Beautiful Architecture

Workflow

The typical studio has two to four camera rooms, stocked with professional lighting, backdrops, and props. The photographers take pictures—each picture is called a “pose”—in the camera room. Outside of the camera room, photographers also handle customer service, scheduling, and customer pickups.

When the photographer finishes taking the pictures for a session, she sits down at any of several workstations to load the photographs from the camera’s memory card.

After loading a session, the photographer deletes any obviously bad photographs: ones with closed eyes, sour expressions, babies looking away, and so on. After deleting the bad ones, the rest become “base images.” She then creates a number of enhancements from those base images. Enhancements range from simple tonal applications, such as black and white or sepia, to elaborate compositions of multiple photos. For example, a photographer might take a group portrait of three children and embed it in a design with three “slots” for individual portraits of the children.

After creating these enhancements, the photographer helps the customer order various sizes and combinations of prints. These include everything from 8”×10” portraits to “sheets” of smaller sizes: 5”×7”, 3”×5”, or wallet sizes. Then there are the large formats. Customers can order portraits in sizes up to 24”×30”, made for framing and hanging on the wall.

After completing the customer’s order, the photographer moves on to the next session.

At the end of each day, ...