If you have ever witnessed an artist at work, you will probably understand the following scenario:
Much to my surprise, I came home from work last week to find that my living room had been transformed into a temporary editing studio. All of my coffee table accessories had been removed, as well as the pillows and throws on the couches. The accessories had been replaced with tons of small cutouts of photographs, which now covered the coffee table, two sofas, and the floor. Yes, my husband is definitely a photographer.
From April to November it seems like we eat, drink, breathe, sleep, and of course shoot weddings. Well actually, not a lot of sleep, but you get the picture. The end result is thousands and thousands of pictures, which means lots of great fresh new content. With wedding season starting to slow down a bit, we thought it would be the perfect time to get our edit on.
When it comes to photo editing Jason and I use a process we learned back in our good ole college days in the studio. Sometimes you just have to step away from the screen, and do things the old-fashioned way.
Let the editing begin.
First we gather all of the thousands of images and do a mass edit to narrow down. Let me tell you, this is not fun. Fortunately Jason gets to do that part! Once the big basic edit is done, we narrow the images down to our top favorites from each wedding.
Next, we print off thumbnails of all of these images so that we can compare them alongside one another. This is also the point where the Famous Amos cookies come out. They make great editing fuel.
The third stage consists of cutting all of the images out. This takes a while…
Once they have all been cut out, we arrange the images for the second major edit. We go through the basic selects from each individual wedding and choose our top favorites.
This is the stage where Jason and I do a lot of talking as we look over images from all different types of weddings. As you can see, the pugs chimed in as well. Even at such an early age, they have a very discerning opinion, and are quite helpful so long as they don’t relieve themselves on our selects.
Eventually we will narrow the images down to the ones that are the most beautiful and emotionally compelling. This is where things get tough, and Jason and I become extremely nitpicky. From here we take the images and separate them into groups of important stages from the wedding. We will go through and look for the absolute best of everything: images of the bride and groom preparing for the walk down the aisle; the kiss; the couple’s portraits; the prettiest venues and cakes; the partying and of course the grand exit. With so many beautiful moments to choose from this process can take hours to complete.
Finally we narrow somehow narrow it down to under 30 images. The images are arranged and rearranged again and again until we find the perfect flow of imagery. Our final cutting edge photo strip is put together (see the photo) and then we sit back and take a deep breath. And eat more cookies. As you can see, its been a very busy season!
We want to thank all of our lovely couples for such a fun and exciting wedding season. We hope you will view Jason’s new wedding portfolio and see what all he has been up to!
