Have you seen a friend’s professional wedding album and thought wow, what an amazing album? What goes into making such a special family heirloom? Here are 6 things to know about the art of professional wedding photography.
One: Your wedding photographer will spend more time with you on your wedding day than any other service provider.
Your wedding photographer typically arrives where the groom is relaxing in the morning, before heading off to meet the bride while she is having hair and make-up done. Your photographer will then be with you until you have sat down at your reception in the evening. Every other service provider comes and goes through the day.
Two: Professional wedding photographers create beautiful images you can enjoy forever.
There is so much that goes into making an image look fabulous. Composition, lighting, placement of the subject in the image, the emotive content. All of this contributes to make a photograph a work of art. There is so much more skill involved than having a “nice camera” or fixing it all in Photoshop.
Three: Professional wedding photographers are “people people” with highly developed interpersonal and technical skills developed through years of experience and industry training.
Let’s face it; a wedding day is an emotional rollercoaster often with a full range of emotions on display. Highly skilled wedding photographers are able to use their interpersonal skills to help their subjects feel comfortable around the camera. At varying times of the day, a wedding photographer is a portrait photographer, landscape photographer, fashion photographer, documentary photographer, product photographer and wedding photographer. They also work quickly and decisively with a seamless relationship with their equipment.
Professional photographers always have to learn new techniques, adapt to new technologies and invest in new equipment. Photographers network actively and are constantly learning through activities organised by the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) and other industry training providers.
Four: Professional photographers spend a lot of time and resources on getting the colour of your images just right.
Have you ever wondered why your images printed at the local mini-lab or home printer don’t quite look the same, why that blue dress might look purple in photos? Colour management is the answer.
Professional photographers colour manage their whole production environment. Images they take are colour profiled, then loaded onto a computer with its own colour profile, viewed on a high-end colour managed monitor, colour and density corrected, artworked, and outputted to a professional lab or printer with stringent colour quality controls and profiles.
Colour management is an incredibly in-depth topic that photographers and their studios spend countless hours perfecting with the expensive profiling equipment necessary to make their photographs exactly the way you would expect your precious memories to look.
Five: Your wedding album is a one off work of art custom designed with you.
Imagine being involved in designing a storybook that will share your memories of your wedding forever! Professional wedding photographers offering a custom album design service involve you personally in the design process. This ensures your storybook is a one off design, totally unique.
Six: Professional photographers spend lots of time on your wedding.
Some of what a professional photographer does is visible, most is not.
Photographing your wedding is so much more than turn up on the day and press the button. There are meetings with you, planning, phone calls, image downloading, processing and preparing for viewing, viewing appointments, design meetings, post production editing, liaison with suppliers, image printing, album manufacture and assembly.
The hours involved with a typical wedding range between 60 – 80 hours per wedding!
by John Reyment
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