Workflow of a wedding photographer

[Mike_Guilbault]

Nikon D1x and this year a D200 - computer is Mac G5.

Shoot wedding, download images and burn DVD of all RAW images. Select all the best images, narrowing to somewhere around 100 images. Use Adobe Bridge for sorting/selecting... very quick and easy. Move selected images to 'selected' folder. NO PROOFS! (haven't used proofs in almost 20 years) Design album using PhotoJunction from Queensberry. Show couple design. Very little changes, usually. Collect final balance, renumber images to match flow in album, process in ACR, final tweaking in CS2 (in that order). Order album and prints. Assemble, deliver, done.... take reorders.

[David_Buzzard]

I'm a little different, as we do high volume, 2-5 weddings per week in a ski resort.

My Gear is:
-2x Nikon D1x's (probably moving to D200's when they become available). Three batteries per camera.

-17-35, 28-70, 70-200, All AF-S lenses.

-Vivitar 285 w/ Digital Camera Battery. This is because the Nikon flash for the D1x sucks. I'll probably go to the SB-800 once I upgrade to the D200 (which is a major reason for upgrading). I use a Lumiquest multi defuser set that has a velcro on defuser, along with a set of reflector cards that you can insert for different effects.

-4x1Gig Lexar pro cards.

Work flow is download cards onto a LaCie hard drive on my G5 Mac. I have Photo Mechanic set to automatically sort via capture time, which meshes the files from the two cameras together. I bulk rename the camera files, and then copy the selects into a seperate folder for work. I use a lot of Photoshop actions to batch process the files. I have an initial action that tweeks levels, curves, and saturation to about where I like them. Then I seperate the files into seperate folders for lightening, colour corrections (for example; shooting in the snow on an overcast day gives the images a real blue cast. I switch the flash on and off a lot, so it's not practical to reset the white balance everytime, so I wrote a Photoshop action to correct for the blue), and B&W. Because we're a destination business, I find it's easier to send out images on CD and let the client deal with any reprinting.

This is a really fast system. I can process 200 to 600 photos in 2 to 5 hours time. I don't back up the images until I've finished the post processing. However, usually I don't reformat my cards until I've finished my post processing. If for whatever reason I can't finish my post processing before my next job, I back up my files on a secondary drive. My rule is that the camera files should be stored on two seperate drives or disks that are independant of each other at any given time.

Archiving is on DVD disk, with one copy going to the client, and one copy being kept in my office. Most archived jobs are between 2 to 7 Gigs, so it makes sense to use DVD's.

I can't stress enough that you can't scrimp on your software. A fast image browser like Photo Mechanic is essencial, and Photoshop is a must.

David Buzzard

[MarkFieldhouse]

We shoot about 3 weddings per week, 10D & 20D for me, 17-40, 28-80 &70-200 -associates use Nikon & Minolta!- all shot Raw, manual exposure and flash, hand metered with a Minolta meter

Return home dead, make client folder "Smith" & 2 sub folders, 1 Raw, 1 Jpeg. Dump all files in Raw folder. Pour drink, feed dog, have dinner etc. Monday fire up CO pro, sort by time shot & adjust all files for exposure, white bal, levels, black/white point etc, etc.. Tuesday, change mind and adjust further. Batch process out to high quality jpegs while at gym. Resize a copy of these to 6x4" adding a wacky border with filename and copyright info on and send them FTP to lab for proofs.

Load all processed jpegs into TDA4 by Albums Australia http://www.albumsaustralia.com.au/TDA4/download.html

Design album with clients at pre-arranged time. Press "hi-res" output button and all files are 95% ready for printing (they were already so for proofing) and send to lab. This includes digital composites which were designed on the fly in TDA4 with the clients. A bit more time on the front end maybe, but albums are streamlined!

