Here's Your Proof!
A lot of clients don’t know the certain technicalities when it comes to sessions, which is totally okay! Sometimes it even might be hard to ask what the simple terms you come across mean, but I' here to tell you not everyone starts off knowing exactly what it all means. Hopefully, this post will quickly answer a very frequently asked question I receive as a photographer: What are raw/proof photos?
Raw photos (or proof galleries) are essentially the rough drafts after a session. Photographers take a great deal of time editing photos, doing things like touch ups, skin smoothing, color correcting, etc. If we were to do this for every single photo we took, we wouldn't be able to take on very many sessions! Plus, some sessions only have a select amount of photos within them, so as a photographer it wouldn’t be very beneficial to edit all the photos just to not be able to include some of them.
That’s where the solution of proof galleries comes in. I myself only use proof galleries for my mini sessions, It gives my clients the choice on what images they want to include in their gallery since it is a specific number of images and much smaller than a full session gallery. Many photographers use proof galleries when they include a specific number of images in their packages. The Raw photos are an original set of photos, usually one of each different pose that was done, with very little editing done on them. Usually, photographers will send the raw photos over to their clients in order for them to make requests about certain photos, and to choose which ones they like best, and want to include in their final gallery. When I send my raw photos, I like to lightly enhance them, just to get the general color story that would be happening within my editing style. I also put a watermark over the photos at times too in order to prevent clients taking more photos than we agreed on, or avoid any type of image sharing of the raw images.
Again, it’s important to keep in mind raw photos are unfinished photos. They have not yet undergone the editing process, but it’s more like a draft to get you excited for what’s to come!
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