Wedding Photography that tells a story
Telling a story of the whole wedding day is my ultimate goal. You may have read in wedding magazines about reportage or documentary wedding photography. What most of my clients ask for is natural wedding photography which is all the same thing.
Recording the day as it happens without the photographer directing or posing anyone is true photojournalism, reportage, documentary, natural photography style. As an experience photojournalist / street photographer capturing news events and public figures around London I am always posed to capture that defining moment. My camera is always on, camera settings on manual for full control and finger poised over the shutter. As is often the case I am the camera to my eye waiting for the moment to appear before taking the shot. I always take multiple frames of the the same situation to ensure I get a shot where someone may have blinked or scratched their nose.
Naturally you will want a few posed group shots but I try to keep this to a minimum. All to often getting the many combinations of group shots done can take a long time especially if guests run off to go a check in to hotel rooms or the bar is open. This is time away from your guests and can become stressful if time is limited before starting you wedding breakfast. Also this is the best time to capture some of those natural shots of your guests as they are full of joy from your ceremony and are roaming around meeting and embarrassing one another. Once for sit down wedding breakfast has started images of people sitting and eating to not very inspiring plus they are more conscious of a camera being pointed at them. During speeches is another golden hour as people are focused on the speakers and you can get some real candid shots of people laughing and have fun.
I use professional a grade camera and lenses some of which cost around £2000 per lens. This enables me to capture images in low light with a wide aperture that also creates a nice focus point of interest and blurs the background so there is not need to cheat with Photoshop. My images are all natural as they are shot with little manipulation. My aim is to create timeless images without trendy effects as I feel too many styles come and go and look a little cheesy as fashions change. That said if you have a retro style, or wanted popout colours then we are all to happy to create your style.
As soon as I have finished shooting your wedding I backup all the images to a hard drive and get to work selecting the best shots to be processed. During processing I then create a second copy of your images to convert images to JPEG flies, straighten, crop and adjust lighting if needed. Processing your images can take up to a whole day for an 8 hour wedding. Once selection and processing is complete you will be invited to preview your wedding photo in a password protected online gallery. Our galleries also features a Lightbox where you can drag and drop your favorite images and add comments so you can select your best images for your wedding album. Most people prefer to choose their own images for the album but if you want us to create the album design then please let me know. Once your image selection is compete album design creation starts where we will undertake and additional editing requests, for example removing a pint glass left on a wall, or a chair is creeping into the frame, as some things can not be avoided without moving or interrupting a natural moment. Also for close ups we will soften skin or enhance colour to add effect and complement the entire image. Album design and retouching can take up to a week.
Your wedding album design is sent to you electronically for you can view a proof of the design before sending to our printing lab. Printing then takes about 6 to 8 weeks printing and hand sticking and bounding to be completed. In all for every hour I spend shooting your wedding I will spend 3 hours processing, retouching and designing your wedding album.
Conclusion
There are many varied rates for wedding photography so I hope this has helped you understand what we wedding photographers do after the wedding day. So if your wedding photographer is charging you £300 for all day wedding coverage plus an album then consider how any hours will they put in to the processing and retouching your images. I provide a high quality product for my clients and thus need to charge accordingly so I can afford the time to lovely create some amazing albums for one of your most important days of your life.
If you find this information useful or have any comments I would love to here from you.
