How many different edits do you do?

FotobyMoMo

I am new to wedding photography and wanted some advice to how many edits you'd do when presenting the pictures to the couple? I would think keeping all the color images in one way and making some BWs maybe the best way? I mean I love to do different edits, suppose add sephia or change tones in certain pictures. Not sure if I'm making much sense here? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

tenoverthenose

Each photograph of mine is presented to the client in only one version. I spend too much time doing B&W conversions to do every image, so I use my experience to guide my processing. On rare occasions, I will make a second version, but it has to be significantly different.

FotobyMoMo

Oh, not the same image. I meant for the set. Like when presenting online, you may have one in BW, the image after that maybe with a different tone, a few more down, there's a totally different tone. Does tonal change matter when printing album or pretty much keep the same tone all the way around and then make a certain special ones BW

Moogle Pepper

For albums, you really want it to be consistent. If every image has a different processing style in the album, it's just bad.

FotobyMoMo

Moogle Pepper wrote: »

For albums, you really want it to be consistent. If every image has a different processing style in the album, it's just bad.

Thanks! Yeah that's what I was thinking. So keeping 2 tones to 3 at the most is ok?

tenoverthenose

FotobyMoMo wrote: »

Thanks! Yeah that's what I was thinking. So keeping 2 tones to 3 at the most is ok?

Ted is right on with this. To me the tonality and processing of an album is really done with the entire album in mind. Make sure and keep a good flow as you tell the story in the album.

FotobyMoMo

Thanx Teno! Yes, I am down to probably 500 images now. They're all mass edited through LR3. Its my 3rd wedding and I'm learning so much. I am taking way too many pictures (2000) As a beginner I think a lot of us have the same issue. I know I went there and took as many pictures as possible, had it set to multi shutter so I wouldn't miss anything. I had like 10 versions of 1 shot because I held the shutter for a few sec. Luckily I had enough shots there to tell the story. But now I realize, when I go there, I should really look at things before I go all crazy and go shutter happy. I didn't really realize "telling the story" properly as I'm understanding it much better. I will improve on this.

Ed911

To many pictures. That sure can be a problem...both for you and your client. One of our more motivated and successful photographers in town just shot a wedding that one of my friends was in as a bridesmaid. She tells me that he gave the client, her friend, 1500 pictures. I was in awe. How does a client sift through all of that stuff. You know that he gave her the good and the bad...there's no way that he shot 1500 keeper images...no culling, I guess. Must have been one of them $3000 two for a dollar picture weddings.

tenoverthenose

Ed911 wrote: »

To many pictures. That sure can be a problem...both for you and your client. One of our more motivated and successful photographers in town just shot a wedding that one of my friends was in as a bridesmaid. She tells me that he gave the client, her friend, 1500 pictures. I was in awe. How does a client sift through all of that stuff. You know that he gave her the good and the bad...there's no way that he shot 1500 keeper images...no culling, I guess. Must have been one of them $3000 two for a dollar picture weddings.

Uh oh... I'm in trouble. A recent job with two photogs netted 4500 images. I sorted through them, processed and delivered 1800. No real duplicates, but I'm sure I could have taken out more if I had wanted to. When it comes to the album, I will pre-design it for them so they don't lock up

Blurmore

I think 500 images edited is heavy. Especially if you are going to be doing more and more weddings. 300 edited is my max for a one photographer job, and I'd really rather be down around 225-250. You should find after editing several jobs that less really is more, and you want to be presenting only winners.

l.k.madison

My most recent wedding (with my husband as my second) gave us about 850 images, that includes the three rolls of film still sitting on my desk waiting to be developed.

On a portrait session, I give both black and white and color to almost every image, some do better with color and the b/w just kills in and others, vice versa, in that case, they only get one copy.

For weddings, I'll give whichever one I think looks best, if I can't decide, they get both. For the most recent wedding, she'll probably get a lot of duplicates due to me not deciding and not knowing her well enough to know which one she'd prefer. And she's related, so that gives her more by default anyway.

FotobyMoMo

Oh believe me, I've learned! No more taking 2000 images! Well, editing 500 wasn't as bad after getting rid of the other duplicates and stupid shots I didn't need. I pretty much chose by location and edited one and mass edited the rest and then once I was done editing them, basically brightness, contrasts, WB etc. Then some I will take a little further and use some presets from LR3 etc.

FotobyMoMo

Although, my ideal plan is when I am confident of my work, I will move on from budget weddings to high paid weddings. I would build a team where I'd have someone with great idea design the album and someone else who's a photo editor to edit the image and use flash mount albums.

Qarik

tenoverthenose wrote: »

Uh oh... I'm in trouble. A recent job with two photogs netted 4500 images. I sorted through them, processed and delivered 1800. No real duplicates, but I'm sure I could have taken out more if I had wanted to. When it comes to the album, I will pre-design it for them so they don't lock up

you gotta be kidding me! was there anything special about this event? Is that typical of what you deliver?

As for me I don't care if I am flipping through Ansel Adams greatest hits..I get eye fatigue after the 1st 500 or so.

as the to the OP issue: The flow of the album will dictate the number of processing styles I suppose, for me I will include standard process shots, BW shots, and maybe a few retroish processed shots, perhaps 1 more processing if I am feeling frisky.

tenoverthenose

Qarik wrote: »

you gotta be kidding me! was there anything special about this event? Is that typical of what you deliver?

