So the wedding is over, you’ve taken all of the photographs that you needed to. What do you do next? We give you advice on how to choose the final selection and create a photo book.
Choosing
As most digital photographers know, taking the shots is only half the process and having taken all the wedding shots, the work really begins.
From a good day’s shooting you can expect to have anywhere between 300 and 2,000 shots, hopefully all backed up to a drive.
Editing the shots
Your first challenge, once you have all of your images visible on your computer, is to reduce the number down to something that is a bit more manageable.
For an initial set this should be down to no more than 400 and potentially closer to 300.
Once you’ve removed all the obvious duds, start to rate the images to allow you to build up collections of definite ‘keepers’, ‘maybes’ and ‘maybe nots’.
Software such as Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom are specifically designed for this kind of heavy image crunching and allow you to whittle down your selection fairly quickly. Their non-destructive image management also make it easy to apply simple image adjustments individually or globally.
You can then perform more specific and accurate adjustments once the final selection has been made.
Final selection
At this stage it is standard practice to show the images to the couple, to allow them to pick their favourites for the album, or individual prints.
This can be done by creating a preview book, or a series of contact sheets. Some photographers may offer to display these on a website, either in addition or as an alternative to the printed version.
Give the couple a limit in the number of images, so as not to overcrowd the album – depending on the layout, this should be around 150 images. Once the images are chosen, individual image tweaking can be done to ensure each one is as good as possible.
Books
There are two main options when it comes to creating the album: the traditional, with prints mounted into the pages; or a modern photo book where the images are printed directly onto the pages.
The photobook comes in a range of prices from cheap paperbacks to high-quality coffee-table books for hundreds of pounds a time.
Photobook companies provide customisable layouts using their own software to produce the album. Many pros, however, will choose to design the layout themselves using a design or photo-editing program.
For album ideas see blurb.com and loxleycolour.com
