Do you deliver RAW files?
Yes. RAW and other source files are available on request, priced separately from the shoot. They can be agreed in the quotation, or released later if the need appears after delivery. They are not part of a standard delivery, and the reason is not secrecy. A standard delivery is finished work with colour and retouching included, which is what most clients need. When the client is going to grade the images themselves, a finished file is the wrong product.
Who asks for this
Agencies, and international brands that work with many photographers across different markets. A company with sites in ten countries rarely has one photographer covering all of them. What it has instead is a look every location has to match, held by its own creative team or by the agency running the account. When the grade has to happen in one place, that place is their side, and the source file is what makes it possible.
If you are commissioning one building or one store once, you almost certainly do not need this. Our guide to RAW files in commercial photography covers how to tell the difference.
When it is agreed
Either in the quotation, when you already know your team is handling post production, or afterwards. A project delivered as finished files can be reopened and the source files released later as a separate item. Nothing is deleted at handover.
What you receive
The complete take in the camera's native RAW format, in one transfer. Nothing is culled beyond technical failures. A set that someone else is going to grade is more useful complete than curated, so the selection is yours to make.
What changes commercially
Three things.
The fee changes, because post production moves to you and an unprocessed file has a different value from a finished image.
The licence is written separately. Handing over a file is not handing over rights. Possession of a file and permission to use it are two different things, and the licence still sets media, territory and duration. This is covered on our image licensing page.
The delivered look stops being ours. We make our own edit afterwards, for our portfolio only. The images on this site are not the versions the client received, and on a project graded by someone else that distinction is the whole point.
Where we have done it
A 40,000 m² logistics warehouse in the Henares corridor, ground and aerial, every frame delivered as unprocessed RAW so the agency could match the building to the rest of its portfolio. The project is written up in the logistics warehouse case study.
If you do not need RAW
Most clients do not. If the aim is consistency rather than control, we shoot to your reference deck and deliver finished files that match it. Each slide is treated as a specification. That costs less than grading a full take and it leaves the colour decision with the person holding the camera, where it is cheaper to correct.