p.4 #1 · How many images do your couples need to remember their day?
The thing about weddings is that you have the main story-arc (the actual wedding, focused around the bride and groom), but within that there are a lot of little mini stories that can be told. Friends and family getting together for the first time in years, people goofing off/having fun, etc. All of these things can be valuable to the bride and groom to have a record of, even if it isn't the primary storyline. For an album, 50-75 will do, for sure. But I don't see the harm in delivering 5-700 (which is my average between two shooters) so long as there's content in the images. My clients understand that what goes in an album are THE story-telling images of their day, and the rest, well it's supplemental.
It doesn't happen so much these days, but pre-digital people would buy an entire album of music for one song. The rest was just gravy. I have thousands upon thousands of songs in my itunes library, but I tend to only listen to a few different artists at a time, but it sure is nice having options.
Wedding Photography isn't like shooting for Vogue and you get 1 killer shot and that's the cover; or even really an editorial (it can be partly that, but it's not ALL about that). There are other things within it that has value to the client and I think that's worth acknowledging. Anyway, just my take on it. I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but it comes down to what you believe provides the most value to your client.
p.4 #2 · How many images do your couples need to remember their day?
tobicus wrote:
I have a lot of trouble with culling certain weddings, and this quotation by a fellow photographer (Fer Juaristi) helps me remember that I don't always need several images from the same "scene" to convey an event. I wanted to share it for any folks in my boat who have trouble winnowing down weddings to a desired number.
Here is the thing we tried differently last year and it worked great. We used to shoot tons and give tons.
Now we still shoot tons to have filler and for the client to feel like they got their moneys worth. yes I said that. We like is a Walmart mentality world and people think more is better. But before we show them more, we make an album design with the best of images. Most of the time it is 1-2 images per scene that are really killer. Then after they see that, they know the true value was in those 60 or so images. Then we release the full set of images.
p.4 #4 · How many images do your couples need to remember their day?
paparazzinick wrote:
Here is the thing we tried differently last year and it worked great. We used to shoot tons and give tons.
Now we still shoot tons to have filler and for the client to feel like they got their moneys worth. yes I said that. We like is a Walmart mentality world and people think more is better. But before we show them more, we make an album design with the best of images. Most of the time it is 1-2 images per scene that are really killer. Then after they see that, they know the true value was in those 60 or so images. Then we release the full set of images. ...Show more →
I like the idea of that too. And I'm betting that the images the handful of images couple remembers a year from now will almost certainly be contained within the 60 or so you previewed.
Speaking personally, I can only remember a handful of images from our wedding disc, and am much more of a fan of the album my wife made from the pictures, which, of course, doesn't contain more than a fraction of those on the disc.
p.4 #5 · How many images do your couples need to remember their day?
The way we've always done it is in our workflow we 3 star in Photo Mechanic all of the keepers that we plan to deliver (500-800). After everything is edited in LR we go through and 4 star all of our favorites (100-150). Those favorites are put in a separate folder on their DVD and in a separate gallery in their online viewing gallery.
We only look through the 4 star photos when creating the blog post and initial album design. Most of the time we send the "Our Favorites" gallery first so that they can look through those before getting all of the photos. That generally leaves a great impression and they can go back later and look through all of photos if they want. I would imagine everyone looks though them all at some point but even if they don't they still have the option sometime down the road.
I feel like this is the best of both worlds for the client. This solves the "no one wants to look through 800 images" problem AND the "you can't tell the whole story in 100 photos" problem.
We have a culling problem and this also helps with that. We don't have to cut out images that we like just to get down to a certain number and we can pick out our favorites without worrying that we're eliminating something that the client will really love for a reason completely unknown to us.
I'd be really surprised if any client would pick the "150 amazing images" option over the "150 amazing images" plus another 600 that you can either look at, or not.
More is better than less
because if there's more less stuff,
then you might want to have some more.
But then, your parents won't let you because there's only a little.
If you really like something, you'll want more of it.
We want more,
We want more,
Like, you really like it,
ya want more.
p.4 #6 · How many images do your couples need to remember their day?
I take about 800-1200 shots during a wedding. I deliver around 300 photos. I can cut a wedding to about 15-20 key "storytelling" "print, frame and put them on the wall" images.
