The autumn run is the same every year: sessions stack up from September, the December deadline is real because prints have to arrive, and editing is the thing that gets pushed to midnight. Most photographers first contact me somewhere around the third week of October, which is later than ideal.
In short
- Start before the peak, not inside it — the first gallery is the calibration
- Hand off whole galleries, not the images you find annoying
- Two to three days of turnaround is what protects your own promise
- Send your own finished images once, and every gallery after matches
- There is nothing to cancel when the season ends
Why October is late
Not because I am full — because the first gallery with a new editor is the one where you discover I read your style slightly warm, or that you hate what I did to the background. That conversation is easy in September and expensive in December. One quiet gallery in advance turns the peak into routine.
Hand off whole galleries
The instinct is to keep the easy files and send the horrible ones. It backfires: the gallery arrives at the client half in your hand and half in mine, and the difference shows in exactly the way that makes people uneasy about a set of photographs.
Send the whole session. Consistency inside one gallery matters more than which of us is faster on any single frame.
Keeping your own turnaround promise
If you promise clients two weeks, the arithmetic is simple: cull within two days, send, and a normal gallery is back in one to five working days. That leaves you a week of slack for the round of revisions and the client who cannot choose. During peak season I hold capacity for regulars rather than taking every new gallery that arrives, which is the only way turnaround stays a number rather than a hope.
After the season
There is nothing to cancel. No retainer, no minimum, no monthly fee — you send galleries when you have them and stop when you do not. Photographers I work with often send four galleries in November and nothing in February, and that is a normal year, not a problem.
FAQ
Usually, but tell me the size first. Twenty galleries in one week needs planning; four does not. I would rather turn down volume than deliver it late.
That is most people. There is nothing to sign and nothing to cancel.
Inside one gallery, no — send whole sessions. Across different sessions it is fine, especially once I have your finished images to match.
One gallery, six to eight weeks before your peak. That is enough to get the style conversation out of the way.
Deividas Kvederys — photographer and retoucher based in Lithuania, EU. 450+ weddings and 1,500+ sessions of my own before I started editing for other photographers, and I still edit every image myself. Newborn retouching · All genres and pricing