Photo Editing
What we always do - adjusting for exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, highlights, shadows, lens correction, straightening and cropping for each and every photo.
What we often do - light skin smoothing, blemish removal and teeth whitening on close-up portraits, remove distracting elements like exit signs or tourists on photos that are to be printed.
What we don't do - (unless specifically requested and paid for) major body modifications such as slimming, adding/removing people, completely changing the background, Photoshopped makeup application, etc.
We've had some pretty varied requests over the years. Please make sure to look the way you want on your wedding day and don't expect we can fix everything in post. Some of these requests are not an easy fix in Photoshop- sometimes taking 15 minutes or more per photo. With an average of 800 photos per wedding, you can imagine how time consuming these sort of edits would be. Our photo editing is meant to enhance, not completely alter the look of the wedding day.
Before
After - adjustment of exposure, white balance, saturation, straightened, dodged and burned
Before
After - adjustment of exposure, white balance, saturation, straightened
Understanding RAW
RAW vs. JPEG - taking a photo on your phone or point-and-shoot camera produces a jpeg. The camera automatically adds contrast, saturation and sharpness to give you a nice looking image. We shoot RAW which comes out of the camera looking dull and desaturated with low contrast. We do this because RAW images give us the largest amount of information possible from the camera, which gives us the greatest ability to edit the photo in different ways. Every photo we deliver is individually edited.
We have a policy of not giving clients unedited photos because half of the creative process involves the post-production work. The one exception is if we are capturing the wedding of a fellow professional photographer.
Editing Process
Here is a detailed explanation of what happens after we shoot
Dump the memory cards and backup the images
Go through each photo and select the ones to be edited using a rating system. The ones that don't have ratings (doubles, blinks, flash-didn't-fire, etc) get put in a separate folder that we keep just in case until after everything is delivered.
Edit the teaser photos and send them to you in a private online gallery within 1 week of the wedding day.
Go through the rest of the photos and individually edit each one to be delivered 4-6 weeks after the wedding day.
Export the entire batch and upload to our password-protected Online Galleries for you to view, download and print.
Send to clients!
Begin album design process, if requested
Post Wedding Video
Editing Process
Dump the memory cards and backup the footage
Sync the separately recorded audio and video of the ceremony and toasts
Scrub through the footage and clip out "selects" of everything that will potentially be used in the final video and put it on a timeline
Put the songs on a new timeline and begin adding clips, syncing the cuts to the music
Master the audio that is incorporated from ceremony and toasts. Master the volume and timing with the background music
Finishing touches - color correct, stabilize footage, incorporate graphics
Export and upload to your customized video hosting page
Send to client!
Re-edits based on comments from client. Note: you have two re-edits of the highlight video.
What does RAW footage mean?
Storage Space - we shoot anywhere from 100-250GB worth of footage per wedding. That takes up a surprising amount of space if you're saving it all on your personal computer.
Hundreds of Files - We don't shoot continuously all day long. We take series of short clips, sometimes multiple times to get the right shot and then move to a different location. After an 8-12 hour day, that adds up to a lot of clips! Raw video footage is, simply put, very hard to watch. You have to double click, watch, close, double click, watch, and close hundreds of times to see the whole story. On top of that we use 4+ cameras so there are multiples angles of the same event. The ceremony and reception audio is also taken on a separate recorder, which we sync together with the video.
The Documentary Cut - We've found that there are certain moments which we have a separate camera recording continuously - mainly for the ceremony, speeches and dances. We deliver this to all of our wedding clients. The final length varies greatly from wedding to wedding. Sometimes a ceremony is 10 minutes and sometimes they are over 1 hour long.
Editor Caveat - Are you or someone you know a professional video editor? We would be happy to give you all the RAW footage on an external hard drive. We just ask for $250 to cover the cost of purchasing the drive, processing and shipping.