This blog post serves as a little homage to Wedding Photographers that have ever been asked.. “why does it take so long?”
For brides and grooms worldwide getting married is a new and exciting experience, and of course an unforgettable one. And working alongside brides, grooms and guests is an entire industry built upon just that. Making it unforgettable. From cake bakers, to dress designers, party planners and photographers. Entire careers are built around helping to make memories that will stand the test of time.
But after all the excitement of the big day is over the biggest reminders of those special moments are the photographs captured that day. That is why hiring an amazing photographer is a worth while investment, as a wedding can be over in such brief time. But you keep your photographs and memories for a life time.
As much as I would love it be so, wedding photographs aren’t always picture perfect straight away. Ideally if I could banish every fire exit door, sign, fire alarm, light switch, road sign, blemish and blinking relative.. part of me would. But that just be impractical. Also alarmingly risky should the best man fall asleep too near a candle (it could happen!) and I have a feeling a missing Uncle wouldn’t go unnoticed. So it is our job, to tweak and titivate. And unsurprisingly having around 1000 images to condense down and tweak into the perfect album can be very time consuming.
Although every photographer has different time commitments and work flows, it is common that editing a wedding album is done during the week whilst other weddings are photographed at the weekends. Fitting in portrait sessions, engagement shoots and commercial projects, meetings, book keeping, blogging and all other business type stuff during the busy week.
Personally, I take on average 3 − 5 weeks to edit a wedding album. Depending on the time in the wedding season and if I am working on any other commercial briefs.
Here are a couple of before and after shots from weddings I have photographed, to demonstrate how much work can go into a single image from a wedding.
Although being a photographer is usually greeted with responses such as “amazing” and “cool” and likely to be imagined with beautiful models, traveling to exotic locations, taking lots of pictures, partying like a rockstar and attending arty parties. In reality the majority of my rock star partying time is spent in front of a computer screen, thats not to say there isn’t any of the above. But I do love my career and feel blessed to have the opportunity to earn a living from something I love, that provides me with an amazing creative outlet and plays an important role in people’s lives.
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