How do you like it?

So, we are photographers and as such, we understand the business, at least that's what we tell ourselves.

But........ our customers don't live and breathe this stuff, so I'm going to give a big explanation to all the mumbo jumbo you will read on wedding photographer's websites and hopefully clear up a lot of confusion.

DISCLAIMER: Every photographer packages and prices their products differently, and may call them by different names, please understand this is for educational purposes only and will not necessarily be true in all cases. Gotta love legal-eze!

First is the shooting. This is just for the act of shooting folks, maybe they include the image processing, but rarely does this include the images. When I say processing, I mean editing and processing. Everybody thinks didigal photography saved professionals a lot of money, well, maybe, but it costs us in time.

Here's an example:

FILM

Typical wedding is about 6 hours of shooting or so. We have a few hours of consultation and conversation leading up to the day and some travel and setup time on the day of. Sooooo, once the wedding is photographed, there is about 10 hours or so in the job. Then we drop the film off to the lab and wait a few days for it to come back. Once we get the proofs, we edit out the unusable shots.  we then schedule an appointment with the customer to pick them up or come place an order. After their order is placed, we send them to the lab and wait again. Then the customer picks up their order. About 14 hours total for a 6 hour wedding.

DIGITAL

Typical wedding is about 6 hours of shooting or so. We have a few hours of consultation and conversation leading up to the day and some travel and setup time on the day of. Sooooo, once the wedding is photographed, there is about 10 hours or so in the job. Then we Download the images to a computer.  Then they are backed up to another device or disk.  Then the images are edited down to the keepers.  Image processing is the task of creating great images from the original RAW files.  This is where your black and white, sepia, and other effects are applied.  Normally, there is 1 1/2 to 2 hours of processing for every hour of shooting at a wedding.  Then we upload the images to a website and contact the customer.  The customer places an order and we retouch the images and send them to the lab.  All in all, we are at about 28 hours for a 6 hour wedding.

See that?  DOUBLE the time!  Maybe we didn't have to pay for "paper" proofs, and we didn't get prints of the unusable images, but I'm pretty sure all that processing time eats up that savings!

Why do we use digital then?

Easy.

Quality.  I can now create the image I want to, perfectly, every time, in whatever look I want it to be.  I can now retouch any imperfections out of an image.  Years from now, because of digital storage, I can make exact copies of the images I create today.

Next time somebody tells you "Digital is free, just shoot all you want", you'll know better.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I had anticipated so I'll do this section in installments.

Stay tuned!  Same bat time, same bat channel!

-B