william-porter

<p>Simple answer: practice. </p> <p>Only slightly less simple answer: practice — and don't let yourself work any other way. In other words, go to full M and stay there. Forget that PAS settings are on your dial. </p> <p>•</p> <p>Now, getting into the details: It's not nearly as hard as you may think. Even when I started shooting in the late 1960s, pretty much everybody shot in full manual because we didn't have any choice. So shooting M was just like learning to drive a stick shift: it seems like an almost impossible challenge today but really, even mediocre photographers like me learned how to do it reasonably well. Among other things it teaches you that getting the exposure right is just about the most trivial thing about photography. I've taken thousands upon thousands of well-exposed photos that are still lousy photos. None of the greatest photographers had priority modes or program mode. I'm thinking of greats like Cartier-Bresson, Kertesz, Capa, Brassai, Doisneau, Stieglitz, Sander, the young genius Lartigue, and many more. Doesn't seem to have held them back. </p> <p>You asked specifically about weddings, so I'd mention that, in addition to working with your camera until everything is simply second nature, experience at weddings is a huge help, because you know how to anticipate what's going to happen and so you can think ahead and if a change is needed to your settings, you can make it ahead of time. </p> <p>And I have to push back against your premise a little bit. The light does not really change <em>constantly,</em> that is, from shot to shot. Inside the church or at the ceremony the light is probably pretty constant. Ditto at the reception. I remember at one of the first weddings I shot, I wrecked some photos when we left the church and stepped out into the afternoon sunlight. I'd been running to get outside and just forgot to adjust my settings. Never made that mistake again. But otherwise, in general, you get into an environment, set your aperture, shutter speed and ISO and you stay in that ballpark for a while.</p> <p>Second, you're generally not adjusting everything on every shot, that is, it's simply not the case that you start every shot with all your settings "zeroed out" and you adjust the exposure from scratch. So you're generally just tweaking the settings and you might not even do that for a number of shots in a row. The exposure meters in modern digital cameras and in particular the live displays in mirrorless cameras make getting the right exposure drop-dead easy, compared to the old days shooting film or even the early days of digital.</p> <p>This is where it gets a little complicated to talk about in the abstract, but I'd say that the thing about shooting full manual is mainly that you learn to be conscious of your settings at all times. Most of the time I would decide that a given aperture (say, f2.8 or f3.2) was good and I'd leave that alone unless I really wanted more depth of field (say, doing a group shot). For me, shooting M was mostly about adjusting shutter speed depending on what was going on. While the couple are standing fairly still, I'd shoot at shutter speeds down to 1/30th sec. (I've always used bodies with terrific image stabilization.) If somebody's moving and/or if I'm using a longer lens, then I adjust shutter speed up to something faster.</p> <p>Occasionally when the body I was using allowed me to use auto-ISO in M, I'd do that. Pentax has a lovely Aperture+Shutter "TAv" priority mode but auto-ISO in M does pretty much same thing on Sony and Nikon. I sold my big cameras a couple years ago and switched to micro four thirds and regret that none of my MFT bodies permit auto-ISO in M. Yeah, it's not "pure" or "full" Manual, but nobody would shoot M in order to be "pure". It's not a moral decision! It's a practical decision.</p> <p>•</p> <p>And what's practical about it?<br> <br> My basic view is, do what works for you and don't do what doesn't. If you can put the camera in P and get great photos, by all means, do that. For me though shooting full manual has always been the best way to get good photos. And not just manual exposure modes, but generally I preferred to work with two bodies each of which had a prime lens, so no zooming. I was a little less rigorous about focusing modes and in the end found myself using manual focus only when shooting on tripod. But working with fixed focal lengths and having to think carefully about exposure settings worked for me because.... Well, I started to say that it worked precisely because it slowed me down, but that's not quite right. It didn't slow me down much. Certainly didn't make it impossible for me to get candid shots, say, at a reception. No doubt years of shooting sports, always in M, helped! Not it wasn't that shooting M slowed me down but rather that it made me more a more deliberate shooter. It kept (and keeps) me honest, keeps me from getting lazy. </p> <p>You ever know one of those people who always knows EXACTLY how much money that have on them? That's kind of what shooting manual is like. Knowing how much money you've got in your pocket or your purse doesn't make it harder for you to buy something, it simply makes you think a little harder about whether you want to. Same thing for shooting in M. You learn quickly to be mindful of all of your settings, which strikes me as an inherently good thing. I found that I worked a little harder to get shots right. My goal always was to shoot fewer photos but have more keepers. I have always taken too many photos, most of them indifferent at best. </p> <p>Anyway, I return to my first two paragraphs: Practice and force yourself to use M exclusively. Try it for six months. You might surprise yourself. And if you find it's not for you, that's okay, too. After the shot is taken, whether it's lousy or great, nobody cares what exposure mode you used!