I will gladly take pictures of your wedding. A huge responsibility and a great honour.
A number of items below to consider when you're looking through websites and pictures:
These are some of the questions I asked myself while putting together the website and when talking with prospective clients.
The wedding photographer snaps away with a digital camera for the duration of your wedding and provides you with a USB stick of your day. So what else is there?
Typically I estimate on 5 days work for each wedding.
Pre-wedding meeting - Pre-wedding photo shoot (1-2 hours) and edits. Here we talk about your day, the plan, the timings, shot list, must-have pictures and more.
Wedding venue visit before the big day - Visiting the location, exploring and finding places to take shots, looking at the lighting etc. This is usually two locations, the church and the reception.
Shot list, plan and must-have pictures agreed - The venue visits factor hugely into the shot list, a storyboard of the day can be sketched out and provided if required.
Gear setup and preparation - Preparing all of the cameras, lenses, making sure batteries are charged, etc.
Wedding day - Certainly this is a full day, depending on location there is travel time to where the bride is getting ready, pictures taken there, then off to the wedding venue to capture the groom, location shots to help with the story telling aspect of the day. Pictures of your guests arriving and waiting for the bride to arrive. Pictures throughout the ceremony, exits from the wedding venue. Group shots as planned and agreed. If there is a different reception venue, travel there and setup waiting the bride and groom arriving. More shots of guests, bride and groom. Reception lunch / dinner is a break from photography. No one really wants pictures of your guests eating. Speeches usually follow with cake cutting and the first dance. It's usually after the first dance I'll duck away, say my goodbyes and let the celebrations continue. That evening I'll get back home, backup the memory cards and start the first pass edit process. I'll pull out 10-20 key pictures from the day and send them to you via social media or other means. Something you can look through in the evening or at breakfast the following day.
Editing - Usually I'll have two or three cameras with me and typically I'll shoot on average 500 shots per camera. A lot of pictures to go through. What I'll be looking for are do any of the shots show people with closed eyes, motion blur, and are out of focus or not tack sharp focus. The next step is to look at who are in the shots, make sure we have a balanced view of people. Double checking I have the pictures from the shot list and the must-have pictures. Work continues with a small amount of editing and cropping, making some pictures into black & white where it works. Once this is complete a start to finish slide show, walk-through each picture, making sure it fits and flows. Generally more edits and tweaking from this walk-through. Then the final quality control check my wife Anne-Marie will go through the pictures. She has a great eye for composition and framing and usually spots items I've missed.
Publish - All final pictures will be published to a private password protected gallery. A link is sent to you which you can share with friends and family. Pictures can be downloaded and printed from the gallery.
USB stick - A copy of full sized/full resolution pictures will be sent to you on a USB memory stick. You can view these on your laptop at home and decide on any you want printing.
Backup / archive - I keep a backup of all your images so don't worry if you loose the USB stick.
Video cameras - If you have opted to have static video cameras at your wedding (usually two video cameras running during the ceremony and during speeches) there is a further set of video editing to work through.
Old school film - I like to shoot film cameras in addition to the digital camera kit I have. Digital provides the bulk of the images but I'd look to run off a few rolls of film during the day. Sometimes it is not possible to shot film, depends on the day. Once these have been developed I will provide these to you in a digital form. Re-prints from negatives can be arranged.
Aerial photography - If the venue allows and the weather works we can look at getting a drone in the air for some aerial shots of your day.
Drop me an email with your dates and then we can get in touch and begin the discussion. There is no obligation at this point.
Once you're happy with me and I have confirmed your dates are free 50% of the agreed fee is payable with the balance due 14 days after delivery of the USB memory stick of images.
There is a contract to be signed covering both you and me, a summary of what we have discussed and an outline of the next steps.
We will then book in the pre-wedding meeting and photo shot.