A wedding photographer should deliver 50 to 100 photos per hour of coverage, with portrait sessions typically requiring more images. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how many pictures a photographer should deliver, but it is essential to communicate your vision for the photos. The number of photos you should expect from a professional wedding photographer depends on factors such as the size of the wedding, the number of hours covered, and the style of photography.
For 20-page wedding albums, couples typically include one to three photos per page, which translates to between 10 and 60 photos. If the ceremony stretches over 10 to 12 hours, the photographer might capture 1,200 to 1,440 photos if a picture is clicked every 30 seconds. However, not more than 800 copies will be delivered after editing.
A good wedding photographer should take 2,000-4,000 images on an average day, but a reasonable amount of photos to give to a client would be about 200-300 photos per each 8-hour day (for a low-end wedding). A professional photographer will only use 200 of the 1,000 to 2,000 raw photos they take since they are the highest quality.
When hiring a professional photographer to document your wedding for eight hours, you may expect to receive between 400 and 800 final images. The perfect number is typically about 100 images. As well as being posted on their blog and sent through Pic-time, clients can download all of those photos.
In conclusion, the number of photos a wedding photographer should deliver depends on various factors, including the size of the wedding, the number of hours covered, and the style of photography. It is crucial to communicate your vision and expectations when choosing a photographer.
📹 Wedding Photography – How Many Photos Should You Deliver?
My thoughts on how many photos to deliver as a wedding photographer. Day 26 of the course! On to editing tomorrow. I know I …
Do wedding photographers send all photos?
No. Your wedding photographer will take thousands of photos on your wedding day. Some of these are duplicates, test shots, and a few where someone blinked or walked in front of the lens. It happens. Do wedding photographers give all photos, and do they give the RAW ones? These questions are asked often on wedding forums. Let’s go over them one by one. Your wedding photographer will take thousands of photos on your wedding day. Some of these are duplicates, test shots, and a few where someone blinked or walked in front of the lens. It happens.
Our job as photographers is to choose the best photos from the many we take. You get a set of photos that capture the key moments. Quality over quantity.
How many photos do you get from a wedding photographer?
A wedding photographer delivers between 50 and 100 wedding photos per hour. I usually deliver 800 to 1000 digital files for 12 hours. How many pictures does a professional photographer deliver on a wedding? How many pictures do you deliver on a wedding? This is a common question. The number of pictures delivered depends on your wedding reception.
How many photos do you normally get from a photographer?
You can expect to receive 50-100 photos per hour. There’s no one answer to this question. This depends on the shoot, how many people are involved, and what you want to achieve. Your photographer will decide the best approach for you.
Based on the photographer, here is a breakdown of how many photos you can expect:
A wedding photographer will deliver 400 to 800 photos from an eight-hour wedding, but this number can vary. A portrait photographer will deliver between 20 and 50 photos from a one-hour session. The number of photos can vary depending on the number of people and the photographer’s style. Event photographers typically deliver between 50 and 100 photos from an hour-long event.
Do photographers give you all the photos?
Most professional photographers keep the copyright and artistic license over their images, so they won’t give you their RAW files. You will receive all high-resolution, print-ready images from the day. You don’t have to choose which images are edited.
1. You can’t use this file type anyway.
2. The editing shows my style and business. It’s also my reputation. If I give you the RAWs and you edit them, it can be bad.
Can you ask wedding photographer for all photos?
Can we request specific shots? You can’t specify every image you want to take, but most photographers will take the important shots and family portraits. Let them know if anything unexpected happens. Do you charge for travel? Some photographers charge a fee for travel if they have to go far to get to your venue.
Why do photographers not give you all the photos?
Photographers spend hours editing their photos to reflect their style and create memorable images. If you ask a photographer to deliver their work unfinished, you’re not getting the service you paid for. Today, I’m talking about something many photographers get asked by clients. The dreaded “Can you just give me the RAW photos?” question haunts photographers. Many photographers I know get asked for their RAW photo files often. I’ve never had a client ask for them, but I still wanted to speak on it to help those who don’t understand why photographers won’t give them. If you ask a photographer to give you their RAW photos, they’ll probably say no. I’ll explain why. Imagine you go out to eat at a fancy restaurant. One where the chef is well-known. You look at the menu and decide to eat there. The waitress comes out to take your order. You order one of the chef’s specialty dishes, but you want it uncooked on a plate. The chef won’t do that because he’s made this dish just right. He’s spent time learning how to cook the ingredients perfectly to give customers the best experience. If you ask a chef to deliver his specialty dish uncooked, you won’t get the quality meal he intended. Ingredients aren’t a meal. How you prepare and cook the ingredients is the other half of cooking. I’ll explain more later. Think of your wedding photographer as the head chef of a restaurant. Taking photos is like making a specialty dish. Editing, color correction, and skin retouching are like preparing and cooking the raw ingredients.
How many photos should a photographer deliver?