</p> <p>Good luck. </p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Patrick,</p> <p>This is one of those questions that doesn't really have an answer — not a single, right answer in all circumstances. But in the end this isn't as complicated as you might think, because you probably won't have as many options as you'd like.</p> <p> </p> <p>You didn't mention whether you're body is full-frame or APS-C and that of course makes a difference to the effective field of view of your 24–70 lens. I'd say your options are basically: tele, normal, wide and very wide, where:</p> <ul> <li>tele = >70mm on full frame, >50mm on APS-C</li> <li>"normal" = 50mm on full frame, 35mm on APS-C</li> <li>wide = 30–40mm on full frame, 25-30 on APS-C</li> <li>very wide =</li> </ul> <p>That's not drawn from the Bureau of Standards! Just meant to provide a very rough idea. I might say that, regardless of the sensor size of your camera, your 24-70 will probably do the job somewhere in its focal range. </p> <p>Now, it would be nice to use a tele lens to photograph a group for the reasons Harry P. already mentioned: tele lens will provide least distortion (and being back from the group will provide max depth of field so everybody in every row of the group will be nicely in focus). But of course to use tele focal length to photograph a wide group of people you've got to back up a good ways. When possible I shot large groups either outside OR in very large indoor spaces like gymnasia or reception halls. </p> <p>And if you can't back up far enough to use something like short telephoto focal length? Then you adjust your focal length, going as wide as you need to. With your zoom lens, this won't be hard. Arrange the group, put your camera on a tripod as far back as you can (mindful of other considerations like lighting) and make sure everybody is in the shot.</p> <p>•</p> <p>Hope a few other thoughts won't be out of line.</p> <p>Always very good idea to make sure that there's a fair bit of EXTRA room in the shot. So zoom out enough to get everybody in the shot, and then zoom out a little further to leave a fair bit of "margin", even if it means including uninteresting stuff in the shot. Two benefits of doing this are:</p> <ul> <li>Allows for cropping the shot to different sizes.</li> <li>Allows for correction of perspectival distortion, if necessary. (I use DxO ViewPoint for this but you can do it right in Lightroom pretty well and there are plenty of other apps that will help you do it too.)</li> </ul> <p>Be mindful of aperture and depth of field (DOF) here — and how relationship between aperture and the distance to focal plane affects DOF. If you've just been shooting individual or very small group shots, your camera might be set to f/2.8 (giving minimum DOF for whatever focal length). If the focal length is short enough and/or you're far enough away from the center of the group, f/2.8 may provide enough DOF to keep everybody reasonably in focus. But this is something to be aware of. I recall some group shots I took where the camera was in tight on the group, I was pretty close and focused on the bride and groom in the front row — and the aunts and uncles in the third row were starting to get a bit fuzzy, even fuzzier than uncles are wont to get at weddings. If you've got plenty of light, then by all means don't feel you need to shoot groups at f/2.8!</p> <p>Even if you don't use a tripod regularly, you'll find one useful here — tripod + hand-held remote. You'll want to frame the shot and then (trusting that subjects aren't wandering in and out of the frame) stand aside from the camera and LOOK at the group. Click the shot using your hand-held remote when you sense the moment is right.</p> <p>Take at least three shots in fairly quick succession. This will maximize your chances of getting everybody's eyes open in the same shot.</p> <p>The Baby Problem: Tell parents NOT to look at their fussy babies but instead to keep looking at your or the camera. When the baby stops fussing for half a sec, then it's up to YOU to react and take the shot. But if the parents are looking down at the baby at that moment, well, baby's looking at camera but Mom or Dad is not. </p> <p>Good luck,</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Jessica,</p> <p>When I was doing weddings, I never gave raw files to clients. And I tried not to give them the very highest res images — not because I was jealously guarding my intellectual property, well not just for that reason, but more because if you are shooting with anything reasonable these days (anything say over 12MP) then the files really are quite large and clients generally won't