digital wedding processing questions

[Phyllisva]

I have just made the leap from film to digital ....so here is my series of stupid questions:

1. Do you process all of your own work or send it to a lab ?
2. Do you PS every shot ? Meaning , do you actually go in a touch all 500-600 shots or do you let the lab color correct ?
3. what print service lab do you use ?
4. what else can you suggest that I have forgotten to ask about this subject ?

Thanks
Phyllis

[TonyK]

When I do things like weddings or receptions or commercial work I do all my own color correction and sizing.

Some folks touch every shot. Others have a workflow that allows them to do minimal work on what they consider thumbnails and then work on finished shots.

I use White House Custom Color. Good work, fast turnaround and free shipping as long as you have at least $12 in order per order.

Now questions for you:

Will you shoot RAW or JPG?
Will you provide a CD of the processed images?
Will you cull down the number of shots to something more reasonable than 500+ images. (IMHO, that many images is too hard for people to go through).
What type of packages are you selling?

[Phyllisva]

Originally Posted by TonyK

Now questions for you:

Will you shoot RAW or JPG?
Will you provide a CD of the processed images?
Will you cull down the number of shots to something more reasonable than 500+ images. (IMHO, that many images is too hard for people to go through).
What type of packages are you selling?

I have a D200 -
I will shoot RAW+JPG
With film I normally make a proof book to show the client , but now I might go to online proofing .....still thinking about that one . 99% of the time I sell the proof book in addition to her package , so that's an extra few $$ in my pocket .
With film I shoot approx 10 rolls at a wedding -- but I noticed last weekend that I felt a little freeer to shoot my brains out .... so that's why i said 500 . I have heard of photogs shooting 1000s of shots -- I don't think I will get there .
I have several packages -- one includes just the proof book as their finished album ( for the budget minded bride ) the rest are full size Bridal albums and they can add on the proofs for another 250.00 . I have only NOT sold the proofs ONCE . And I really think it's because they scanned the book - it look like a train wreck when she brought it back .

[TonyK]

These are my personal feelings. 500 or 1000 images, at a typical wedding, would seem excessive. How is one to cull out the "bad" or "not so great" shots? There will be obvious throw aways of course. Present too many choices and what can happen is people simply do not order anything.

Maybe it is because I grew up with film, and the associated cost, that I developed my style. Thinking before shooting is one of the things I do. To me, again this is MHO, people who shoot 1000 images may not be taking the time to compose the images and to think about the shots.

Get ready for more and more folks to try and scan proof books or in some other way not order prints. Based on my readings that is the growing trend. Hence my thoughts about providing a CD/DVD with corrected images only. Lacking that, do put "PROOF" across the image with just enough opacity so it shows in the image and is hard to PhotoShop out, but not so intrusive that it commands the image. This holds true for both online and proof books.

Most folks use a workflow. Mine is like this.

Get home, offload images to HD
Backup images to external drive or DVDRW (this way you can reuse them)
Cull out bad images (out of focus are primary issues, bad flash shots, etc).
NOTE: I once did a wedding where grandma beat my flash 2 out of 3 times. These were must have shots. Solution was PhotoShop. Took the one good image and cloned grandma's eyes on the other two. With some tweaking no one could tell what I had done.
Sort the images by priority. Programs like Bibble allow one to set stars and the only see those images that match a certain rating.
Decide which ones to include in the shoot.
Create a proof album. Print or put online
Start working on color correcting and re-touching all images. At a wedding I did the groom cut his upper lip shaving. All images with him had to be PhotoShopped to remove the injured lip.
When color correction is done, back up all work again (Use DVDR for this one)

Notice we have not really cropped the images. Depending on how you do your albums you might consider some rough cropping BUT leave enough to refine your crop further should you need to.

Hopefully this helps.

[Kosherpaparazzi]

I choose the best images from the event (about 150 out of 600) and rate them 4 or 5 stars using Aperture. I then edit those images and deliver them to the client (or something like that).

[Phyllisva]

so what do you do with the other 450 shots you took

[Kosherpaparazzi]

They get those too (the good ones at least) on CD or DVD. I usually take two or more of everything basically like a double shooter. point once, focus-and-shoot twice. This way at least one of them is (hopefully) in focus.

I was told by someone that clients usually order about 10% of the photos taken. I don't know how true that holds though. I'm a semi-pro beginner learning the ways of professionalism.

Thanks for the question (how else would we learn?)

p.s. i just gave someone over 650 shots from a wedding. (I shoot community ones paparazzi style, with permission of course).

[TonyK]

Hi Kosherpaparazzi,

Not sure if 10% of the total number of images taken is a good number. That would mean someone who took more images would sell more. To an extent this is true if compared to a light shooter. My experience would be this:

Some pre-wedding shots
Bridal portrait
groom portrait
Family photos (formal or informal)
reception, first dance, cake cutting.

The more people in a given shot, again in my limited experience, is what helps sells the prints. Especially with older relatives.

Thanks,