Magic picture pixie dust …..
When people see our printed work they are always impressed with the “look and feel” of our wedding photography images.
There is a lot of time involved in achieving this, probably more than anyone realises ….. What we do is work on each and every image after they leave the camera, the equivalent of “hand processing” in the old darkroom days, where each image is assessed and burnt and dodged, contrast enhanced and so on.
We shoot all of our images in RAW to get the highest possible level of image data (42 bits per image … an out of camera jpeg is just 24 bits) and use proprietory software with the best conversion engine in the industry to get the best colour, sharpness and contrast that we can.
We feel that our brides and grooms deserve the best, after all … they are entrusting us with recording one of the most important days of their lives. Hence we spend an average of FIFTEEN hours per album optimising all the images to get the very best from them (about six minutes per image on a 150 picture album) … when you consider the meetings, pre-wedding shoot, rehearsal, wedding day with two photographers shooting, preparation of viewing, selection of images, optimisation of images, album design and meetings there is FIFTY to SIXTY hours in every wedding.
Which is why we close our books at around 30 weddings each year …. otherwise there aren’t enough days in the year. If we were charging the same as your plumber or local garage then our fees for the average wedding should be about £5,000 by the time we have bought and paid for the album as well.  At a third of those rates our wedding photography is a bargain!!
In the panel (shown left) the image from the camera is shown on the top. The middle image is the retouched album one (including a judicious amount of air-brushing to make everyone look their best) and a black and white version shown underneath … even at web-resolution you should see that the original and the final image are chalk and cheese. Look at the sense of depth, dimension and separation in the bottom two images and the rather flat, lack-lustre look of the top picture … it is worth the extra effort and like everything else with our service we go that further mile on the road to exceptional.
Published by admin on March 7th, 2008 Tagged Techniques
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