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 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!)
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.
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” digital wedding photography tip – backup your files. And then back them up again. Do this at the first opportunity you have.
A good digital wedding photography 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!
Copy, copy, copy . . .
Final digital wedding photography 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.
Sidebar . . . One of the best things about digital photography is sharing the photos you take. However, because we end up taking so many of them, it’s easy to lose track of them all.
I recommend you give Google’s Picasa a try. It will not only organise your photos, but will perform minor edits too.
It’s all some photographers need, and best of all, it’s absolutely free!
Picasa comes as part of the Google Pack. If you don’t want the rest of the pack just de-select them when you get to the download screen.
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! 
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Technorati
Y! MyWeb