know what to do with them. But I did give them reasonably high-res files. You should be aware that 1200x800 is TINY. That's the approximate resolution of a very old computer monitor. I want images at least twice that large for viewing on my iPhone 6 Plus or my retina display Macbook Pro. </p> <p>The key to nearly every problem in life and business is <em>avoidance</em>, and the way to have avoided this problem would have been to be more informative about the resolution of the images you'll be providing. Now if you had told them they'd be getting 1280x800 images, you might not have gotten the gig in the first place. But that's a separate problem. The way to get the gig AND keep them happy is to promise them something reasonable and then deliver. As I said, I'd expect <em>at least</em> 2400px on the long side. And these days even that might be stingy.</p> <p>Exporting from Lightroom isn't hard, in fact, this is one of the best parts of Lightroom, and you really do need to be a master of this feature. Obviously, you know you're not there yet. But there are a zillion places where you can learn about Lightroom. Start with Adobe's forums, then search for websites devoted to Lightroom. And there are books and books and books. There's help right inside Lightroom, too, which isn't a bad place to start.</p> <p>https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/exporting-photos-basic-workflow.html</p> <p>It doesn't take long to reexport all the images at two or three times the size you gave the clients initially. Make 'em happy. Good luck.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Good for everybody to be warned again. But this is not a "new" scam — it's been around for years.</p> <p>I was a target of it a couple of years ago (when I was still shooting weddings). Something about the customer's initial contact gave me the "uh-oh" feeling. Perhaps it was that they were looking for a photographer two weeks before the wedding, and I thought that even for a customer in a hurry, they were too easy. But I think it was also that they didn't ever speak to me by phone (although I don't see how that's particularly critical to the scam).</p> <p>Then they sent a check for much more than I had demanded up front. Around the time the check arrived I got an email apologizing for the too-large check and asking if I could pay for one of the vendors from the surplus amount in the check. I wrote back, offering to return the check and asking for check in the correct amount. And of course, never heard from them again.</p> <p>One interesting detail: The address they gave me as the wedding venue was a house in Mesquite, Texas. I'd done some small home weddings in the past and didn't initially think that was odd. But after the problem with the check, I looked up the address using Google Street View. It was a valid address — for a total wreck of a house out in the country. </p> <p>In my case, other than the disappointment, no harm was done.</p> <p>Anyway, pays to pay attention.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Well, those of us who regularly shoot with prime lenses always work and usually even play with two bodies; I've worked with three at times, shooting weddings and events, and as late as the 1970s, that was not uncommon.</p> <p>I wouldn't worry about depth of field. I mean, if you can, fine. But doing news reportage photography is NOT like photographing a wedding!</p> <p>At least in my experience shooting political debates, marathons and regattas, church carnivals, lectures, graduations and the like, I was usually worried simply about GETTING THE SHOT — and after that, about basic focus, exposure and composition. When the background was uninteresting, I didn't think about blurring it by opening up to f/1.8, I thought about moving and shooting from a different perspective.</p> <p>You do what you're comfortable with and what seems to work best. If it were me, I'd put the 28–70 on the full-frame camera and shoot with it as much as possible; I'd save the APS-C camera and the 70–200 for special needs. When I covered events for news publication I was more often shooting with wide angle than with telephoto, so the 28 on the full-frame would be most useful. But your mileage very well may vary. I know other photographers who basically live with the 70–200 on their full-frame cameras and are very happy.</p> <p>No right answer here. Well, there's one right answer: You must have two cameras. (What happens when one has a problem?) And there's one other answer I think is pretty close to right, which is, it's hard to shoot with two really different cameras. Not impossible, in fact, these days I do it a fair bit. But it's much easier if the two cameras operate in similar fashion and have very similar specs, so that when you switch you don't have to think hard about which side of the steering column the turn signals are on (so to speak).</p> <p>Good luck</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Candice,</p> <p>This isn't a possibility: It's a certainty unless you take steps to avoid it. Some things that will help:</p> <ul> <li>Make sure there's at least one helper available (for me this was always a friend of the bride) who can help the bride carry the train and/or hold up the dress when the bride has to move around.