Wedding photogs- I have a few Qs about PP

[DStanic]

So I just shot my first wedding on Saturday, I got approx 600 pictures, most were acceptable, and some were pretty good! :) All in all I'm happy with the results, I did this for friends for free since they didn't have money to hire a pro.

Anyways..

1. With large amounts of photos taken, do you try to delete as many of the mediocre ones as you can, and give them only the best... or give as many as you can in order to give them all the memories. Obviously some shots are going to have to be important enough that can't be deleted, even if they aren't the best looking pictures.

2. How much time do you typically spend PP the images? I am using Lightroom mostly but for some pics will take into CS3 or Elements to do special effects. I shot their engagment photos the week before, and spent maybe 3-4hrs on the 180pics I shot (about 150 I kept). They were quite happy with them.


I guess that's all the questions I have for now.. maybe some more will come to mind later.

[SuzyView]

Answers will be all over the place because we all do things different.

I keep all the photos on a hard drive and make CD's for storage, just in case. I only give the workable edited images to the client.

If the wedding was really easy, PP time is about a week. If it was difficult, about 2 weeks. But hour-wise, 1-5 minutes a picture.

[René Damkot]

Here's what I'd do:


Back up *everything* (You never know what image they might want later)
Make a selection and remove the bad images
Select again, to pick the best ("Refine" works well for that)
Process only the best, and deliver those; people tend to remember 1 bad image better then 20 good ones.


IMO a well done album with 40 images works better then a CD with 140 images.

Then again; I hardly ever shoot weddings.

[Mike]

I keep all the photos on my hard drive and then use lightroom for PP. I set lightroom flags to show picks and unflagged photos and any photo that doesn't pass muster gets the black flag and disappears from view.

I post process all but the OOF shots or shots where people have unflattering expressions. From say 600 this will remove perhaps about 75 photos. The remainder will be PP'd and from those I select the very best for print.

This takes me a couple of weeks - my laptop is steam powered and v-e-r-y...s-l-o-w!!

[DStanic]

Thanks for the tips. My computer isn't the fastest either- but whats worse is that it locks up sometimes in Lightroom (the ONLY program that does it :roll:)

[Mike]

Yup, mine does occasionally. My wife gets fed up with me screaming at the computer! I was kind of hoping she'd have taken the hint and bought me a new one by now :D

If I'm processing a wedding batch I have to exit all my other programs (POTN is a big distraction) and get as little as possible knicking memory away from LR which I find helps sometimes.

[ccp900]

you have to remember that normal looking shots can lead to an album layout that is ripe with story...it may not look good by itself but together with other photos you mighht be able to tell a story that may turn up to be magical. dont delete for the sake of deleting...try looking at it from the point of view of a story needing to be told...

that being said a crappy underexposed shot made at iso 25600 of the ceiling might be a good candidate for deletion....

point is choose the pictures with the album in mind.

[DStanic]

Wow old post! Thanks for the tips though!

In the last year I've upgraded to a new computer with quad core and 4gb of ram, it is way faster (and therefore easier and more fun) to edit photos. I've gotten better at LR after a few tips from my wedding photographer friend. I assisted a wedding with him last month and it went quit well. :)

[Svetlana]

You gotta check out FREE Lightroom Workflow seminars (online) offered by Nathan Holritz through Photographer's Edit.com...

[Svetlana]

couple of links:

http://www.winecellarphotography.com/blog/Lightroom-Workflow-Webinar-by-Photographers-Edit/48/

click to register: http://photographersedit.zendesk.com/forums/30415/entries/19248

[elisesanchez]

Back up everything.
Edit the best.
Then back it all up again.