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How long to photographers work for?, what happens next and how do I get my photos?
It's a long day!
You need to check with your chosen photographer how long they will be with you at the wedding, some photographers have hourly packages say, 8 hours, 10 hours etc. If you have this type of package then you need to decide what times you want them there between so they capture the best part of your
day.
I usually stay until after the first dance, maybe get some shots of guests dancing and that always seems a natural time for me to leave you to your evening. If you want your photographer to stay longer then it's usually not problem and can be arranged before hand.
Thats not the end of the night for the photographer!
Not expecting any sympathy! but it really isn't the end of the day for us. Photographers normally cover a wide area, I cover Gloucestershire, South Wales, Bristol, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and areas of Devon...
So it can on occasions be up to 2 hours from when we leave a venue until we get home..
The next part is very important and that's the security of your precious photographs..
Each of my cameras has 2 memory card slots and each photograph is saved on to both cards to cover against card failure, this is very rare nowadays as professional quality memory cards are very reliable.
It is best practice to transfer these photos off the cameras as soon as possible, that means the same evening so photographers will do this when they get home and this usually means backing up to external hard drives and online to the cloud. That way any failure or damage to the physical photos means the photos of your day are safe.
Just to start this procedure can take about an hour and completes overnight.
How long does the editing take?
You might have heard of a program called Photoshop, its been around years and is commonly used to change photographs by adding and removing elements. Photographers tend to use another similar program called Lightroom which is aimed more at improving photos by adjusting colouring etc. So when we say editing this is what we mean.
We will look at each photo and adjust it to be its absolute best, we can adjust tilt, brightness, change to black and white and lots more, each photo could require up to 10 minutes of work.
Sometimes people ask us to " make me look better..." I will always try and take the actual photo so you look your best. Doing this in editing is complex and not usually possible. I will often remove and distracting elements from the background eg. a fire exit sign or similar.
How many photos will I get and when will I get them?
How many.. this is always a difficult question to answer, as every wedding venue and situation is different.
You will see some photographers will quote a set amount of photos, This is a pure guess work.
As an example as the Bride/Groom walks down the aisle, I will be shooting continually at 12 frames (pictures) a second.. so I could have dozens of pictures of you walking towards me all pretty much from the same angle.. this isn't based on a theory that at least one of them will be good but more along the lines of what if you are blinking, looking down at your feet, a guest is in the way or the light catches you in an unflattering way. Spread that theory across the day and there may be 1000's of pictures taken
You are paying your photographer for their skill at choosing which one or two of those images is best to present to you as the customer, you don't want 20 pictures of the same thing.
The client will get the maximum amount of photos without them being repetitive you may get the same photo but one may be black and white and the other colour, so you can decide what you prefer. An average over the past year for me is between 300-400 pictures, that is plenty and covers every part of your day.
When?
This again varies between photographers and you will need to ask. Some can be weeks or even months. My average is about 2 weeks but I recently had one wedding done in 24 hours!
How?
Years ago it used to be CD, then DVD, then memory stick, now the trend is online galleries and they work really well for everyone. You need to check with the photographer what they provide.
I use an online gallery which means once I've edited the images they are with you immediately. I send a link to your via email which you can share with family and friends, this is great if you have people who were unable to go to the wedding they can get quick access to see how amazing the day was.
It also means the images can be download in the same high resolution as on a memory stick and saved to your computer, uploaded to a photo site to produce prints or shared on social media. The other benefit is they are there if you ever loose them!