</li> <li>Emphasize with the bride that she should NOT move around while the dress is touching the ground.</li> <li>Make sure you stay away from wet and/or dirty areas.</li> <li>Bring a large sheet or blanket. Spread this ground cover on the ground, move bride on to it, then get helper to carefully rearrange the dress and/or ground cover so that the cover isn't visible yet manages to prevent 99% of the dress from touching actual grass or ground.</li> </ul> <p>And that's about all there is to that. </p> <p>So now you have the know-how to minimize soiling the dress, you talk to the bridal shop with confidence, let them know that despite your precautions, there's a small chance some dirt might get on the dress. I would expect them to understand and to accept this risk. If you do your part, the risk should be pretty small, but if something goes wrong, the shop certainly has the ability to clean the dress.</p> <p>Be smart to get that agreement in writing. Doesn't have to be too formal—you don't want to scare them! You just want to have an understanding memorialized in some clear fashion for everybody's benefit.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Grant S. writes:</p> <blockquote> <p>All their excuses look pretty weak now that DxO Optics Pro 10 is out and it accepts DNG files from Adobe.</p> </blockquote> <p>I have no inside info about why DxO declined to support DNG in the past. But I can confirm Grant's observation: DxO Optics Pro 10, released in late summer 2015, supports Adobe-converted DNGs and provides the same lens corrections it gives to original raw files. I just tested this with some PDF files from 2009. </p> <p>Even more interesting: the new DxO ONE camera (brilliant review of which can be found <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2995052/cameras/dxo-one-review-a-better-camera-for-your-iphone.html">here</a>*) uses DNG as its native raw format, and its proprietary 'SuperRAW' format is basically just 4 DNG files inside a wrapper. So it appears DxO is now supporting Adobe DNG pretty well.</p> <p>I'm giving serious thought to going all-in on DNG. Major advantage for me would be having all that metadata written into the DNG file so I could get rid of XMP sidecars. I wish that my other cameras gave me the DNG capture option. It was one of the things I liked about my old Pentax cameras: I had choice of PEF or DNG. I'm mainly shooting Olympus and Panasonic micro four-thirds now and none of my cameras let me choose DNG raw capture. I expect Canon and Nikon to hold out as long as possible, but I do wish the micro four-thirds system cameras would adopt DNG. Seems more consistent with the micro four-thirds 'let's all get all along, okay?' philosophy.</p> <p>Will</p> <p>*"Brilliant review"? Well, my wife liked it. :-)</p>

<blockquote>BUT can I do it for much less than $250 including my time and effort?</blockquote> <p>No. :-(</p>

<p>Pete S. says, "The problem with Auto WB is that it doesn't work," and he goes on to explain why it doesn't. And then, quite correctly, he proceeds to explain the problem with setting the white balance manually. In the end, his approach differs from mine but obviously works for him, and that's what matters. Everybody has to struggle through this issue and find their own peace with it.</p> <p>The ultimate problem is that <em>color in photography is an enormous pain in the</em> neck. It doesn't work generally. I mean, I can use two different brand cameras both set to same white balance preset (say, 5000K), take the same shot with the same exposure, and then find that the color is not quite the same when the raw file is converted to my computer monitor. OR, I can load <em>the very same image</em> into two different programs — say, Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro — and the colors won't be quite the same. OR I can get an image to look just about perfect on my calibrated monitor and then look at it on another display and see subtle changes in color. And as we all know, even if you eliminate the digital problem by printing the image, the image will look a little different in different lighting. I know that product photographers who are working for publication in magazines go to a lot of trouble to make sure that the output in the magazine displays the product's real-life colors. But again, in what light? And I don't even like to think about the fact that not everybody perceives color the same way. This is an absurdly complicated problem.</p> <p>On my iMac, I have just spent a couple of minutes tabbing back and forth between Lightroom and DxO Optics Pro 10.5, comparing each program's rendition of the very same raw file with the other's. The photo is a picture of my red pickup truck. The differences are very subtle: my wife (who is normally pretty sensitive to colors) might not notice them even if I tried to point them out. But to my eyes, anyway, the DxO OP colors are very slightly more accurate, while the Lightroom colors are very slightly more appealing. Lightroom's blue sky is a little bluer, and the red truck is a little redder; DxO OP's sky is a more realistic pale blue and the truck clearly has a tinge of orange in its red paint. I'm talking about the default conversions here: I could make both renderings (nearly) identical with just a few adjustments. The photo in question was taken with the DxO ONE, so perhaps it's not surprising that DxO Optics Pro renders it a bit more correctly. I've often had the feeling that one raw converter renders files from a particular camera better or worse that another raw converter I also use. (I used to think that Lightroom rendered Olympus raw files better than Aperture, but that Aperture rendered Sony ARW raw files colors better than Lightroom.)