Small business concept rate: 1-5 images (usually around 10 to choose from) Social media (per recipe): 1-3 images (usually around 5-10 to choose from) Full-day event: 35-50 images (not selects to choose from) Full-day event: 50 images (not selects to choose from) How many images should you give your client? You know those answers that don’t really answer the question? I’ve got one for you. The number of images you supply after a shoot depends on the client and the job. Your initial estimate should include how many images you’ll supply in each package. This helps clients understand their needs when you give them your rate card. This number is the best way to provide value in the negotiation stage.
Some general guidelines: How many images should you give your client? Let’s look at different types of jobs. There are two types of jobs: editorial/commercial and small business.
Why do photographers only give you a few photos?
Giving you every photo doesn’t show the finished product, and giving you unedited shots doesn’t either. If you see unedited photos with my name on them, you’ll think I’m a bad photographer. You’ll probably be unhappy with them because they didn’t get the full treatment. Remember, our editing skills are included in the price of your package.
HANNAH – HOW DO I MAKE SURE MY PHOTOGRAPHER WONT MISS ANYTHING? Don’t assume. Everyone is different. Make sure you’re clear before the big day.
What is the average number of photos in a wedding album?
Most couples have an album with 30-40 spreads (60-80 pages) with 150-300 photos. We design as many pages as we think best tell your wedding story. Even after 10 years, we still have trouble guessing how many pages the album will be. Most couples send us hundreds of photos, so we choose about 300. Some couples just send us their favorite photos. We can’t answer how many photos or pages we need without knowing what photos and how many from each part of the wedding day. We divide the album into sections of the day, not photos. This should help you understand how big your album might be. Please don’t include pages for sections of the day you don’t have photos for or don’t want included.
How many images do you get for a wedding?
How many wedding photos? Conclusion: 75-100 photos per hour. You’ll get 600-800 images in eight hours of wedding photography coverage. Wedding photography is about telling your story. Your images are edited to tell your story.
How many photos should you give for an event?
Set expectations with your client. Tell your client how many final images you expect to create. Don’t over-promise. A reasonable offer might be about 50 to 75 images for an hour.
What is the 3 1 rule in photography?
The rule of thirds says to put your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds open. The rule of thirds is a good way to take well-composed photos.
📹 How Many Photos Should You Shoot On A Wedding Day?
In this video I discuss my thoughts on the amount of photos that should be shot on a wedding day. Bottom Line: experimentation …
Coming from film days I’m very precise when I push the shutter, even in continuous mode I don’t take more than 3-5 photos, and between 700 to 1000 on a wedding day, I mostly rely on Paretto’s 80-20 rule to get most of the shots, but this comes after 25 years of experience as a full time working pro. Great articles, I like to listen someone who talks from experience in the field, keep it up with your articles! Cheers from Argentina, south America.
I am an amateur hobbyist but I shot two weddings using a canon t3 and t1i with my daughter. They were close friends and they had no budget the reception was pot luck it was so very low budget. I watched a ton of YouTube articles and practiced allot before the event. Luckily we also went to that same church so I knew the layout. I think before editing there was 600 photos total from both cameras. Thinking back I wanted to take more but the timeline was very tight. It was a learning experience and now I have much more respect for wedding photographers. You guys earn your check we did it pro bono !
You made a few excellent points that remind me of all the difficulties I was struggling with in the film days. High cost of “storage” and how it limited the pleasure of experimenting, the manual forward of the film on some cameras, locked into single ISO/ASA per role, changing roles took a felt eternity, and results took forever to materialize unless you had your own lab. I definitely don’t wish those times back and not using the capabilities of digital is like running a V12 on one cylinder. It is totally fine if somebody wants to do photography as a kind of slow meditation, there is no doubt artistic value in it. But not if you have a 100+ people performing action in a few hours that never come back. My humble thoughts on the topic. Great website btw. thanks for the great articles
Couldn’t agree with you more. On my first wedding reception where I was really just there as a friend doing a favour. I just snapped away. I took a couple of thousand images on one body in about 4 hours. I had very little experience but I just took pictures that I thought could be interesting. I ended up with a very small percentage of keepers. But I also ended up with enough really good images to give the couple something that they loved. And I learned more from that one session than I had in the months before just taking a few pictures here and there on my own. I am the same today. I don’t worry about it at all. I just snap away all day having fun. Though I get a much higher rate of keepers now because I know what I am dong somewhat.
This is more of a broad comment on your article topic. but to comment @ 2:00 – on . Ive been shooting professionally for about 5 years now. I still see month to month or year to year how much I progress in lighting, shooting and editing. Honestly I hate seeing my work from 3 years ago 😂. Ive had a few friends of mine get into photography as would talk to me about how their camera or lens isn’t that great. The #1 thing I always tell someone looking to get into photography is, “just keep shooting!” don’t worry about gear, fuckin up or what other people think of your images. Im just glad a REAL photographer is talking about this on youtube finally! 💯 Keep it up, man!
