My complete photography workflow from start to finish

Photography is one of those dynamic professions where you can have 100 people, each employing a variety of unique methods, all striving to achieve the same desired outcome - captivating and great images. Today, I’m going to walk you through my personal workflow for capturing, processing and delivering images, providing you with a clear insight into not only my creative process but also the considerable amount of effort and dedication involved in producing the high-quality work that I am proud to deliver to my clients.

I personally like to use the best possible cameras and lenses available to capture the highest level of detail when shooting. I believe having an abundance of detail is far better than not having enough as a starting point, as it provides greater flexibility during editing. Light is also a crucial factor in photography, so I carefully work either with natural sunlight or employ artificial light sources such as flashes and strobes to achieve the perfect illumination. Finally, I always shoot in RAW format, which means capturing the maximum amount of information from the camera sensor for each shot, ensuring the best quality and versatility in post-processing.

Now that we’ve covered the setup, let’s dive into what happens during the shoot itself. Of course, the approach can vary depending on the specific subject I’m photographing, but the primary focus always remains the client brief first and foremost, with everything else coming second. Once I have a solid understanding of the client’s needs and goals, I like to explore creative possibilities while staying firmly within the parameters of the brief. This involves paying close attention to key elements such as capturing genuine moments of people smiling or laughing, noticing any interesting or impactful background lighting, and ensuring that any essential branding is clearly visible. If I manage to combine all three of these elements in a single shot, it usually results in a strong, compelling image that meets the client’s expectations.

The other important thing to remember for each shoot is exactly how many images the client needs. This requirement will directly influence the total number of images captured during the session. I typically keep around 20-30% of the images taken, meaning that if the client requires 100 final images, I would need to shoot between 300 and 500 images to ensure I have a sufficient variety and quality to work with. Throughout the shoot, I am consistently reviewing the images against the client’s brief to make sure that the final selection will meet their expectations and overall satisfaction.

Once the shoot is complete, I immediately begin working on editing the images without delay, for two important reasons. The first reason is that the session is still fresh in my mind, which helps me better understand the client’s vision and ensures I deliver exactly what they are looking for. The second reason is that the faster I can provide the finished images to the client, the more satisfied and pleased they tend to be with the overall experience.

I use Adobe Lightroom to import and edit my images because I find it offers everything I need, all conveniently within a single program. My process begins by importing all the RAW images into Lightroom, after which I carefully review and select only the best shots to keep for the client, discarding the rest. There are always photos that are out of focus, or where someone has their eyes closed, or even instances when someone unexpectedly walked into the frame as I took the shot. Additionally, some images simply don’t work compositionally or technically, so I see no value in keeping or sending these to the client. Besides, holding onto unnecessary images consumes valuable disk space, and as someone who shoots thousands of photos every single week, all those extra files quickly add up and can slow down my workflow.

Once I have selected the images that I want to keep, I then get to work on the editing process. RAW files straight out of the camera tend to look fairly flat and lack vibrancy, so my first step is to apply the Auto Levels function. This tool essentially allows the computer to analyse each image and make initial adjustments to key elements such as exposure, contrast, white balance, and more. I find that this is an excellent starting point, as it quickly brings the images from looking flat to about 75% complete, all within just a few seconds.

From there, I’ll carefully apply some sharpening to enhance the details and also perform denoising to reduce any unwanted grain. Often, when I’m shooting indoors, even with the assistance of a flash, the images are captured at ISO settings of 2,000 or higher, which is when noticeable grain tends to creep into the photos. While some photographers actually appreciate this grain for its texture and character, I personally prefer a nice clean and smooth image. Adobe offers a fantastic feature that uses advanced AI technology to denoise images remarkably well, producing stunningly clean results. However, there’s a catch – this process demands a significant amount of computing power and can take quite a long time to complete. Because of this, I usually run the denoising process overnight while I’m sleeping, especially when I have hundreds of images to work through.

I remember clearly when I purchased the latest and greatest, fully specced MacBook Pro back in 2019, which cost me a hefty $7,000. At that time, it would take a frustrating 2 minutes and 45 seconds just to denoise a single image. If you do the maths, denoising 1,000 images would take nearly two full days and nights non-stop, which was simply unworkable for my workflow. Fast forward to now, with my new Apple silicon Mac, the time to denoise each image has dramatically dropped to just 15 seconds. This incredible improvement brings the total time required to process 1,000 images down to a manageable 4 hours, significantly speeding up my editing process and allowing me to focus more on capturing amazing shots.

Once the images have been carefully denoised, the next step, which I would argue is probably the most important part of the entire process, involves making the final adjustments to exposure and colour balance. Great images can easily be ruined if the settings in this stage are not handled correctly. My primary focus is always on achieving accurate and natural skin tones, as this often determines the overall impact and professionalism of the photograph. For example, when shooting events, there is frequently a mixture of different lighting sources, which can cause colours to appear different from what the human eye naturally perceives. If I have a person standing on a stage, my main goal is to ensure that the person’s colour and exposure are perfect, even if it means sacrificing the accuracy of other elements in the image. It would be counterproductive to have a person appear unnaturally bright, too dark, or tinted with strange hues like pink, green, or blue. The subject always takes priority over everything else, so my adjustments focus on them to achieve the right exposure and colour balance that best represents their true appearance.

Once I’m completely happy with the colour balance and exposure settings, the next essential step is cropping the image. Even a subtle or small crop can transform an average photo into a truly fantastic and visually striking image. I take an overall careful look at the entire frame and assess whether there is any wasted or unnecessary space, or anything in the background that might distract the viewer’s attention away from the main subject. If I find anything like that, I go ahead and apply a precise crop to improve the composition. It may not sound like a huge change, but trust me, it makes a world of difference in the final result. The only downside is that cropping has to be done manually on every individual image. Unfortunately, there is no way to bulk process this step automatically, so it can be quite time-consuming when working through lots of photos.

Finally, the last piece of the editing puzzle is to carefully remove anything that I don’t want in the images. This could be someone walking in the background, some messy cables lying around, or any object that just looks plain weird and distracting in the shot. Once again, Adobe comes through with the goods because, nowadays, we can use the AI removal tool to easily eliminate such unwanted objects simply by highlighting them. The tool generally works really well, providing clean and seamless results. However, just like cropping, this process has to be done individually for each element, so it does take some extra time and patience to get everything perfect.

Now that I have my complete collection of finished images ready to go, the next step is to export them into a client-friendly format such as JPEG, which typically only takes a few minutes to process. Once the images are converted, I upload them to an online image gallery platform (I prefer using Pixieset) for the final delivery to the client. From this gallery, the client can easily view and share the images however they wish, and they also have the option to download the files directly to their own devices for safekeeping and future use. Additionally, the gallery presents a highly professional appearance, featuring the shoot’s name and date, which adds a nice, personalised touch that clients really appreciate.

From my own end, I make it a point to keep all the original RAW images securely stored on a dedicated hard drive. Additionally, I maintain a second copy backed up to the cloud, ensuring that if I ever need to revisit them for any reason - whether for editing, reprocessing, or client requests - they are safely preserved and remain exactly as I initially captured them.

So that’s my entire process from start to finish, laid out in detail. What do you think about it? Were you expecting there to be that much work involved in capturing professional, high-quality images? It’s definitely a detailed and careful process. I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, or experiences in the comments below - feel free to share!