Wedding going digital

[JoelF]

I have been slowly switching from 50% Hasselblad/ 50% 35mm to about 25% Hasselblad and 75% D30. The reason for this is that my older customers who where not informed that we will be producing some digital CD's have not balked. I still provide about 75-100 paper proofs and about 400 digital images per wedding. My formals are still done with my Hasselblad. My new customers who have booked their wedding since I have gone digital understand that there will be not paper proofs to speak of. I use a Olympus P-400 to show my clients a sample of what their digital prints will look like when they come to pick up the proofs and CD's. The formula seems to work.

[Ron]

>I still provide about 75-100 paper proofs and about 400 digital images per wedding

YIKES! - what could you possibly shoot to get to that number? I shot weddings for 24 years (during my busiest year, I shot 73) and never shot more than 190 images and that's including "dupes" as I always took at least 2 of almost everything. I'd then weed out the dupes and show them the rest. (always under 100 different pics - usually about 65 on average.)

>booked their wedding since I have gone digital understand that there will be not paper proofs to speak of.

During the 24 years I shot them I never had paper proofs either. All film went directly to final print... but then if shooting 500 pictures I can see where that wouldn't be wise.

But if the formula works... I'm curious though how much time do you spend at a wedding to get 500 pictures and with that many to show and your personal attention required to show images digitally - how much time do you spend showing/ordering with them? Sounds very time consuming.

My weddings were almost always 4.5 to 5 hours to shoot, then we didn't spend more than probably 1 hour tops putting prints into the album, ordering re-prints and finishing the final album.

[JoelF]

Ron
In the Metro NY/NJ area a typical wedding shoot runs about 10 hours. About 1 1/2 hours at the brides home, church, park and reception. Prior to digital we would shoot about 250-300 total images(my wife and myself together,)but with the digital cameras we not longer count exposures. The results are truely photojounalistic at a minimum cost. The digital processing is automated aspossible. After off-loading my D30 images and uncompressing them to Tiffs batch processed,I "batch convert" them to 75K Jpegs. I then print out multiple composite thumbnail sheets of 30 images per 8x10 using imagebook (batch processing),and then print the sheets with batch printing utility. The jpegs are put onto a CD slide program (automated) and burned to a CD. Since film and processing costs me about $1.00 per image I figure that I am saving about $350 per job up front. Total time spend is about 1 1/2.

[Andy Pauquette]

"YIKES! - what could you possibly shoot to get to that number? I shot weddings for 24 years (during my busiest year, I shot 73) and never shot more than 190 images and that's including "dupes" as I always took at least 2 of almost everything. I'd then weed out the dupes and show them the rest. (always under 100 different pics - usually about 65 on average.)"

Please, Ron, are you serious with your shocked response? You had the same reaction to my posts over on the D30 forum -- now I feel like your just feigning surprise to look down your nose at us "film wasters" and gloat about what you percieve as effeciency. In my opinion, any photographer who can't make several hundred unique and intersting images at as colorful and emotional an event as a typical wedding just isn't looking hard enough.

I'm glad you have had a succesful career in wedding photography, and I am sure your clients were more than happy with the images you produced. However, the wedding market has changed significantly over the last decade, and the high end market has to a great extent embraced the concept of "wedding photojournalism" over the tradtional portrait-based model. The top handful of wedding shooters are journalistic in slant, generally shoot 700-1500 images per gig and are getting fees well into the five figure range (I can give you names if you want). While I am certainly not in that league, I have risen to the top of my market in a short time by filling a similar niche locally. Open any bridal magazine, do an internet search for wedding photography or go to an upscale bridal show in a larger metro area and you will see what I mean. The journalistic style, emphasizing reality-based images captured without the intrusion or interuption of the photographer, has become the new standard in the high-end wedding market. The most succesful photographers in today's wedding market are making images that show the distictive personality of each event, rather than simply making the same images with different faces. Discerning clients see the difference, and are specifically looking for this style in an increasing proportion. If it's not something you like or appreciate, be glad you don't shoot weddings anymore. But once and for all please try and realize that there are many more of us out here than you think, and we are having a good time AND getting paid well to do what we do.

