I recently had a conversation (at the Abbey Hotel Wedding fayre as it happens) about the cost of wedding photography and the time it takes to fully edit possibly 400+ wedding photographs. You only see your photographer on the wedding day itself, or maybe at a pre-wedding shoot. What your actually paying for when you hire a professional wedding photographer is several things
All of these things take time to acquire, especially the creative flair and expertise with Adobe Photoshop, and that is why professional wedding photographers charge what they do - to make your wedding images look fantastic. Straight out of a camera (I only use RAW images and my Canon EOS 5D Mark II gives me files of 26Mb+ each at 3744x5616) they can look rather dull and lifeless as the image below shows:
After basic editing that happens to all my images (getting the exposure the way I want it, adding vibrance to the colours, warming skin tones, brightening shadows etc) I end up with this:
I then do a little bit more editing to fine tune the colours, skin tones and convert to JPG...
The last part is to fully edit the image to really make it something special. "Something Special" is one of the reasons I always have a pre-wedding shoot. I can get a feel of what the happy couple like in terms of style, editing , look and feel for their images. This means that every wedding is going to be edited slightly differently. Next comes the more specialist editing:
As a final touch I would a border and white key line...
What makes it easier, especially on this image, is that the bride has great skin anyway. Not every bride will have; and I will work on that especially for closer shots. That does take a bit longer to do as it is more fiddlier to get it looking natural.
From the time when the first images is brought into Adobe Photoshop to when when it is finished could be around 20 minutes or more per image.
Now, not all images would need this, but you are still looking at 4-5 days editing for a full day of shooting at a wedding, and it is that time that you are paying for add on the costs of wedding albums, designing the albums etc and that is one of the reasons why professional wedding photography can cost as much as it does.
The photographs you choose for your wedding album will be edited to the above standard; however please think before asking to edit other photographs - it does take time and hence cost.
