Photographers often ask how they should deal with customers who ask for their outtakes. Take a look at the image to the right. I completely screwed up the focus while shooting a track runner doing the hurdles. I’d never let that image see the light of day… if I hadn’t published it here for you to see, that is. When it comes to frames like this nothing takes the place of a good, solid contract, but you may be able to prevent this situation from even arising by changing your file naming scheme.

Most professional photographers I know do not deliver every last frame to the client. The feeling is that a photographer’s value lies in his artistic vision, and what is delivered to the client is the end product of his or her expertise. If the job were to just fire away, dump the memory cards to a disc and drop it in the mail, well, anybody could do that. We all know that quality is far more important than quantity.

It’s virtually inevitable that at some point in your career a client will call up and ask something along the lines of “do you have anything else?” Like I said, nothing takes the place of a rock-solid contract. Many of the contracts I’ve read include a clause that explicitly states the photographer is not obligated to deliver 100% of the frames that were shot. But if you take steps to prevent this question from ever arising, then you won’t have to fall back on your contract.

Step 1: Deliver awesome photographs

First and foremost, use your talent. Deliver a set of rock-solid, mesmerizing photos and the client will most likely be satisfied. Your job is done.

Step 2: Change your file naming scheme

Alright, nobody’s perfect. From time to time we shoot a frame that turns out terrible. It is of no value to the client, and you would not want it to make its way to potential clients as an indicator of your skill level.

So what I am talking about? Well, when you import photos from your memory cards, how do you name them? A lot of photographers use sequence numbers, e.g. keyword-0001.cr2. This is still the case even if you don’t rename your files, since most cameras name use sequence numbers to name files. A client may look at a folder full of images, see gaps in what’s obviously an incremental sequence of numbers and ask to see the files that appear to be missing.

It is possible to name your files in sequence without making the succession blatantly obvious. My preferred method is to use the following date & time-based pattern:

[Year][Month][Day]-[keyword]-[Hour][Minute][Second].cr2

A sample filename output by this pattern is 20100116-foobar-134726.cr2. It’s still incremental, but not so obvious.

Based on which software you use to organize your photos, there may be even more options available — e.g. Lightroom can use meta data such as aperture and shutter speed in the file name, and Adobe Bridge has milliseconds available under the date & time options.

Exceptions

Of course there may be exceptions to this — for example, you only have one or two mediocre frames of a wedding guest who is very important to the client. In that case, hand ’em over!