Jump to content

What would be a typical number of photos?


Sandy Vongries

Recommended Posts

Talking to a friend the other day and he mentioned that his daughter, quite a respectable enthusiast photographer, was out of state photographing a friend's expensive wedding. I talked about some of the watch outs, in case he spoke to her before the event. He said she was finished had had taken 13,000 photos of the Lead up, Wedding, and Reception. I thought that was an extraordinary number of raw shots. Granted, I am still possessed by film habits, but I did around 500 of my son's Wedding / Reception before discards. Of course, they had Professionals as well. Be curious to know what kinds of numbers are customary for a wedding these days.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

No idea but that would be a photo every 2.21 seconds during an 8-hour day. Shooting bursts to get expressions? Glad I'm not doing the editing and post!

Me too! My assumption is, since this was an over the top event, there was probably the Rehearsal Dinner before, final fitting, makeup before the wedding, off site shots, Wedding, and Reception. She must have been shooting burst. My yearly Charity shoot, in process now, is usually on or around 600 shots taken over several days, and that is a travail to cull and edit. Unimaginable chore, but her day job is in a family business so she has the space she needs. Thanks for the feedback!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't need to tell you (but of course I will anyway), that I wouldn't want to be the one to slim this down to a nice portfolio of wedding pictures.

 

Too many is tiresome. Fewer really good shots will always beat out a vast number of good shots. But you all know that anyway.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dunno. I was thinking final photos maybe 200. Raw photos maybe 3,000 - 4,000. But 13,000 seems excessive.

 

I was told National Geographic photos shoot 20,000 photos for an assignment more or less. I think that # was still in the film era. I say you need to shoot a hundred photos to get a good one. (if lucky)

 

I almost never go to weddings, but did go to one a few years ago...

dancing-queen-bride-copyright-2014-daniel-d-teoli-jr-mr.jpg?w=995&h=663

Dancing Queen Bride 2014

It is kinda interesting that I don't like weddings, yet I have a huge collection of archival photos of vintage weddings / brides. I find them interesting as long as I don't have to go to them. I even have a category for nosegay, which is a small floral bouquet the bride used to carry to stifle smells.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13,000 photos ! I hope she meant 1300 because that is a quick way to wear out your camera. Depending on the size of the wedding, I usually don't go past 1600 for a very large wedding, 1200 for medium size and 300-600 for a small wedding. Unlike some photographers that treat the camera like a machine-gun, I take my time and try to get the best shot possible. This is probably from my old Film day experiences. Sitll 13,000 is a lot of photos to Cull. That might take you an entire week unless you have help, or unless you nailed each and every shot. Shooting RAW makes it even more tedious...
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13,000 photos ! I hope she meant 1300 because that is a quick way to wear out your camera. Depending on the size of the wedding, I usually don't go past 2000 for a very large wedding, 1200 for medium size and 300-600 for a small wedding. Unlike some photographers that treat the camera like a machine-gun, I take my time and try to get the best shot possible. This is probably from my old Film day experiences. Sitll 13,000 is a lot of photos to Cull. That might take you an entire week unless you have help, or unless you nailed each and every shot. Shooting RAW makes it even more tedious...

Heard it from her father, he is an intelligent guy, but could have heard wrong. This was apparently an over the top affair. They flew in a distinguished clergyman from overseas to officiate. I don't even care for culling and editing the 500 to 600 shots I get on my yearly charity shoot. Been procrastinating for a couple of days, rainy day, so no excuse. Thanks for your response!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heard it from her father, he is an intelligent guy, but could have heard wrong. This was apparently an over the top affair. They flew in a distinguished clergyman from overseas to officiate. I don't even care for culling and editing the 500 to 600 shots I get on my yearly charity shoot. Been procrastinating for a couple of days, rainy day, so no excuse. Thanks for your response!