</p> <p> •</p> <p>If you shoot raw, you <em>will</em> need to make corrections to images now and then — although in my current day-to-day experience with Lightroom, DxO Optics Pro and ON1 Perfect Photo Suite, rendering color "as shot" looks right to me 90% of the time, if not more often than that. I generally have to fiddle with color balance only when the shot was affected by multiple light sources or some unusual colors in the subject. </p> <p>If you shoot jpeg, you can use one of those thingies to create custom white balance settings. I can't remember the product name although I've got one lying around here in my office somewhere. People used to mimic them by use the plastic translucent top from a Pringles potato chip tube. Years ago, I had that gizmo hanging around my neck and did a lot of custom white balance while shooting. Is that better? Is color from JPEG better than color from RAW? Is sRGB better than AdobeRGB for color? </p> <p>To me, the amazing thing is that so many cameras seem to produce <em>plausible</em> color output. In other words, it's amazing to me that this stuff works at all.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Phil,</p> <p>No, there are no hard and fast opinions about this. Well, no, that's not correct. There are a few hard and fast opinions — but they aren't in agreement with one another. In seminars with a lot of the world's greatest photographers, I've found that there's almost no universal agreement about anything except that good lenses are worth the money. But best approach to white balance? best shooting mode? best camera? best focal length? Call out one of those topics in a crowd of serious photographers and then step back before the fists start flying.</p> <p>• </p> <p>There are lots of ways to do this. I think I've done every one of them.</p> <ol> <li>Set white balance to a fixed temp (usually 5000K) and leave it there, on theory that you at least know where you started. Got that tip from one very famous photographer (who by now is probably doing something different).</li> <li>Set custom white balance in camera for the shooting scene.</li> <li>Shoot a WhiBal or similar card for reference and adjust later.</li> <li>Put it on Auto White Balance and forget about it. Correct in post if necessary.</li> </ol> <p>Mostly, I go with #4. I'll add #3 when I remember: I always have a white balance card in my bag and getting a reference shot of the card is definitely a good idea — but it's a bit difficult to get all the reference shots you need if you are moving around, say, at a reception, switching between flash and no-flash, light from windows, light from incandescent or fluorescent lights, into the shade, into open sunlight, etc. I <em>do</em> almost always take a reference shot with the WhiBal card when doing portraits. I almost never do #2 (set custom white balance in camera) although I've known serious photographers who do. And while I did shoot at 5000K for a year or so, and it worked, I decided that Auto WB is easier and required me to fix fewer photos in post. </p> <p>Nailing the white balance when shooting is supposed to make a difference to the camera's exposure calculations — but in my experience, that difference is trivially small.</p> <p>•<br> <br> The key thing is — whatever you decide about white balance — ALWAYS SHOOT RAW. </p> <p>The main reason that white balance is a problem is that you want the bride's face to be the same color in all the shots. I will confess that I have more than once delivered images processed in different ways to the bride and realized afterwards that the colors were <em>not</em> consistent. One of the reasons I'm not one of the world's truly great wedding photographers. (I think that's reason #27.) When you're shooting with multiple cameras (as I almost always am) it's valuable to have reference shots that can be used to sync white balance, but in my experience anyway that's mainly a problem if you're shooting with more than one <em>brand</em> of camera and less of a problem if you're shooting with two models from the same brand.</p> <p>A well-calibrated computer monitor is more important than your choice of white-balance setting in camera. My advice: SHOOT RAW, on Auto WB, and put more effort into things like basic exposure, composition and focus. But the real truth is: do what you feel comfortable with and what you find works for you.</p> <p>My two cents, anyway. Good luck,</p> <p>Will</p> <p>p.s. I'm only thinking here about wedding photography and wedding portraiture and similar types of shooting, say, real photojournalism. If you're doing studio work, or commercial or product work, then you have the time to nail the white balance while shooting and it's probably worth the trouble.</p>

