Image Delivery

This can depend on a multitude of variables, as well as the methodology of the individual photographer. But most importantly, if there was a serious time consideration, this should have been disclosed to the photographer at the time the Estimate was requested.

Time Frame

This is greatly dependent on the number of images in your shoot, specific deadlines requested at the time of Estimate, and the workload of the photographer’s studio itself. Your photographer should provide you an estimated date of delivery of proofs (whether online or hard copy) within 1-2 business days of the shoot. Just a basic rule of thumb on the typical processing time images not requiring extensive post production efforts is two to twelve hours for each image, so if you have a five image shoot and taking an average of that, you could potentially be looking at 30 man hours in post production, so, potentially a week.

Online Contact Sheets

For ease of review, and sharing among many parties within your firm, many photographers provide online contact sheets to their clients. From these contact sheets, final delivered images can be selected. However, some clients still prefer to have a physical contact sheet delivered. If this is your preference, be sure to tell that to the photographer at the time you’re asking for the Estimate.

Final Images

There is a wide variety of image delivery options available to you:

• Electronic Download - final image files can easily be downloaded directly from a photographer’s web site
• DVD Delivery - a physical DVD with all the final images delivered to your office
• Hard Copy Delivery - a hard copy print(s) created by the photographer
• Combination - some clients prefer a combination of two or more of the above delivery options of the final images

Image Storage

Though your photographer undoubted is going to maintain a copy of your images, to be absolutely safe that you always have access to your images, the best approach is maintaining your own catalog.

The industry standard for Digital Asset Management (yes, DAM) is the 3-2-1 approach.

• Three (3) copies of the images
• Two (2) different onsite drives or media (one hard disk/server, one DVD, or two hard disks)
• One (1) offsite copy. These files can be maintained on either a hard disk, back up service, etc.

Whether we are your photographer or not, if you have any questions or comments about commissioning architectural photography, please feel free to drop us a line anytime. We'd be happy to help!

Kimberly Blom-Roemer
Architectural and Aerial Photographer
R2 Photography, LLC
r2-photography.com
866-722-9506