it hit me this morning that i really need to start accounting for my time spent working on photography more comprehensively. as i’ve begun to spend more time working in photoshop learning and working on more complex editing processes, the amount of time i spend editing has drastically increased, and as a result, it’s forced me to reevaluate my approach to finishing.

consider this example. on saturday, i joined stock for some event photography, and in four hours onsite, i shot roughly 800 photos (it was really. closer to 900 but let’s round it to keep it simple). that’s 200 photos per hour. this morning, i edited the photos. first, i sorted the images and ended up with just over 120 keeper photos. from there, i applied edits, including color corrections, lighting adjustments, crops and geometric alignments. from roughly 7:40am to 9:10am, so 90 minutes of concentrated effort. keeping in mind that i still need to upload the photos, and may need to do custom retouches on a small percentage, let’s call it two hours of editing time for four hours of onsite work. i’ve recently decided that i need to set my rate at $75 per hour, so essentially my price for this gig should be $450. this price doesn’t include travel time or time for coordination and logistics, so it’s incomplete, but at least it sets a rate that is within the market range of what people are charging and what people might be able to afford.

all of this came tumbling out of my brain this morning because i was voicing with stock about how long he should spend editing his own photos from the event on saturday, and i realized that my estimate was shy of the mark. this also comes after last week, stock and swana set out a schedule for his video and editing work, something that really got me thinking. i don’t naturally like to plot out my time, but i need to get over that if i’m going to get ahead of my workflow. i can’t be committing myself to more than i can handle, and the only way to know what i can handle is to map out what i’m actually committing to when i take a job. i’ve known this for a while and it’s loosely guided me effectively until now, but my workflow is increasing and i need to professionalize my approach to the process if i want to keep up.