<p>In the past — including the distant past — wedding photographers made much or most of their money selling prints, not so much from taking the photos. Even today, prints and printed books are where the money is. If you get paid a fixed amount for shooting and processing, you're working for an hourly wage. If that hourly wage is high, you may be able to make a living. But people who get rich don't work by the hour: they figure out how to get paid repeatedly for something they've already done (publishing novels, selling songs, royalty payments on reruns of your old movies, etc). So one reason to restrict reprinting of images is to try to get clients to come back to you for the prints — so you can make the money.</p> <p>You can put this into your contract ("no reprinting of licensed images permitted whatsoever!!") but that's a waste of time, pretty much like prohibiting people from reposting images on their social media sites. If you're serious about limiting their ability to print, don't give them images large enough to be printed well. I have never given my clients full-res images and my contract states that clients will get "images processed and ready for web sharing". </p> <p>But there are problems with <em>that</em>, too. Technology marches on without regard for the economic problems of photographers, and things like retina displays require higher res images to make the images look their best. You might decide to give your client images none of which is more than 1024px per longest side. But you might get complaints — and even if your client doesn't complaint, your images might not look so great on her Facebook page if somebody views it on anything other than an old smart phone.</p> <p>All of the above is from the <em>photographer's</em> perspective. We're photographers, so that's an important perspective.</p> <p>•</p> <p>But there's another way to look at this, and it's perhaps even more important. Restricting printing is <em>in the client's interest. </em>There are several points to make here. First, printing matters, indeed, printing is the only way the client can be sure she'll have access to her wedding photos in 25 years. And second, if printing matters, then it ought to matter that the prints be well made. The final point — which I'm usually pretty explicit about — is that, these days, excellent photo printing services are increasingly hard to find and the client really needs the assistance of the photographer.</p> <p>The really successful photographers get hired because they have great photos on their websites; but they succeed in business because they sell the clients on prints and books <em>before the wedding.</em> </p> <p>Will</p> <p> </p>

<blockquote> <p>I do have a contract which states he would provide images of the full day starting from bridal prep to the evening. Some of the pictures are ok, alot of them are out of focus and a lot are of the back of my husbands head. The photograopher showed us albums and a webpage which he has, ( i have now found out his has 4 other photographers working for him and putting their work on his page too).</p> </blockquote> <p>"A lot" of the pictures are out of focus? Sigh. Hard to understand that. I'm not the world's greatest photographer, but I just went through the photos an old wedding that I did when I was just starting — one of my first paid gigs — and out of 800 or so photos, there were only two, perhaps three that were badly out of focus. There are lots of ways to take a bad photo! But focus simply shouldn't be a problem for any semi-competent photographer these days. <br> <br> I'm taking your report about the photos at face value, which is all I can do without seeing the images. But even if this is not completely fair to your particular photographer, it's a fact that there are plenty of people shooting weddings who don't know what they're doing (including some that will go on to become masters) and, alas, there are more than a few complete frauds in the business, too. In the U.S. and perhaps the U.K., it's an unregulated industry. Absolutely anybody can put up a website and solicit business as a photographer. You don't even have to have photos: More than a few photographers (including a couple famous ones) simply steal other people's work. <br> .</p> <blockquote> <p>As to why he gave me these pictures, i asked if he had more because the edited ones were rubbish and none of family which you would expect. So he sent me all the pictures including the inappriprate ones of one of my friends. My step dad is a photographer but i refused to let him do all the wedding pictures as he had enough to do walking me down the aisle and he said the same why did he send those pictures to you? He was £400. His facebook page also has 4.9/5 star ratings ? no idea how though.</p> </blockquote> <p>Ah, I see. My guess is that I wouldn't have <em>taken</em> those photos in the first place, but if I had, I sure as heck wouldn't have turned them over to you. Most of us with any experience have a clause in our contracts that states that the client (i.e. you) will NOT see "all" the photos that are taken. I've never kept a count on this, but I reckon I delete perhaps as many as five percent of the photos I took at a wedding almost immediately. Delete — forever. Some of those were test exposures, some of those were accidents (like a photo of my feet because I pressed the shutter while carrying the camera in my hand) and some of them are grossly inopportune captures. Those are photos I myself never want to see again. I keep everything else, at least until I've gone through all the photos carefully enough to confirm that this one mediocre photo of the bride's grandmother isn't the only shot I've got of that VIP.