Did you get into photography to create beautiful images or did you pick up a camera hoping that one day you’d be sitting in front of a screen for hours on end? If you want to turn your workflow to more behind the camera, and less in the digital darkroom – Zookbinders Editing & Culling Service could be your solution!
If your face is currently aglow from the dim light of your monitor, there’s a kink in your neck, and you haven’t seen another human in days, this blog is for you. When talking with professional photographers about their pain points the biggest time suck across the board is culling and editing.
Love it or hate it, Lightroom is the new dark room and editing has become the sloth crossing the road in a photographer’s workflow. Unclogging the bottleneck created by culling and editing is very easily done by outsourcing these tasks.
New Solution for Photographers
Zookbinders now offers culling and editing services. Using Lighroom Smart Previews you can very easily share small versions of RAW files with our editors. The editors make adjustments based on your preferences. Additional options like vignetting, cropping and straightening, and creative filters are also available.
Once your project is complete the smart previews will be returned to you and you can apply the settings to the full size RAW images. So, it’s a no-brainer, Zookbinders is the one-stop shop from shoot to album. Need some convincing? Read on.
Doing Your Own Editing Doesn't Increase the Value of Your Work
Jennifer is a professional photographer and delivers edited images to her clients three weeks after their wedding and charges $3500. If Jim down the street takes 2 months to deliver he doesn’t get to charge $3500 because it took longer. Your customer has hired you to photograph their wedding and everything else you do behind the scenes is a mystery. They expect to get their gallery fast and they want to believe all their images are all straight out of camera gorgeous, so make that your delivery goal.
Paying for Editing Services is an Investment in Your Time
We pay for expediting all the time. As consumers we see this often when there is a problem with an online purchase – maybe it is temporarily out of stock or has an unavoidable delay. The business can ship it via ground transport, but it may not get to us as fast as on express transportation like a plane. Yes, it costs the company more – but we get our product in the expected turnaround time and it keeps us happy. This is what photographers need to do for their customers as well.
Let it Go.
For some photographers, the thought of another entity touching their RAW unedited images is like asking them to walk into traffic blindfolded. Let’s be real here. Basic editing and culling can easily be done by professionals with experience – even if they weren’t at the wedding. For photographers to be so closely connected to your own work and analyzing its worth, its flaws, its beauty, its opportunity to be better – is all sorts of thinking that, to be honest, no one cares about except you.
Do the Math.
So, is it worth the money and your time to outsource your editing? At 15 cents an image, Zookbinders editing is a great price. Go ahead and count up the number of hours you spend culling and editing your wedding images. Multiply that by what you believe you should be paid per hour. What does that answer look like? Right now hopefully you’re fantasizing about what you’d do with all that extra time. You could take on more clients, do more engagement sessions, attend more networking events, or spend more time with your family and friends. Time is money and you can’t make more time.
To learn more about Zookbinders editing and culling click HERE
