The (Surprisingly Doable) Workflow of a Film Shooter

Eric Kelley and his wife Lora not only own two coffee shops in Charlottesville, Virginia, but they also shoot 20 to 30 weddings per year on film. 

“Film changed how I photograph,” Eric says. “I do the work before I take the photo—I don’t have to take 20 shots of the cake and decide later which one I like better. I take one shot of the cake, because I make sure everything looks great in the composition and exposure before I take my shot.”

Photo © Eric Kelley 

With a full-time studio manager, an intern, Lora styling and assisting, and Eric serving as primary shooter, he estimates that with film he spends an hour culling a single wedding and another hour doing a run-through tweak, saving himself many hours in post. “In the end, I am able to do more with my time, and when I first see my images, they look their best,” Eric says. 

The Kelleys mapped out their film workflow and cost for us, showing how feasible shooting film can be. 

THE WORKFLOW

Friday

• Prep for weekend wedding, printing out all directions, timelines and shot lists.

• Check all equipment and prep bags with film. “We shoot 40 to 75 rolls of film per wedding,” says Lora.

Saturday

Shoot, shoot, shoot.

Sunday

Rest/family day. “We try not to do anything on Sunday,” Lora says.

Monday

• Unpack and tidy everything from the weekend; check inventory for stock, and note how many rolls of film are needed for the following week (rolls of film cost the Kelleys between $4.50 and $11).

• Fill out the order form to Richard Photo Lab (RPL) in Los Angeles, including the type of film needed, how many rolls are being sent from the past weekend’s wedding, how it should be scanned, the amount of prints needed and the name of each job. “Developing, scanning and processing a roll of film averages $18 to $32 per roll,” Lora estimates.

• Ship everything overnight on Monday so it gets there Tuesday.

Photo © Elan Klein

IN LAB

• Once film arrives at RPL, the lab develops and scans each roll.

• After the film is scanned, the staff processes it, which includes a quality assurance check and a color profile or a color pack match. The Kelleys have a custom post-processing/editing profile. “This is something RPL can develop for any photographer once you’ve determined your style” Eric says. “The lab tweaks all of the images to match how I like my images to look, i.e., stronger blacks or brighter highlights. They also check for dust spots, etc.”

• When the film is entirely processed and perfect, RPL puts all images on an FTP for the Kelleys to download. Depending on the time of the year (wedding season, huge orders and backlogs can set a lab back), the Kelleys receive their processed images within two to six weeks of initial sending. The type of scanner you prefer also plays a part in the timeline. Frontier scanners painstakingly scan images frame by frame, but they can arguably get more details and crisper blacks, whereas Noritsu scanners can scan more frames at a time, and therefore the processing is more swift. “After four years using RPL, we’ve used both types of scanners, and with our custom profile, the lab nails it for us either way,” Lori says. 

Tuesday 

• Get film back from the lab (usually from a wedding sent one to six weeks prior). 

• Post-processing and culling: Once the images are downloaded from an FTP the lab sends, Eric loads them into Lightroom and culls them. “I keep 80 percent of the images that I photographed,” he says. “Twenty percent are ones in which people either are blinking or may not be as flattering.” He then does a run-through edit for any additional things he wants to tweak. “I also add in any digital images that I photographed at the wedding,” Eric says. (He sometimes pulls out his DSLR at the end of an evening when the venue is dark and raucous dancing ensues.) 

• Print culling, packaging and shipping: “I mail out all of the prints and a disc (if it’s a portrait session) or a USB (if it’s a wedding),” Eric says. After a client has received the prints, he uploads their gallery to Instaproofs and sends an email letting them know their gallery is up. “Depending upon the season and time of year, we deliver images to our clients two to eight weeks after their wedding,” Lora says. “For our larger collections, the final package to clients includes a USB of images, box of prints and a wedding album.”

Wednesday

Album design day. “We design an album for every one of our clients, using SmartAlbums by Pixellu, which makes it so easy,” says Lora.  

Thursday

Unpackage a shipment, organize new film that’s been delivered and allocate it to its proper home. “The main thing is maintaining a proper order and staying organized,” Lora says. “If you assign everything a certain day, do it then.”

Photo © Eric Kelley

What It Costs for a Single Wedding
Rolls of film needed: About 50
Cost of each roll: $4.50
Cost to process each roll at lab: $18 (using a Frontier scanner)
Shipping to lab (overnight from Charlottesville to Richard Photo Lab in Los Angeles): about $50
Shooting and processing costs: 50 x (4.50 + 18) + 50 = $1,175
TOTAL: $1,175

Why I Switched from Digital to Film, by Eric Kelley
The year moving from digital to film was the hardest. The previous year we were charging for a digital wedding, and we didn’t account for film and processing costs. Now it’s much easier for us to have a hard film cost, rather than just “charging for time.”

Eric Kelley. Photo © Elan Klein 

Time is challengeable by clients, colleagues, even yourself (am I really worth this much?). The hard cost of film is impossible to negotiate. Plus, the “culling and post-processing” burden of the digital era is a hefty one. Photographers spend 20 to 40 hours per wedding culling and post-processing digital images.

If I were to be cheap and say my time is worth $20 per hour, that’s $800 I should be paying myself to post-process a wedding for 40 hours. More realistically, my time is worth $100+ per hour, and with that calculation, it costs me $4,000 just to post-process a wedding.

With an extra 40 or even 5 hours a week, couldn’t I be practicing my craft instead? I could make back the post-processing time-costs of a wedding just by photographing one family session. 

And wouldn’t I enjoy that more than sitting at a computer? Yes, yes and a million times yes.

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