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chelsy weisz

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Photographer Education

Post Wedding Workflow

January 9, 2018

I'm the woman who transformed adversity into triumph: I left my economic development job, navigated through divorce, and built a business that realized my dreams. Blending support with strategy, I turn dreams into reality. My mission? To empower women to boldly chase their entrepreneurial ambitions every day!

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I'm Chelsy Weisz

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Your wedding day has come and gone, and you wake up two days later in shock of how fast that truly went!  While you’re packing your bags for a tropical island, I’m hard at work retouching hundreds of images from your perfect wedding day.

As soon as I got home from your wedding I start backing up your images!  Did you know I shoot over 200 GB of images at an average wedding!  I also shoot dual cards so I’m starting the backup process as soon as I click the shutter button!

Images are backed up two different times when I get home.  To different hard drives, one of which is locked up in a fireproof safe! The morning after your wedding while you sleep in and wait for room service, I’m pouring myself a cafe breve and getting to work!

First steps!

I go through each image and start the culling process.  That means I get rid of those images that just aren’t up to par! Think closed eyes, out of focus, hair blowing in your face and awkward faces that probably shouldn’t have gotten photographed.  While the thought of your photographer getting rid of images scares some brides, rest assured that this is part of why you hired me! I promise not to get rid of any beautiful images. On average I deliver about 100 images per hour of coverage. So that means if I was with you for 8 hours you can expect about 800 images.  Part of that number depends on how many little details you included in your wedding like decor, what location was, what the weather was like, and lighting that day.

Time for heavy lifting in Lightroom

Once I cull all your images I bring them into the first phase of editing Lightroom. Lightroom is the program I use to do all my heavy lifting when it comes to editing wedding photos. This is where I color correct, adjust things like highlights, shadows, blacks, whites, saturation, sharpen, lens correction, straighten images, and crop slightly if needed.

I shoot all my images in RAW format.  This means you can’t open the files directly from your desktop, and they need to be processed by programs such as Lightroom, camera raw, or photoshop.  It also means that file sizes are quite large, there is a lot of information on each file!

The Lightroom stage of editing takes a while to complete. Once all images have been processed in Lightroom they get exported into JPEG files. These are the type of files you can open on your phone, computer, and print from.  Images are exported at high quality and are then ready for any photoshop work that needs to be done.

 

photoshop when needed!

My photoshop work is fairly minimal if any.  Often it is just used to fix things like flyaways, get rid of minor skin imperfections like the inevitable wedding day zit that may show up. Sometimes I use photoshop to take out signs out of the background, or power lines that are distracting. Last year for a wedding I spent a lot of time photoshoping kittens, and kids out of the back of some bride and groom shots. 🙂

    •  

Gallery Time!

After images are completely edited I will upload them to your online gallery!  One they are all uploaded into the gallery I break them up into some manageable sections.  Usually, they are broken down into Highlights, Getting Ready, Ceremony, Portraits, Reception and All Images.

The Highlights section are duplicates of images you will find in your other sections. These are some of the best images of the day, images that speak to the theme of the day and tell the story of you as a couple.

 

The reason I break images into these sections is to make finding images easier for you later on.  If you want to show grandma the photo of her earrings and your mothers necklace you know right away you can find those images in the Getting Ready section! Or if we caught your uncle doing the chicken dance, you know you can find that in the reception section!

Gallery delivery in a really long email!

You will receive a super long email from me with information on downloading your gallery, how to back up your images, and where to print your images! I know it is a long email and I know you are probably just skimming it to find the link to your gallery right away, and that’s okay, just please go back and read it so you know all the information you need!

After you have had a couple of days to soak in all your images I’ll send you an email with some dates to choose from to meet to go over your album design.  I do albums a bit different than some photographers! You will pick a day to come into the studio for your album premiere.  When you get there you will get to see your highlight video of your photos, and then we will sit down to go through your album design.

Album Premiere!

I predesign your album you get to sit on the couch in front of my TV which is hooked up to my computer.  We will go through each spread we can swap out images, or adjust the layout.  Since you will have had a week or so to look through your images you will have a pretty good idea of images you like and don’t want to include on your album.

I have done this process through email before and it takes just way too long.  I want to get your heirloom album into your hands as fast as possible! After we are done with your album if you have any other products in your package we will choose images for those products.  You will also have the option to add to your order things like canvases, prints for parents.  The night of your album premiere you will also have access to premiere night pricing, this means that you can save big time on products!

“You can still order through your online gallery!”

Don’t worry you will also have access to your online gallery where you can order smaller prints at any time at competitive prices.  You can also rest assured that your photos will be printed at my professional lab so your images will be printed on color calibrated printers, so you won’t come out looking like an Oompa Loompa like some kiosks tend to do when they haven’t been color calibrated for a while!

Thank you cards please!

The night of your album premiere we will also go ahead and design thank you cards. Even if you don’t end up ordering any I like to go ahead and get some designed just in case you get down the road and your good intentions of handwriting 400 thank yous goes out the door! You can rest assured that you already have custom designed cards ready to be printed on an emails notice! If you decide not to print them no problem at all!

The next day I will place your order with my lab.  Albums take 2-3 weeks to come in. Once they get to me I will go through each and every page and ensure that it is completely flawless.  Every once in awhile something will come back from the lab looking a little off and I want to make sure I will have had the chance to go over your products with my own hand to ensure they are the highest quality and ready to be enjoyed for decades to come!

I’ll give you a call when its time to pick up your products!

Timeline

  • 3-4 weeks after your wedding you will receive your images in your online gallery
  • 2-3 days after you get your images I send an email for you to pick a date for your album premiere
  • 4 weeks after your wedding  Album Premiere
  • 2-3 weeks after Album premiere you can pick up your finished products!
    • I do send thank you cards directly to you from my lab so you can get started on thank yous right away! Those take 5-7 days to get back!

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