I've found it extremely helpful to explain my process to clients. Knowing what I'm doing and why I'm doing it helps to build a strong working relationship. Some photographers believe in keeping a mysterious veil over their work. I'm not one of them.

Provided here is a brief description of what I do between the time of the shoot and the day your images are delivered. Knowing the time, energy involved in even a short, simple photo shoot goes a long way in explaining the huge amount of unseen work behind the final product.

Gear:

I shoot with Canon products. That includes a couple of camera bodies and a series of top lenses. If I need a specialty lens for a particular job, I rent it. While equipment doesn't make the photographer, having the right set tools for the job is extremely important.

Workflow:

I shoot everything RAW and process in Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe Lightroom. A RAW file is the unfiltered image data produced by the camera, but its not technically an image file. What it is, is a lossless representation of all the information collected by the camera's sensor when that sensor is exposed to light.

Once I pick the best photos from a shoot, I sort through the RAW files and process them individually. This involves work comparable to what's done in a traditional darkroom. When I'm happy with the image, I export the RAW data into a 16 bit TIF file. I then make final adjustments in Photoshop and save the image one last time.

What's delievered to a client (unless otherwise arranged) is a CD or DVD disk made up of each edited file. Unless you have a request for a specific format, each file is delivered in both full resolution print ready and monitor resolution, web ready JPG's. 

File types and delivery options (including ftp) are of course flexible.