As for me I don't care if I am flipping through Ansel Adams greatest hits..I get eye fatigue after the 1st 500 or so.

Nope, nothing special. That's just how we roll. Fairly typical of what the client receives, but again I predesign an album so they don't pass out trying to make a decision. I can edit pretty quickly and I have my reasons for shooting the way I do, so it works well for me.

And don't forget, Ansel only made about 10-12 good photographs a year.

Agnieszka

Moogle Pepper wrote: »

For albums, you really want it to be consistent. If every image has a different processing style in the album, it's just bad.

Same here. CONSISTENCY is key. Every once in a while if I really like a photo, I'll do a different edit on it (maybe 8 photos in a set) but the "normal version is always included also. As for the black & white images; I usually convert 1/2 of the photos into b&w / sepia, no special edits though, I usuall just run a simple (ok, a bit personalized) action

sara505

I do a straight color gallery with no special processing, then I do a selection of BW, also pretty straight-forward, all in LR, and the BWs get their own gallery. If I have a gallery of 250 color images, maybe 50-75 are converted to BW, primarily for me, since I'm a BW junky. To be honest, my stat counter tells me that most people aren't that interested in BW. A wedding with 800 images might get 150 BWs. It all goes pretty quickly w/LR. And I agree, less is more.

Matthew Saville

It has everything to do with the products you deliver, and what you *need* to do to get there.

Wedding photography should NOT be about a disc of images. In my honest opinion, that is a disservice to the client. Yes, giving them a disc is normal these days, and I'm happy to provide a disc to clients. But the 1,500, or 1,800 images delivered are just a means to an end, that end being the ALBUM on their coffee table, and a print on their wall.

The album is what it's all about. A GOOD album only has 1-3 images per spread, (two pages) and you can only have so many pages before the thing weighs 30 lbs.

So really, your final product comes down to 60-90 images. The rest is just your means to that end. If it takes 300, 500, 1,500, or 2,000 delivered "keepers" for you to arrive at those 60-90 final images, well, that's just your style. Some clients like the assurance of big numbers, some clients don't care as long as the album is awesome.

So, like I said, delivering nothing but a disc of images, whether it's 500 images or 1,500, ...that disc is most likely going to just go on a shelf and collect dust. I've lost track of how many times I've heard "oh we still haven't done anything with our wedding photos..." (Mostly concerning other photographer's clients)


Sorry for going completely off-topic, but I thought it was relevant in this discussion of how many images ought to be delivered. Personally I LOVE B&W, and I often deliver nearly 50% B&W images, mixed right in with the color ones. But I hardly EVER process the same image twice, and only ever use ~3 differrent styles of processing per job. Usually I have straight color, slightly warm B&W, (not full sepia) ...and maybe a tiny bit of my current favorite in faded film-like processing. I try and keep it subtle, though. The core of my style is correct color, clarity, and rich-toned B&W's...

=Matt=

dusty-dog

Interesting thread, as I am not regularly a wedding photographer, though I have shot a few for friends/family. The latest was for my niece. I shot about 1200 frames. But, I only selected 200 to show them. They then selected their favorite 65 that are possibly album-worthy. Now, I will take those 65 and process them more carefully for highlights, skin tones, etc. It still seems like a lot, but hey, she's my niece, and I love her. For what it's worth, you can see the collection here. It was truly a flip-flop wedding, no formal reception dances, or anything like that. And, it was almost 90 degrees out. I worked my ass off. hehehe.....

We checked out the Smugmug book selections, and she chose the Canvas one for her book. She's going with the book, because the album is too expensive for them right now. Do any of you have any suggestions, or exhibit your final products for review, whether it be book or album? I'm just looking for a few ideas.

Thanks for this thread. It made me smile.

FotobyMoMo

Personally I would rather do albums than giving disks. It makes more sense to me to do that. I can make a flush mount album with 20 pages with 8x10 and charge them $300 and that's a good deal for a cheap wedding, which is what I'm doing at the moment until I am confident do go out and do more. The thing which I find hard for a beginner is that when we go out to do weddings, people want to see portfolio and a lot of us offer even free weddings or cheap weddings to get a portfolio made. But I was offering $1300 for wedding with a simple album and $1500 for flush mount album. Of course if they want a 50 page album that's 12x12 that'll cost them more. When you put images in album, that's what matters to me, rather than putting them in a disk. But I did that couple times because I offered them free wedding for portfolio building in exchange of shots in disk. But that's going to change now.

nicoleshilliday

everyone has hit on most of my points..but i have one to add.

i change about 50 photos into black and white, depending on if the client says they enjoy black and white or not. And i tell them that later down the road if they would like another picture converted to send me an email and i will email them back the edited version. Really, there is nothing worse then a push of a button black and white conversion that they get from (GASP) walmart!

I too used to give a tone of edited images but now i really narrow down to the best, weather it is 300, 500, or 1000 they get the best of what i shot.

FotobyMoMo

Makes sense Nicole. Anyone has a good idea of where to go to find some wedding albums? I am so new, something visual would help me IMO. What's the best way about doing this?