Digital
wedding photography tip – carefully edit the photos
On
these pages I have gone through some digital wedding photography tips,
with the emphasis on editing the images after the event.
There are also plenty of tips on
organising and securing your digital images.
There's various techniques that can be applied to a picture in
Photoshop, with some interesting results.
However - and here’s my first digital wedding photography tip - treat
them with care!
You may well be a whizz with all those Photoshop special effects.
And the groom may indeed be pleased that you air-brushed out the
mother-in-law. But the bride probably won’t be! (Perhaps that should be
my second digital wedding photography tip – never upset the bride!)
digital-photography-tips.net is updated regularly. To learn out about the updates as they
happen subscribe to the digital photography blog,
and this site’s RSS feed.
First digital
wedding photography tip - remember who's wedding it was
Before you even begin to edit all those photographs from the wedding,
please remember my top digital wedding photography tip – it’s their
wedding, not yours!
You must have prepared by talking to the bride and groom, so that you
fully understand their expectations of you.
Click to go to the general
digital wedding photography tip page
for more about preparations.
You might not agree with what they want, and may make a few suggestions
of your own. That’s fine. But at the end of the day, it’s still their
wedding!
In wedding
photography "classic" is a good starting point
The key to editing those photos (and here’s the next digital wedding
photography tip) is to keep it simple. Think “classic”.
Photoshop is best used to replicate traditional wedding photography
effects, rather than producing the effects normally reserved for whacky
advertising campaigns!
I’m not saying there isn’t a place for the more modern techniques.
There is. I’ve listed some of these below, with links to pages on how
to achieve the effects.
My key point here is simply to not go overboard with the effects.
Practice makes
perfect
Next digital wedding photography tip - practice some of those
traditional effects. I’ve listed some below. Click on the links to go
to a Photoshop tutorial on how to produce the effect.
I mentioned above that it’s OK to experiment. And this is my next
digital wedding photography tip – experiment with the software and your
creativity. Try to have “artistic wedding photography” in mind and you
could produce some great results!
So, do try a few of the more modern digital wedding photography
techniques. Some of these modern, artistic digital wedding photography
techniques are below:
Before diving into these effects though, I want to re-iterate my first
digital wedding photography tip - remember that it's not your
wedding! You’re only the photographer.
You absolutely must talk to the bride and groom to
find out what they would like from their wedding photographs. By all
means throw in a few extras that put your own style into the
photographs.
But these must be extras only. Make sure you already have the
photographs in the style that the bride and groom wanted first. Then go
for the fancy stuff if you like.
Digital
film - the new negative
The next digital wedding photography tip concerns the digital files
themselves. With digital wedding photography the information
contained on those memory cards is valuable. Extremely valuable!
Those memory cards are your negatives. Lose those, and you lose all the
photos of the day (and probably lose a few friends too!)
This is a “must
follow” tip – backup your files. And then back them up
again. Do this at the first opportunity you have.
A good tip here is to get your
hands on some portable storage if you can. A lot of digital
wedding photographers take one for backup on the day. It’s a good idea.
They let you copy images from your memory card, and store them on a
hard drive.
I’ve used a laptop before which works just as well, but is bulky.
You’ll want to leave it locked safely in the car.
As an interesting alternative – how about an iPod? With an adaptor they
can be used as an external hard drive too. And you get to listen to
some of you favourite tunes during the quiet moments!
It is also important to protect your copyright on wedding photos.
Click to read how I copyright pictures.
Copy, copy, copy .
. .
Final tip – when editing your photos, never,
ever save a file over the top of the original. Your original
file really is your negative.
My advice is to burn all the images onto CDs or DVDs
as soon as you get back home, and store them safely. I keep these disks
in a different room from the computer, just to be really safe. These
are your ultimate backup should anything disastrous happen to your
computer.
Then, on your computer, make a copy of the entire day’s photographs. Work
only on the copied images, not the originals. This way, even
if you mistakenly overwrite a file you have the original right there on
your computer.
Discover a quick, easy, and effective
way to learn digital photography and start taking amazing
photos!
Want even
more photography tips and tricks?
Subscribe to my monthly newsletter, "Stay Focussed".
You'll get even more digital photography tips and get to know about the
latest updates to the site.
Go to the Stay
Focussed newsletter signup page
(opens in new window)
Return from the digital wedding photography tips page to digital-photography-tips.net
home |
|
