Post-shoot, delivery, and retouching

The shoot itself is the visible part of the work. The post — selection, retouching, color, delivery — is the invisible part, and it's where most of the difference between a competent set of images and a strong one actually happens. Standard turnaround on a portrait sitting is ten business days from shoot to final gallery; on a brand campaign it's the same per-image standard but the volume scales the timeline.

First step is selection. Within forty-eight hours of the shoot I send a small unretouched proof set — usually six to twelve images representative of the session, just to confirm we're aligned on tone and direction. The proof is for orientation, not selection: you don't need to pick favorites, you just need to react. If something feels off (a wardrobe choice, a lighting direction, an expression you want more of), this is when we catch it.

The full selection is mine. I cull the session down to the final gallery size — fifteen to twenty-five images for a portrait sitting, twenty-five to forty for a half-day brand session, sixty to ninety for a full-day. The cull is opinionated; I'm not delivering everything that was technically in focus. You're paying for editorial judgment, not for raw output.

Retouching standard varies by image. Skin retouching is conservative — pores, texture, and the small irregularities of being a real person stay. What gets removed: blemishes that aren't part of you, stray hairs, a piece of lint on a sweater, a cable in the corner of the frame, a distracting background element. What stays: laugh lines, scars, freckles, the geometry of your face. Heavy skin retouching ages portraits poorly and reads as dishonest within five years.

Color is mine to set. Each image gets individually graded to its own palette — a session shouldn't read as a single LUT applied to thirty images, even if it produces a consistent overall feel. The grading work is what makes a gallery feel cohesive when you scroll through it but each image still feel earned.

Delivery is via a private gallery link. You can download all the images at full resolution from the gallery, share specific images with a single link, and I keep the gallery live for at least a year. After a year you'll get a heads-up before it sunsets; before that you have unlimited access. Reprints, prints on archival paper, and image licensing for additional contexts are available — those happen on request after the initial delivery.