Mik Milman

Job Editing Notes

This job (patreon supporters can view the gallery on my Patreon page) was a two day (3.5 hours per day) friends and family, soft opening for a new restaurant in Los Angeles. The objective was to grab interactive shots of diners without being obtrusive- so I photographed everything with available light. At times, this was not ideal, but for the most point it created a more accurate feel for the ambiance and what it was like to be there... or as my client put it: the vibe they were looking for. Minus a little bit of coaching to get a particular shot of the bar tenders, nothing was staged.

Here's some of the data I put together:
Total time shooting: 7 hours.
Total # of images shot: 2108
Total edit time: 107 minutes.
Final image count: 628
Time spent editing: 15.28 minutes per hour of shooting.
# of images delivered per hour of shooting: 89

My thoughts:
It felt like it took much longer to edit these than it actually did. A huge realization I have had, tracking my editing time, is that editing takes me less time than it feels like. I dislike it so much, that it creates a lot of excess emotional friction, and feels far more time consuming than it actually is (That said, I still spend way more time than I'd like and still want to reduce my time editing per hour of shooting). This project of tracking my editing time has really reduced a lot of that friction. Plus I've enjoyed collecting this data as I know people may find it helpful.

Another general observation is how much more I feel like I shoot now vs when I first started as a photographer. This is due to three things: the much more usable servo tracking of modern cameras, faster shooting speeds, and what seems to be a extremely minor but impactful lag with my mirrorless cameras' viewfinder (so I overshoot a bit just to make sure I got the moment).

2 years ago (edited) | [YT] | 21