How many photos to allow client to choose from portrait shoot

[Steven Rowley]

<p>I follow a few photographers who have been around many years and who only have the clients view and choose the photos they want from an online gallery. What is a good number of photos to have a client pick from roughly 150- 200 shot during a session? Also, do any of you offer retouched, final photos in a digital format only, with no actual prints?</p>

[Ian Taylor]

<p>That's all I have done for eight years. I have a couple of packages. I post the proofs and they select.<br>

If they want more there is a price for that as well. Up to you how many.</p>

[michaelmowery]

<p>You weed out all the bad shots and minimize duplicates. You should not delete original images because you can't sell what you don't show. If you do not plan on selling the images and you are including the files then you can weed it down more to a best of the best shots. I know some photographers who say your shoot includes 40-60 images. I don't know exactly what type of shoot they are doing unless its a 1/2 hour but if you do an hour or more you can't help but have 150 images or so. The main thing to take away from this is to show and sell not show and give away.</p>

[gulfbeach47]

<p>For a family portrait session, I typical shoot 150- 200 images. Number of images shot for other projects are usually less.<br />Customer views unedited images at my website. From the website, I offer X amount of edited images for X amount of dollars. If they want additional images, they pay X amount per image. Remember that editing can be time consuming when doing your pricing.<br />I sell them digital format, but they can also order prints online at my website.</p>

[parttimephoto]

<p>Steven, Michael sums it up well: weed out the bad shots and minimize duplicates.<br>

If I do a one-hour shoot with a senior, I'll make around 150-250 images in maybe 15-30 'scenes' or setups. Each scene I do I'm hoping to make at least one "must-have" image from that scene, so when it comes time for the sales session (I do in-person sales - per-client sales averages for me have been vastly higher than online galleries), there is too much variety of great images for the client to say no to them. They then end up purchasing my CD of all the images, fully processed and in hi-res (which is always priced a little higher than my per-client average sale; every sale then drives the value and price up).<br>

I try to show one set of must-have images per scene, and maybe two versions of each (slightly different angle, pose, or expression). With a few black and white versions of my favorites and some great outtake shots (that won't get bought by themselves, but add a lot of value to the all-images CD offering), I'll show 40-60 proofs.<br>

That's just the way I work. I've met photographers who show no more than 10 images per shoot, sometimes just five, but they often only offer large wall-art or higher dollar minimum-order packages.<br>

I love digital, so yes, the majority of my business is in digital image sales.<br>

Best of luck Steven! Have a great weekend!</p>