Every session starts the same way: someone fills out the contact form and tells me what they have in mind. From that first message to the delivery of the final gallery, there is a process I follow with every client. This is what it looks like from my end.
From enquiry to booking
When someone gets in touch I reply the same day. The contact form captures the basics, but I want to know more before I confirm anything: the location, whether it is for personal or professional use, whether there is a specific date in mind or just a rough window. Once the details are settled, I send a booking agreement prefilled with the session information. The client reviews everything, answers three short consent questions, and signs electronically. A 10 percent refundable deposit via Venmo or Zelle confirms the date.
That deposit matters less as a payment than as a signal that both of us are committed to the date. It is also refundable if anything goes wrong on my end. Once it is in I send a calendar invite and the slot is locked.
Before the session
Most of the preparation happens in the week before the shoot. For outdoor sessions I look at the location, check the forecast, and work out where the light will be at the time we are shooting. Morning light before 10am and the hour before sunset are where most of my outdoor work happens, and I build the schedule around that rather than around whatever time is convenient.
I give clients specific guidance on what to wear. No logos, no patterns that will compete with the background, outfits that sit well together without matching exactly. For headshots this conversation is especially important. The wrong clothing choice is the most common thing that dates a portrait, and once the images are in a client's hands I cannot fix it in post.
The day before I send a specific message, not a generic reminder. Here is where we are meeting, here is the closest parking if relevant, here is what the forecast is looking like. If conditions are not right for what we planned, we move. I would rather reschedule than push through and deliver work I am not satisfied with.
On the day
I arrive before the client. It gives me a few minutes to look at the light without company, check a few angles, and have something specific in mind when they show up. Most people arrive slightly nervous, even if they do not say so. The first ten minutes of any session are the least productive ones photographically, so I do not start shooting hard straight away. I spend that time walking, talking, getting a sense of how someone moves and what directions they respond well to.
I do not put people into positions. I give them things to do. Walk to that corner. Stop and look at the building. Tell each other something. For couples especially, the prompts are activity-based: movement over stillness, conversation over silence. The photographs that come from the middle of a session, once people have stopped thinking about the camera, are consistently the strongest. I structure the time so we get there.
After: the edit and delivery
I cull in Lightroom the same day or the day after. The images that survive the first pass have three things: sharp focus, a good expression, and something in the frame worth spending time on. For colour work I bring the files back to where the light actually was, not to somewhere that looks processed. Flat, clean, and true to the conditions.
For headshots the selected images then go into Photoshop: skin, stray hairs, anything distracting in the frame that the eye wants to go to. I retouch conservatively. The goal is a clean version of how you actually look, not a different face.
The final gallery is private and password-protected. Images are high-resolution JPGs, sized for both print and digital use, accessible from any device. Within 14 days of the shoot, usually much sooner. Once it is up I send the link and the password directly.
What I am trying to do
The process is not complicated, but it is deliberate. Every part of it, from the pre-session conversation to the way I pace the time on location, is built so the client can focus on being present and I can focus on making good photographs. The two things depend on each other, and the work comes from that.