[Ron]

Andy - I don't recall you mentioning you shot 600 pictures as well. It's mind boggling to me. It's really surprising how different areas of the country look for different things. All our weddings were 'portrait style' weddings. Where each shot is posed or at least directed in some way before it happens so that it will look best, be from the best angle to give the best background etc. Though 'posing' and directing is the hardest part of portraiture and the portrait style of wedding photography I can understand why it's gone the photojournalistic route. People with cameras don't need the posing and direction skills to do wedding work... just be in the right place at the right time, point and shoot. If they have a good eye for composition, they'll pull off a saleable shot.... especially when shooting 700-1000 you say? wild!

I suppose this is like those shows I see on tv when they are documenting a magazine cover shoot of a beautiful model. They show the photographer ripping off shots and then show them pouring over 1200 slides in hopes of finding a good one. This just wasn't in my training. Give any good portrait photographer this same model and you'll get 10 good ones out of 10 shots.

It's just different methods I guess.

My daughter and her boyfriend are at that age where they are finding themselves in a situation where it appears they might not end up living in the way in which they've become accustomed? ;-)
I've seriously thought of training them to do weddings, but the vast knowledge of trying ot teach all the nuiances of poseing really turns me off. This jounalistic style that has become popular in other areas might be the way for them to go. Get em a couple digitals and have them go nuts shooting pictures. Certainly an album can be created from 700-1000 shots. = )

Thanks for your insight, I guess I'm just old-skool.

[Andy Pauquette]

Ron;

Thanks for your gracious reply, and I must apologize if I came off poorly in my response. I must remember that the first time I heard Denis Reggie speak (wedding photographer of Maria Shriver, JFK Jr.,Mariah Carey and many many others) it rocked my world a bit. At that point I had shot one wedding, very traditionally, and vowed I would never do it again. Being introduced to the wedding PJ concept turned a whole bunch of lights on in my head, and I'm thankful to be doing what I do.

I shot for a senior studio and school portait company for five years before going out on my own. When we shot seniors, my boss wanted at least nine sellable shots on a 10 exposure roll, so we knew that experimenting was not an option -- we did what we knew worked and no more. The kids were happy, but I got bored with it very early into the season.

When I started my own business, I gave myself permission to rewrite the rules a bit. I let myslef play and experiment, knowing that a good amount of images will be duds, but a few will be magic. I have read that the photographers that shoot for National Geo (some of the best photographers in the history of the medium, in my opinion) generally average one published shot for every 1000 exposures. I think this is because they recognize that the difference between a good photograph and a great one is in the subtle details, and when you are shooting as a journalist those details are found, not made. While a portrait photographer can tend to all the subtleties before the exposure is made (providing the patience of the subject holds out), a journalist limits his or her realm of control to photographic options (films, lenses, exposure, composition). Directing the subject is not an option. Thus the PJ photographer is more often going to make many more exposures, looking for that spark of natural magic.

Not all photojournalists work this way, especially those that learned on a Speed Graphic! But I'm sure you would agree that your average working news shooter is going to make many more images than you or I in the course of an assignment. I essentiallyam trying to approach a wedding more like a news shooter.

I think I am a competent photographer and a good photo editor, but I really have a hard time doing both jobs at the same time. I would rather give myself plenty of options, and not try and make too many judgement calls at the wedding itself. I have budgeted my business to allow me to shoot a lot of film, and now that digital has entered the picture, I have even less excuse to shoot a bunch of images.

This is something I've noticed (and this is not directed at you, specifically) -- why do people who claim to enjoy phtography gripe about having to make over a certain number of images? It can't just be cost, since there are so many affordable methods for proofing, and film and processing is really the cheapest part of the equation. At what point does the working photographer start to feel like with each press of the shutter a piece of his or her soul dies, and that the goal is to make as few photographs as possible?

As an analogy, I think about the difference between Bruce Springsteen, who I saw do a four hour concert in the '80's and run off the stage beaming (he played for a half and hour AFTER they turned the house lights on!), and myself in my former career as a lounge musician, who couldn't wait for the gig to end so I could pack up my gear and go home. At some point I lost the fire that Bruce maintained (having 50,000 people chanting your name helps, I bet).

I love making photographs, and fortunately my clients like the images I make. So I make lots of them. Life is good.

By the way (please sit down before reading this) I rarely shoot a wedding at which I don't make well over 1000 exposures, and I've exceeded 2000 more than once. That number is usually edited down to about 700 or so from which the couple can choose. And I'm not unusual in this regard -- I have a friend in NY who regular shoots 50-75 rolls of film at a wedding (some of the biggest events on the East Coast, mind you).

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