Why it is against our company policy to deliver the RAW files

Have your clients ever asked you if it is possible to receive the RAW unedited versions of their photos. This is a big NO NO for us and you can find out the reasons why in the sections below.

Handing over the RAW files is a disservice to your clients

Imagine this… You’re celebrating getting engaged, and you found the perfect restaurant to host your engagement party at… This swanky place downtown with stellar skyline views, an exceptionally yummy menu, and oodles of 5 star reviews is exactly what you’re looking for. You call to book a reservation, and you’re put in touch with their head chef, who is excited to chat about creating a custom culinary experience for you and your guests to delight in. Holy cow! Can you be any more excited?? The night of your dinner celebration, you arrive and walk through the doors and are instantly greeted by a friendly staff member and the smell of freshly baked brioche buns and some mouthwatering dish with the aroma of fresh garlic and garden tomatoes. ~MMM~ You and your fiance are seated at your table and just as the first congratulatory toast is about to be made, the chef comes over and places a pile of cooking ingredients on your table, and walks away, leaving you to do the rest. 

No matter what quality the ingredients might be, there is just no way your dish is going to come out the way you were hoping. Not to mention, this place wasn’t cheap… your reservation was made with the understanding that you were going to be taken care of not working… After all, you should be celebrating right now, not elbow deep in fresh dough and baking soda. 

This silly analogy is exactly what it is like delivering Raw files to your clients. These files are meant to be edited… i.e. “cooked”, and in our business I am the head chef. Our clients come to us with expectations of being served well, and they chose us for a reason. Trusting us as the professionals to bring their visions to life, is a cornerstone of the high level experience our clients can count on.  

It is overwhelming

Part of the service we provide is going through the collection of images and selecting the best of the best. This is not to say that special moments are left lying on the cutting room floor so to speak, but rather that the outtakes are removed from the final cut.

Blinks, duplicates, blurry missed focused shots, lighting test shots, and even unflattering angles are all cut out leaving only the cream of the crop to be edited for the perfect finishing touch. 

 Can I be honest with you for a moment? Culling (the process of sifting through all these images and selecting the keepers vs the outtakes) is the WORST! It is by far my least favorite part of the editing process, as it is very much not personal and you know your girl is all about making things personal… In fact there is no creativity involved at all. It is either sharp, well composed, well lit, and flattering or not. If it meets the criteria, it’s a keeper. I would hate for our clients to have to toggle back and forth zoomed in 10X trying to decide which photos are worth their time on the back end. We have special software that helps us do this efficiently and effectively, so trust me it’s better if you let us handle this part. I promise we’re not deleting any hidden gems. 

Storage is expensive

Okay let’s get real for a moment… When talking about digital files, size does matter. The average size of a JPEG is roughly 10MB, where its Raw counterpart is closer to 30MB. Both Andrew and I shoot on two cameras throughout your wedding day, we often fill up 64GB Cards, meaning we could have as much as 256GB worth of data to import into our hard drives. Our professional grade computers are integrated into a system of external hard drives on a network designed by a computer specialist who understood we would regularly be moving massive files around. Our system is built to handle these large files that could otherwise cripple a laptop or computer with a smaller hard drive. The network speed, the computer itself and the hard drives it works off of, can be costly to set up and maintain… but they are all a necessary investment in working with this kind of technology.   

Software Requirements

 Did you know, without the proper software and storage space on their computers your clients wouldn’t even be able to open these files. Raw files take professional programs like Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop to open. The reason for this is because the data in the Raw files is vastly more complex, recording information that is meant to be worked on, manipulated and tweaked, resulting in an edited file that can then be exported as a jpeg. 

It is a misrepresentation of our work.

As a business we have worked hard to establish and develop our own unique brand identity. The Raw file is not a finished product, but rather a stage in the process of creating our end product. There is a timeline that goes into every photo we take… and you might think it starts when we release the shutter button… but it actually starts long before that. We pride ourselves on getting to know our clients throughout the planning process. Learning what is most meaningful to them allows us to see their day through a “different lens”. Every time we raise our camera up to capture a moment, the grand design is already in the back of our minds. We don’t just take the photo, we create it… with the intention of giving it all the love and attention, perfecting it in post as it deserves. Creative decisions like intentionally underexposing to allow for more dramatic edits, is the perfect example of capturing the photo with the edit in mind, as only in the editing stage will the photo achieve the envisioned end result. Post work is as much about creative development as it can be about correcting images. Our style and approach go hand and hand, so to hand over the Raw file is to hand over half of our product. 

It lacks the Secret Sauce

 I once heard someone describe the unedited version of a photograph as missing the “secret sauce” and I loved that! Here’s the thing, there are literally hundreds of photographers to choose from. If a client chose us to be their photographers, then our style and approach must have resonated with them. They hired us looking to add our signature touch to their photos. I recently saw a new trend in one of my photography networking groups. A group of photographers each edited the same photograph and added their own personal flair to it, the end results were WILD, the same photo looked vastly different. One was edited dark and moody, and the other bright and airy and another true to color. It was fun to see how much impact a photographer’s touch can make to the final product. All our images have that special something, The “secret sauce”, and that’s what our clients came for.