Often when I meet someone for the first time and they hear I'm a wedding photographer, their next question is asking what I do during the week. There's this crazy misconception that Monday - Friday, photographers enjoy a life of leisure and Saturday is our only workday. I definitely don't get offended because before I jumped into the business, I thought the same thing! :) So consider this post an educational segment about what goes on with your wedding photos behind the scenes during the week.
Here's the entire workflow (process) that your images go through:
1. Wedding Day - I photograph the wedding in RAW format with my professional Canon cameras and equipment.
2. Upload/Backup - Download all images to hard drive and several backup hard drives, and DVD stored in remote location (in case my house burns down! ..morbid I know but we've got WEDDING PHOTOS on the line here!)
3. Selecting Slideshow Favorites - go through all images, and select my favorites from the day
4. Slideshow and Blog - Minor photoshop tweaks to slideshow images (sharpening, color correcting, resizing), get music for slideshow, create slideshow & load to web server, create blog post
5. Sort through images - select all images that client will ultimately see..which means deleting out photos with blinks, out of focus, and those where someone walks in front of the camera right when you click the shutter
6. Edit - color correcting, sharpening, & some minor cropping of the original RAW files selected for final proofing (typically 600 - 800)
7. JPEGing - batch processing the RAW files (which cannot be printed from) into manageable size JPEGs
8. Upload - All final JPEG images uploaded to client website, sorted, & organized, email client with viewing info
9. Print Burn CD- Burn copy to send to client, copy to keep, and copy to store
10. Beg and plead for client to select their album images to begin album design
11. Album design - custom design coffee table album by assembling favorites selected into a prescribed number of album pages (depending on package chosen), while trying to make design as visually appealing as possible! Load album design online for client to view
12. Album Edits - get feedback from client on album and make changes if needed
13. Album printing - Album design sent off for printing and binding, then shipped to me
14. Album Shipped to Client! - finally , after I make sure there were no errors in production, I ship out the album
Add to these a pretty busy schedule of engagement portraits, bridal portraits, family/children portraits, and day in the life sessions..Monday - Friday fills up pretty quickly! :)
Oh wow! If they only knew! I need to put this on my blog! :)
Posted by: Brantley Freeman | January 23, 2009 at 05:21 PM