Software? Windoze, CO, TDA4, Photoshop & FTP

Great thread,

Mark

[KarenSimmons]

Canon 20Ds w/ 20, 50, 85mm lenses.
Hitachi Microdrives - total of about 24 GB of storage
580EX flashes, off camera cord

Post processing:
Canon DPP to process RAW files
PhotoShop for tweaking and batching proofs
iView for creating online galleries
CuteFTP for uploading online galleries

Printing:
Proofs at Sam's Club
Final prints at WHCC

Karen

Camera Gear:

Olympus E-1 bodies (2)
11-22, 14-54, 50, 1.4x lenses
FL50 Flash
Vivitar 285 Flash with off camera cord.
8GB of compact flash
40GB Compact Drive (PHD)

Computer Gear:

Mac G5 Dual 1.8 with 20" Cinema Display
Lacie external 120GB HD.
Adobe CS2 and ACR (raw conversions, tweaks)
iView Multimedia (web galleries)
Transmit (FTP)

Labs:

WHCC
MPix

Bruce

[Mark_Passmore]

Camera Gear:

Canon 5d (2)
Canon 17-35, 24-70, 70- 200 & 300mm plus 50 Macro Lenses
Canon 580ex flash with Nikon sb80 flashes for fill flash off-camera (Built in slaves) & Quantum Q-flash
Sandisk 2gb cards
Lowepro backpack

Computer gear:
Too slow

I shoot small JPEG & RAW, I edit the small JPEG's in Fotostation & convert the selected images in DPP before photoshop for fininshed images.

I send the proof images to a lab called Multiprint in the UK, who produce the Image Box with up to 200 images.

Colour images are printed at my local pro lab, I have the black & white images printed at Monolab in Brighton.

Cheers
Mark P.
www.markpassmore.com

[ChrisLadoulis]

Jeremy, thanks for the thread - I'm thinking about my workflow too. It seems that others have a much faster time working through their wedding images. I'm fairly new to the game, shooting weddings in summers and no more than 1/week.

Here is my workflow, with some comments:

Gear/capture:
Nikon D2X / D70 backup (clocks synchronized)
12-16GB of CF card storage (no re-use / no PSD)
Nikkor 12-24/f4 afs on one body
Nikkor 28-70/f2.8 afs on the other
use an 80-200/f2.8 as needed on monopod
formals usually with 28-70/f2.8 or the 35/f2
SB-800s x3, during reception one on each body with bracket
formals with iTTL setup, two SB800s in 60" umbrella, one in 45" for fill
(su-800 to control the 3 sb-800s)

Colorspace:
All images captured in sRGB
(in-camera JPGs in adobeRGB require profile-aware browsers. Bad for PCs, so I use sRGB.)
All images captured in RAW/NEF with JPG
(if I ever find some reason to use adobeRGB, I can get the data from the RAW file...)

Computer upload:
-unique incremental number assigned to every image (forever) during import by Nikon View
-import into iView MediaPro
-burn to DVD; backup to HD; leave on CF cards; go home with CF cards (now 4 copies total)
-burn another DVD of SELECTS folders after batch edit (see below) before wiping CF cards

Editing workflow:
-Rate/sort in iView: SELECTS/ CUTS and add a few RATINGs in IVMP when I see great shots
-Split SELECTS into NEFs/RAW and JPGs folders
-Create Batch Edit folder for NEF editing
-Batch edit NEFs with Nikon Capture (dropping batches into Edit folder temporarily)
-Batch new JPGs from edited NEFs, overwriting JPGs in JPG folder
-Create Gallery of Proofs from JPG folder; upload thumbs to Printroom.com (US/Atlanta GA)

Printing for family/friends:
-Printroom will notify of print ordered (PSM)
-I then either 'release' the full-size JPG; or
-edit from NEF/RAW file and upload new JPG

Album prints/package prints for bride & groom:
-upload to WHCC

These last 2 steps create the most concern for me, as I find that my batch editing is sufficient for 'proofs' but I always go back and edit again for prints. It may be a confidence issue, or simple inefficiency, but I can't get my time per printed image below 5 minutes (average).

I'd appreciate thoughts from others, too.