Moment By Moment : Editing a Wedding
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I find that if I’m editing a wedding that’s the one I’m always most enthusiastic about. If I share pictures it tends to be from the couple’s day that is filling my mind as I work on it.
I find a ‘moment’ and work around it
My process for editing a wedding is to take a look at everything I’ve photographed on the day and choose the photographs that work best from each moment I’ve captured. When I’m shooting on the day I tend to find a moment and work around it till I have the one frame that tells that story. I like each photo that I deliver to build on the preceding one – part of the job as a photographer is to be an editor of my own work. I never want to present a couple with multiple photos of something knowing that only one is the ‘right’ photograph. I would say I deliver on average 500 photographs for every wedding I shoot, which is plenty to tell the complete story of the day.
Here is a photograph from my current edit of a wedding I photographed at Aynhoe Park in early July this year. During the reception guests often break up into little groups to chat and joke as the canapés and drinks are served. I love capturing these little vignettes, they can say so much about the ‘feeling’ of the day.
Below is the sequence that I photographed of this particular group talking – there are multiple photos that tell you what is going on.
Some frames were possibilities – some great expressions across faces but not others.
Some were a straight out rejection – the back of someone’s head being to prominent, too many obscured faces, Danny the filmmaker from ‘Minty Slippers’ in the background!
But there were enough frames that worked to leave me with a decision that was about what I personally liked about the photo. In this case it was about how the hand in the foreground (displaying the big engagement ring) framed the two faces on the right. It gives a sense of animation that perhaps the other frames didn’t.
Move from Shot to Shot to build a sequence
This is the process I go through when photographing a wedding and then editing the photographs afterwards. I’ll often stick with a situation till I feel I have the photograph that I want rather than flit around like a butterfly quickly photographing and hoping I get something! The temptation at a wedding is to fire off a camera in multiple directions as there is so much apparently going on – but I prefer to stay calm, move from shot to shot and hopefully build a sequence of photographs that tell a story.
You can see more photographs from Francis and Larissa’s wedding day at Aynhoe Park here.
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5 Responses to “Moment By Moment : Editing a Wedding”
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A very interesting piece Andrew – always god to get an insight into the way other photographers work. I love the shot you’ve gone with (and like many of the others too!). One thing springs to mind is that, given you’ve edited 11 down to 1, this would imply an overall shoot of some 5.5k images to refine down. Clearly, you’re not necessarily going to have 11 versions of the same moment every time but this is still quite a body of images to cull!
I wonder, too whether you ever supply a colour and mono version of the same image? I think the question that most often crops up at the approval stage is whether or not shot x is available as mono (or vice versa).
Thank you for an enlightening blog.
*good*
Thanks Alec – I don’t actually shoot 5.5K images, that would be a lot to curate. Everything is shot in Colour but I do deliver some photos in B&W, that’s a decision I make and I don’t automatically supply the colour version as well (but it’s available if a couple need it).
As an admirer of your work this is a fasinating insight to how you approach and think about your goal in acheiving the photo you want. Your question was “do you think it’s too much to share with couples?” For me the answer is no , I think giving details like this is all about the story behind the photo which for couples can only be something for them to reflect on and remember in years to come.
I do think it is possibly more interesting for us fellow photographers to read but again I’m sure alot of couples would be interested to know how you choose and how you go about creating your images. Excellent work as always , keep it coming and just out of curiosity what would you say is your average frame count on a wedding ?
Thanks Sam – I would say that depending on the wedding I’ll take between 2-3.5K photographs.