Excellent topic. I shot my first wedding last July. I was very inexperienced yet I was grateful for the opportunity. I shot well over two thousand photos. I covered the entire day by myself. Pre ceremony shots of the bride, groom, bridesmaids and groomsmen. I shot a total of ten hours. I ended up delivering 80 photos which I put together in and album for the client. They were very pleased with the end product…. I couldn’t imagine NOT having a ton of photos to sort through in order to acquire the absolute BEST photo of that particular moment when the boot was taken…..I’d much rather have more options to sort through before editing. Nothing sucks more that not having enough
You have a really good website, I love your perspective and style. I am just an amateur but after a number of years I have been told my images are pretty good by a well known pro who shoots for fashion mags. I used that exact technique you described using the high frame rate at my nephews outdoor wedding and moved around at every moment of the event, some low some high and ended up with about 1800 images. I culled it down to about 400 before editing and caught some magical moments of laughter, joyful smiles and really interesting angles. I had one close up shot of the new brides ring sparkling just right,, with her hand draped over my nephews neck as they had their first dance, her huge smile was slightly in the background of the ring but it nailed the moment and when she saw the photo she cried lol. I will bet a c note the photographers who you talked about arguing against this are older shooters who have been doing so long it has become a job and they have lost the desire to create magic, when you love to do something you will always experiment and generally be better than someone who does it for money, alone.
I do the same with birds and landscape. Lol. Landscapes I will do a TON of different angles. I have noticed that some pics I think aren’t any good end up being great. My dad always tells me his story’s about the days of film. He still has his old nikons. I now have a d850 and z6 and it all just blows his mind how far it’s came. Costs nothing to delete photos from a xqd. Lol. Thanks for your articles. New sub. 👍🏻👍🏻
It’s a great subject and I agree 100%. I am not shooting a lots of weddings but I think it’s depending on how big is the wedding. But in general if there is the whole package deal like before ceremony, dress, rings, getting ready, ceremony, after ceremony, groups family and friends, etc… than I would think that 2-3 000 it’s not a lot at all especially when you using high continuous a lot. In HC you can shoot 100 images in 1-2 min. easily. More you have, wider the selection will be and more likely you will have more sharper and great composition images. I am shooting a lots of family and corporate events which usually last about 3-5 hours and I do between 700-1000 at least (with burst)shoots. Only About 2-3 % of the shoots will be delivered but I am glad I’m able to make so many shoots because it just give me a little bit more comfort during shooting knowing that there is a little room for mistake.
Good topic. Back when film was currency I was taught to take the photograph only if my life depended on it. Meter, compose and shoot. I had an educated expectation of how the photographs would turn out because so much went into the preparation. It wasn’t hit and miss. Today I think it depends on what you offer as a Wedding Photographer. Are you producing the couple a printed album with a set number of photographs? Are you producing digital only photographs? Or a combination? The spray and pray approach can turn up some gems of the guests but is this what the bride and groom really want for their wedding album? It’s all about asking them prior to the event. I certainly would encourage continuous bursts for key album photographs to avoid the inevitable nervous blink. Would I really want to sort though 5000 photographs for every event??? Personally I think that is excessive, you are starting to compete with the frame rate of the articlegrapher. (not really but its an example of the burst rates for stills now possible compared to cinema photography). If you do want to sort 5000+ images, its only a delete key to the bin.:)
I’ve not shot a wedding for a few years, but I once had someone call me a ‘spray and pray’ photographer because I said I could come away from a wedding with 2-3k of images. But I was getting som enice shots, and in between I was then playing around with images, trying out ideas I was seeing others shoot, but doing it my own way. Some worked, some didn’t at all, but others I’d come away thinking I’d try again but a bit differently. Photography is a learning process, and unless you try things out, you’ll never learn.
Well I’m more or less an exclusively article shooter, and so every time I press the shutter it’s creating overhead that is measured (over time) in terrabytes: more storage; and much more time in post. But I heard your points and thought I should press the shutter a little more in order to push myself. Because I agree with the main point: you aren’t going to magically take some amazing shot where before you didn’t. You get there by pushing yourself, by experimenting, and finding something that works where before you didn’t know. So, thanks for the encouragement, I’m going to push things a little harder after this. In the end, it’s just storage space and some time, versus taking the best shots you can.
It is ok to shoot lots of images, if you have an idea what are you doing. Unfortunately, I have seen so many (not only young) photographers who just ‘spray and pray’ without any idea – they don’t change lens (or zoom), don’t change angle, postition, light, setting, anything! And no, they are not going to shoot masterpiece 🙂 Personally, I shoot around 2.000 images per full day wedding (10-12 hours in my country), and deliver 600-800 finished photos. And I don’t just deliver USB, all my brides and grooms have to order Wedding book or large canvas print or something like that. I simply enjoy print and believe in the power of print vs usb 🙂