Been told that the bigger/expensive the wedding the bigger/expensive the divorce. But what would I know? Married in a women's clubhouse and have only been married for 51 years.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some cameras don't wear from use per shot as they rely on the electronic shutter for the most part, thus you can take as many shots as you want, and they can typically do it at 20 fps no less. So it would be easy to get 13000 shots on a busy wedding with many sub-events, if one uses these capabilities. There would be no extra wear on the camera. However, one can ask the question "why" would one do that when it would result in a large amount of editing work and the photographer is surely aware of that. If one has an efficient computer for this type of work then it may not be a huge problem to just pick some of the best ones to create the set, but if one wants to be sure of which ones are the best then this can take quite a lot of time doing side by side comparisons to evaluate what feelings each image invokes, how they work together with other images etc. and finally to edit the images to fit visually with the others.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Spoke to the young lady yesterday. It was 13,000! She has begun culling them. I'm pretty sure she is a Canon user. I didn't go into detail because I didn't want to come across as critical. The Wedding couple are personal friends, and she has done photos for them before so they are ok with some processing time. I can't imagine the task, the mind boggles.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

13k??? Really? How would even three or four photographers shoot that many, much less one? Next question is why? I think the last one I shot, two of us shot a total of about 1300. Edited down to maybe half that and didn’t miss a thing during a 12 hour day. When digital was younger I recall a friend receiving close to 5000 images of her wedding shot by a pro over three days. I think he did that just because he could, not because it was a monster event. 
 

Rick H.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/3/2022 at 3:26 AM, robert_ante said:

Do people really view the videos and dozens and dozens of photos after the wedding? 1,300 or 13,000 pictures! Just wondering. At our wedding I handed a friend my Rollei and three rolls of film and told him to enjoy himself. All BW film by the way.

I don't think many photographers deliver thousands of images nor would it make any sense to do so, unless the idea is to provide an inexpensive service which doesn't include editing. Editing is the most time-consuming part no doubt. 

It is an interesting question, of course, what people do with the photographs. Some make albums or books according to their own layout, others have the photographer provide the album or book design. I wouldn't necessarily want to design a book based on let's say 72 images captured (3 rolls of 220 film), as there will undoubtedly be some that are not good. But it would likely be sufficient for portraits to frame and display. By shooting a lot of images it becomes more likely that one can create a more complete documentary of the course of the day and select the ones that best fit together. However, there is a point of diminishing returns where increasing the number of images no longer improves the outcome yet increases the workload and makes editing very tedious. I guess one way to solve the editing problem is not to even look at all the images in full but simply pick from thumbnails the ones that are needed for the story. But then still there is the question of what to keep in back ups to the future.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/2/2022 at 6:26 PM, robert_ante said:

Do people really view the videos and dozens and dozens of photos after the wedding?

I only view them when the mother of the bride shoves her phone in my face to make me look. Otherwise, if I get a link at home, unless something really catches my eye, I skim quickly through them so I can get back to my next HBO, Netflix, or Amazon episode. 😊

"You talkin' to me?"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Just saw this. 13,000 is madness. When I assisted my uncle in wedding photography back in the 1970s, we rarely shot more than 300 or 400 with the ‘blad, and maybe a dozen or so b&w with an old Speed Graphic using cut film if the couple wanted those kind of ‘retro’ shots. 13K is mind blowing! My late parents’ wedding album was shot in the late 1940s in b&w—looks like it was done last month, b&w holds up over the years. A relative who was a guest took some 35mm Kodachromes—they, too, look like they were shot last month, but the Agfas and Dufays are faded to nothing. With today’s bridezillas, so glad I have nothing to do with weddings.

  • Like 2
Jeffrey L. T. von Gluck
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

While 13,000 is bad, I can easily imagine it happening. Suppose your camera is set at around 10 fps, which is a good idea if you want catch best expressions. Every time you take a shot you get 10. Continue for 3 hours + it would easily add up. Particularly for a large wedding. When I did weddings a very popular question the couple asked was how many photos would I take. Quality was not the issue for most. Now you are also competing with phones, so you need a lot of shots to get everything of interest, or at least that is what some couples think.

Edited by Robin Smith
Robin Smith
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 3/7/2023 at 3:08 PM, Robin Smith said:

While 13,000 is bad, I can easily imagine it happening. Suppose your camera is set at around 10 fps, which is a good idea if you want catch best expressions. Every time you take a shot you get 10.

(snip)

There are supposed to be digital cameras (I haven't tried one) that will take 10 or so frames,

as noted, and then select the one with most people smiling, then store that on the card.

The person (you) only have to look at one.

-- glen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...