You will no doubt soon realise that there is vast array of different styles and varying degrees of talent in the industry
One of the many things that will make a photographers work stand out is the way that the photographer handles the editing and production of your photographs. This can range from the fly by night who gives you undedited uncorrected photos on a disk the next day to the top pros who generally take some weeks to prepare your images with great care.
There is also a trend amongst some photographers in our industry now to subcontract the editing and this is often sent to be done in bulk abroad cheaply, part of what you tradtionally pay for with your wedding photography is the time the photographer spends editing the photos in their own style, if you are dealing with a photographer that sends stuff away because they feel they its not a good use of their time or they are just not capable then you should not be paying more than a couple of hundred quid for them for a full day as thats all they are doing. We do all of our own editing and all of our own album design work. Ask your photographer before you book if they do .. you will notice when looking round photographers sites some look very similar , bulk editing houses tend to produce the same style for all the clients.
So what do we do with your photographs ?
Correction of Exposure ( brightness )
Colour correction for places with poor light
Black and White Edits ( timeless classic )
Colour Toning ( Sympathetically coloured shots )
Cloning to remove fire exits , cigarettes , pints etc etc
Artistically unique edits which we have perfected over many years as signatures of our style
Colour Splash , where a shot is made black and white and just one part re-coloured
Heres a look at some examples in more detail :
Exposure Correction - On a lot of occasions in demanding situations we will shoot a scene slightly darker than it is to retain the detail ( not make everything too white ) we will then edit the shot in Photoshop to bring back the parts we want to get the right look to the image.
Colour Correction for places with poor light - We shoot in a format called RAW which enables us to change the colours in a shot to adjust for things like tungsten lights and yellow colour casts from celings in venues etc. This can mean an awful lot of editing in some cases but it produces the best results, whereas the old school method of attempting to get the colour balance right as it is shot would mean missing the majority of moments and it is too inconsistent with documentary style wedding photography.
Notice also in the shot above we have corrected exposure, adjusted colour for the yellow lights of the town hall , cropped the image for more impact, and removed the fire exit sign resulting in two very different photos.
Black and White Photo Editing and Colour Toning - these techniques are indvidual to photographers as there as many ways of acheiving different looks so it is worth looking through galleries to see whose black and white type shots stand out to you. There are many good ways and many bad ways of acheiving a black and white shot, the basic easy ways result in what looks like a very flat boring image and are often practised by cheap wedding photographers for whom time is of the essence as they struggle to balance editing your photos with their day jobs.
Cloning and removal of objects - This is a time consuming process and definitely comes with the more experienced photographers out there. Some shots are just worth spending the extra time on though as with the one above. Cloning involves copying one part of an image to another place , for instance the trees have been copied from the top along with the hedge to replace all the people. This is more often done with things like fire exits and extinguishers which unfortunately grace even the poshest of wedding venues and often stand out a mile ( as they are meant to ! )
Colour Splash / Selective Colouring - is a now favourite technique with a lot of clients and photographers alike which involves painting through a layer over a black and white image to allow the colour to show of a particular part , mainly employed to colour in flowers and button holes by most, but we like to use it where it has the most impact or meaning as above with the wedding 'sand ceremony'. Another fairly time consuming but worthwhile editing process.
Artistic Editing Examples - Many more in our Gallery but heres a few different types:
Colour toning and adding light to photos to produce dramatic effects
Colour spash / Selective Colouring
HDR Shooting using three or more shots combined to produce stunning clarity and detail
Dodge Burn and Contrast technques used to add drama
Sepia Old Photo toning - brings out the classic photo look with timeless black and white images
Low light shooting - nightime photography fireworks and sparklers / light painting is something we love doing !
Vintage photo editing - on occasions where this suits ( rather than just all the time like some photographers ) we use vintage style editing with our own backgrounds and styles. Remember styles come and go so its better to have classic wedding photos rather than all one style so you will still love them in years to come.
Completely unique editing is one thing we pride ourselves on, we dont follow other styles we lead with our own. In this example the bride was originally in a car window.
This is just a very small insight into the work behind the scenes and we would love you to visit our galleries to see more of our own unique editing and techniques. Hopefully this has made the task of deciding on your budget for a photographer a little clearer !
A note on cosmetic editing
As standard and in general we do not undertake cosmetic editing such as alterations to peoples looks , crows feet , wrinkles , spots , weight , size etc unless we are asked to do so and it is discussed before the wedding , some of these things are possible some are not and it also can be an extremely time consuming process especially with 500 photos !
If there is something in particular that you are worried about appearance wise then please discuss it with is so we now how best to counteract it with our photography to make you look and feel your best on the day.
Make up is also an important part of this and should you have a professional make up artist they will be able to advise on how to use the make up to look your best in photos , if you are doing your own make up then it is wise to be careful of the lighting you use and try to get a look at your make up in natural light if you can rather than hotel / room lights as these can often be deceptive.