what to expect from your image reveal and ordering appointment | render boudoir in minneapolis

You’ve come to the studio, you’ve been pampered and photographed. You’ve stretched your body, lit a candle and taken a hot bath to finish off your day of self-love. What the hell next?

The next step in your boudoir process is your image reveal and ordering appointment. After you leave the studio on session day, I’m working to cull your images down to the best ones to choose from and prepping them to be viewed. Your preview images will be ready no more than 2 weeks from your session day and when they are, I’ll be in touch via email to set up your reveal session!

Where is it? Your reveal session is done over Zoom, so it happens wherever you are the most comfortable and have a reliable internet connection — usually your home! I encourage you to round up some snacks and a drink so that you are comfy and fueled up for some decision-making. The average appointment takes 2 hours, so that’s what I tell people to expect, but the length of time for the meeting can vary quite a bit. If you are a quick decision maker and placing a simple order like a digital collection, I’ve had this meeting wrap up in under an hour. In cases where decisions are tough and you’re ordering an album or creating a package with multiple print products, the design and order process can take closer to 3 hours.

I send out a Zoom link when we confirm the day and time of your appointment and when we are all logged in and ready to go on reveal day, I don’t waste any time! I share my screen and kick us off with a short 30-second trailer of images to give you a taste of your images. This is often my favorite part of the session, I’ll probably try to get a screenshot of your face while you watch — these tiny, poor quality screen grabs always remind me that I’m doing valuable work — my clients looking so happy to see themselves in a new way!

Next, I open up your images in LightRoom. Our first time through your images, I ask you for a rapid-fire gut instinct on each image — you say yes, no, or maybe for each one. I do my best to keep my mouth shut during this round so that our initial jump off point is purely your emotional connection with each image. While you give your reactions, I’m marking the images and sorting them into categories.

Second, we roll through your “yes” pile. I pull up images in groups so that you can choose favorites between similar images and we whittle our initial yes pile into a more refined one. This is usually about the time we do an image count and I check in with you about your budget. Did you come into the session with a certain budget in mind? A certain number of images in mind? That answer can shape our next steps — we might concentrate on our yes pile and whittle it down even more.

A lot of times, our next move will be to take a roll through the “maybe” pile. Now I’m bringing up images in groups, showing you your “yes” images alongside maybes from the same set. You’ll have the chance to bring in new favorites and make swaps. This is the moment where, if I remember you saying “no” to any images that I felt were really strong, I might pull them up as well for you to take another look at. I’ll be lending my thoughts on which images I think are strongest, how to get the most variety out of your set of images, and which images might help tell a story in your collection.

We repeat this process until you feel confident that you have the best images and a final investment that you feel comfortable with. It’s always such a good feeling when you’ve refined your favorites collection to just the right ones! A finishing touch on your final picks is either 1. bringing all images into color or 2. balancing the appearance of black and whites throughout your collection so they are intentional and balanced.

Next, definitely the most boring but arguably the most important step — your privacy and permission form. Your can read about this step in more detail in this post: https://www.renderboudoir.com/blog/2020/2/18/boudoir-image-privacy-who-sees-my-photos. This form gives you very specific control over how your images can and cannot be used by Render Boudoir. On an image-by-image basis, you’ll tell me if your boudoir image is to remain completely private, if it can be used in my Facebook group, my website, my print materials, and on public social media pages. This step leaves no gray area for me and keeps you in total control — and I love that!

Next, we do additional steps based on your product choices. Often this means putting together an album layout. Sometimes, we’ll be marking which images you’d like to appear in your viewfinder or a glass box. You’ll guide me to make sure we emphasize your favorite images and create a flow that you love. Once our product design is complete, it’s all downhill from there!

Finally, I put together your final invoice and we’ll hang out for a bit while you submit payment. By the end of the appointment, you’re all paid up and I’m ready to put finishing touches on your images!! Woohoo!! After your reveal session, I take a few days (usually no more than a week) to carefully edit and retouch your favorite images. When they’re ready, you’ll hear from me again — I’ll ask for you to look over the retouching, request any changes, and when I have your approval on that, I go ahead and order your products!! Product turn-around times vary, but most often you’ll have all of your goodies in hand within 6 weeks of ordering.

Image Reveal FAQ

Can’t I just have an online gallery?

I tell ya what, I have offered online galleries for image proofing in the past and I’ve moved away from it for a few reasons. My choice to move from gallery proofing to having a reveal session was primarily based on creating a more positive client experience. Past clients who’ve done gallery proofing and the Zoom appointment gave me feedback that they preferred the Zoom process. I got a lot of feedback from gallery users that they would share their galleries with friends and friends would have different favorites from them and it could make the favorites selection more confusing. Clients liked that the decision process was done in one sitting rather than a checkbox that loomed for several days. And some shared that the more time they had with images in the gallery, the more they got into their head and overthought their choices rather than going with their instincts. I also love that the Zoom process allows me to lend some guidance on image choices — from sharing which images I think have the strongest facial expressions and body language, to advice on getting plenty of compositional variety in your images, to choosing images that lend themselves to a beautiful design layout and storyline. I love being a part of this step in the process! So, to summarize, no way, no online proofing galleries — the Zoom reveal is way better!

Are images at the reveal session fully retouched?

They are not! The images you see during your reveal session — I call them preview images — have been prepped for viewing with my signature color tones and balanced out quickly for being too dark or too light. That’s it — these are images in a pretty natural state. Your favorites will go through a final round of editing to refine them — they’ll get more contrast, some dodging and burning, removal of distracting elements (like my coffee cup which I am eternally leaving in the background of my photos), and a Photoshop finish. So don’t let my coffee cup or a bruise on your leg or a scratch from your cat impact your favorites selection — those are all things that will be handled in the final stage of editing/retouching!

What else do you want to know about your image reveal session? I’m always happy to answer!!