTHING to do with your time management (unless by "time management" you mean turning away clients). And, as for raising prices, it also has nothing to do with that. We raised our prices and the clients kept coming.

In general I have the same situation.

Time is a valuable commodity in our line of work. It can be put to better use like marketing, networking, learning new business strategies, etc. instead of editing.

I fully agree!
I've found a couple of post-production studios which work via Dropbox (preferable for me). I guess that small studio could match my editing style more attentively. Already made few trial orders but still open for your suggestions.

 

[Derrel]

When I want maple syrup, I plant a maple tree sapling, wait for it to grow (15 to 22 years), and then I tap it, and collect the sap,and eventually, that becomes delicious maple syrup. Controlling every fricking step in the process makes me feel good. I do the same with my beef...I raise the calf, then once he's grown into a nice hefty steer, I slaughter him, and with my brother and our kids, we then cut and wrap the meat. We also plow,disc,seed drill,irrigate, and then harvest wheat for our loaves of bread. We even mill the damned grains of wheat to make our own flour! We know that WE are the ONLY people capable of satisfying our desire for common commodities like wheat, syrup,and meat. It's all part of the idea that one must do every,single step in the process, or the results will be utter crap. Next year we're considering getting into iron ore mining...we need a new cast iron frying pan and Dutch oven set, and we're not really sure of the ability of the big specialists to make cast iron cookware that will meet our standards.

 

[jake337]

When I want maple syrup, I plant a maple tree sapling, wait for it to grow (15 to 22 years), and then I tap it, and collect the sap,and eventually, that becomes delicious maple syrup. Controlling every fricking step in the process makes me feel good. I do the same with my beef...I raise the calf, then once he's grown into a nice hefty steer, I slaughter him, and with my brother and our kids, we then cut and wrap the meat. We also plow,disc,seed drill,irrigate, and then harvest wheat for our loaves of bread. We even mill the damned grains of wheat to make our own flour! We know that WE are the ONLY people capable of satisfying our desire for common commodities like wheat, syrup,and meat. It's all part of the idea that one must do every,single step in the process, or the results will be utter crap. Next year we're considering getting into iron ore mining...we need a new cast iron frying pan and Dutch oven set, and we're not really sure of the ability of the big specialists to make cast iron cookware that will meet our standards.

While I Do agree I wonder how your beef would stack up to some Kobe beef in Japan. Not saying you grow bad beef as I'm sure I would devour it.

I guess it depends on your needs/wants and your customer needs/wants.

If your customer needs Pratik Naik level retouching then you should hire Soltice Retouch or get to his level.


If I had extra cash I would love to see how a world class retoucher finishes one of my images.

Maybe it's just me but I worksheet want to spend money on someone who can do it "just as good as me". I'd want someone who was better than me. Once you start handing a part of the process to someone else you are now building a team. You want good players.

It also can be fun to collaborate.

 

[Derrel]

I was thinking about some of the world-famous, successful shooters who made entire careers on shooting images that were "post-processed" into their final form by somebody ELSE, and not just "occasionally", but every day, for years and even decades and decades on end.

Marked Up Photographs Show How Iconic Prints Were Edited in the Darkroom
Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing
Outsourcing Digital Photography Services to India - Outsource2india
Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats (Part I)

"Voja Mitrovic, Printer to the Greats (Part I)"
Printer for HCB for 30 years, 1967-1997. Printer for Josef Koudelka. Also the printer for Peter Turnley, and for others, listed by Turnley himself as including but not limited to: "Sebastio Salgado, Werner Bischof, René Burri, Marc Riboud, Robert Doisneau, Edouard Boubat, Man Ray, Atget, Helmut Newton, Raymond Depardon, Bruno Barbey, Jean Gaumy, Frederic Brenner, Max Vadukul, and Peter Lindbergh "

Those are some of the BIGGEST names in the history of 20th century photography. People who turned their POST production work over to "somebody other than themselves."

A thought occurrs to me: what if the professional, paid image retoucher and Photoshop professional's skills is actually BETTER at post work than I am ? I know that MANY top-tier fashion shooters have ALL their post work done by "others".

What if I were to create well-exposed images, ones that were lighted well, focused well, and then I payed a post-processing specialist, with a powerful workstation-level computer and a suite of state of the art software and state of the art input devices (tablet,pen,etc), and he or she simply cranked out high-quality work with astounding speed based on my notes and my directives?

It's my understanding that much higher-end commercial advertising images are edited by somebody other than the person who pressed the shutter release. On the opposite side of the coin, I've been asked to process images shot by friends and family members, and I've been able to envision/find/extract VERY nice photos from source material that is not all that great right off the memory cards...

I KNOW for a fact that a top-flight Photoshop/Lightroom treatment can make a good image into a fine image, and a top-flight processing effort can turn an excellent image into a superb image.

 

[manaheim]

As a business problem, it's an interesting one. I tend to think that companies should never outsource what makes them special, because that's the "secret sauce". If my IT consulting company outsourced our IT support... we would lose what makes us special.

All that said, I once read a story about how Nike outsources everything... except marketing.

So... what does that say?

I think a lot of folks on here would balk at the idea of outsourcing the post-processing. It certainly was my gut reaction initially... but then I stopped and thought about the 12 weddings or so that I shot...

If you do a LOT of weddings that probably a large number of your images fall within certain repeating categories, and you likely have a pretty consistent style for treatment of these. I also bet you have a very small subset of images for each wedding that are truly unique and need your personal attention. Within that construct, I bet you could outsource a LOT of your editing to someone with a clue and make it work. It's an interesting idea. (and obviously not a unique one, given some of the other comments here)