I am asked this question a lot by new clients.  The answer varies on the customer and what their needs are.  They have options!  Everything I photograph is for commercial and editorial clients on location, so the options are:

1. You can have the photos immediately – after they have been edited on-site using a pretty powerful laptop (I carry two laptops, just in case).  This is a fairly rare request, but if the images are going to the press, urgency may be the order of the day. 
   
   
2. You can have the edited photos emailed to you along with a contact sheet on a web page. 
   
   
3. You can have the edited photos sent to your FTP server (a very popular request nowadays).  For those of you who don’t know what FTP is – essentially it is a method that allows one computer to transmit all the photographs on to hard disk space on a clients computer. 
   
   
4. I can send the images on a DVD. Very rare now – it just takes too much time for the images to arrive. 
   
   
5. I can place the images on my server space (using PhotoShelter), and you can download them within a few hours using a web link and password I will email to you.  This is used daily by my clients and is now perhaps the most popular method of image delivery. 
   
   
6. You can have a set of prints - although this hasn't been requested for about 5 years.

Essentially, for all commissioned photographs, clients will receive the photographs within 24 hours – realistically, all photography leaves this office the same day that it is taken, meaning clients have their images available to them when they get to their desks the next morning. 
 
The best option? Number 5.  For the client this means the images are available very quickly after a photo shoot (usually a couple of hours), they are archived on my server space (actually on PhotoShelters server space – but the site is fully branded, so as far as everyone is concerned, this is my company space), they can be downloaded by the client, their design team, PR’s, the press (if the client grants access), and anyone else who needs them and has the password (all this can be done simultaneously without any work on my part, meaning the client doesn’t have to wait for me to send the images), the images can be sent from my server space via FTP should the client request it at a later date, and finally, I can rest assured that the photography is backed up on several machines – again, just in case.

 
The long and short of it – online delivery of images is the best way to get photos to clients.  With image files now exceeding 60MB, email is becoming less of an option, and with the need for archiving, an on-line storage/delivery system is by far the best option.

Visit: Images of Birmingham Archive & Stock Library, Photoshelter