so this came up for the first time yesterday and i wasnt really prepared for it. did a commercial shoot for a small construction company, they wanted progress documentation on a build, pretty straightforward stuff. delivered the edited jpegs like normal and they came back asking if they could also get the raw DNG files because their marketing person wants to do their own edits apparently.

i dont really have a policy on this, ive always just delivered edited finals. part of me feels weird giving out raws because thats kind of the whole thing i do, the editing is part of what theyre paying for. but i also dont want to be difficult about it especially since this could be a long term client with regular shoots as the project progresses. what do you all do, do you just include raws on request or is this a whole separate conversation about licensing or whatever

yeah raws are extra, always. its not being difficult its just how it works in photography broadly. the way i explain it to clients is that edited finals are the deliverable, raws are the raw material of my work and licensing those is a separate thing. i usually charge somewhere around 50% on top of the shoot rate for raw file access, sometimes more depending on the project. for a construction documentation client that wants ongoing work id maybe offer a slightly friendlier rate to keep the relationship good but i wouldnt just throw them in for free, sets a weird expectation going forward.

also worth thinking about what they're actually going to do with them. if their marketing person is decent with Lightroom fine, but ive had clients mess with raws and then come back confused about why things look different from what i delivered and that becomes a whole thing.

i actually had someting similar with my second ever paid job lol. i just gave them the raws because i panicked and didnt want to lose the client. looking back i should have just had a simple answer ready. think im going to write up a quick FAQ for myself so next time someone asks something unexpected i have a response that doesnt sound like im making it up on the spot