<br> <br> Facebook ratings are worthless. Personally, I think Facebook itself is worthless, but that's another topic. There's an amusing commercial for Adobe being shown here in the U.S. in which a businessman is shown out on some shady-looking street late at night buying clicks and likes from a very shady-looking character. It's like he's buying drugs. I think it's hilarious — and it's too true. Don't count on other people's endorsement, especially the endorsement of other people you don't know. Good reviews are too easy to get (or manufacture). And a single, completely unfair bad review from somebody can wreck an otherwise very good vendor's rating. <br> <br> As I said, you can't sue him for better or different photos. If you feel that what he gave you fails to satisfy the terms of the contract, perhaps you can sue for a reimbursement of some or all of the fee. In Texas, you might be able to go to "small claims court" and do this on your own. But, while I am sure you were on a tight budget, in an absolute sense, £400 (little over US $600) sounds inexpensive. It's also the case that you might get a judgment against the photographer that you can't enforce, in other words, you go through a lot of trouble and you accomplish nothing. <br> <br> Think it through and decide for yourself. But it might be the case that your best option is to be grateful for the few good photos, and forget about the rest. I've mentioned this here at photo.net before: When my wife and I were married, we were on such a tight budget that we asked family members to do as much as possible for us. My wife's sisters-in-law "catered" the reception and did a lovely job. My brother-in-law was the photographer. He wasn't a pro by any means and to make matters worse, multiple rolls of film were loss at the processing service. We treasure the handful of photos that survived — and we'll celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary this December.<br> . <br> I'm sorry you had this experience. But even if nothing else comes of it, it's a good thing that you vented here. There actually <em>are</em> good photographers out there working for cheap, but nobody should assume that they're easy to find. <em>Caveat emptor:</em> buyer beware.<br> <br> Will</p>

<p>Steph,</p> <p>I notice that the word "contract" wasn't mentioned in your post. Without a contract, you don't have a lot of options. If you don't have even a single good photo of you and your husband, well, you could hire another photo to take a portrait of the two of you (for which you'd both get back into your wedding clothes). But you can't sue the original photographer for better or even different pictures. Whether you can sue for your money back, I don't know. You could talk to an attorney.</p> <p>I also notice that you say nothing about the process by which you hired the photographer. Did he show you albums from other weddings he'd done? Did he have a website with lots of good photos that you looked at? On what basis did you decide that he was competent? "Talking the talk" is a good thing for somebody who's going to give a speech. But I sometimes think that brides interviewing photographers should ask the photographers to make their sales pitch <em>entirely without words. </em> </p> <p>•</p> <p>I'm a bit surprised about your description of some of the photos. Even if the photographer was a perv, <em>why did he give you those photos? </em>Now and then I have accidentally captured subjects in embarrassing postures — embarrassing in lots of ways, like sneezing, eating, too obviously drunk, etc. Those photos are never seen by the client: In most cases they're deleted immediately. It's hard for me to understand why the photographer would share those images with you. Well, hard to understand but not impossible. Sounds like you hired a "shoot and burn" photographer who showed up, took a lot of photos and simply sent them all to you. </p> <p>Did you get <em>any</em> decent photos? Would you mind saying how much you paid?</p> <p>Will</p>

<p dir="ltr">My sense is that you may think this is an easy question. It's not.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">There are lots of services that make photo books. There's definitely a very wide range of quality and price. But getting a "good quality" book isn't like buying "good quality" wine, where you just pay more and voilà: good quality! My friends who know something about wine tell me this doesn't work with wine either, but never mind about that. Perhaps a better analogy would be cooking. Cooking a really good meal isn’t just a matter of knowing what market to shop at or even how to tell good asparagus from mediocre asparagus, good sirloin from mediocre sirloin. It’s knowing what to do with the ingredients that makes the meal. Now, I’m not a great cook, but I’m a good cook, and I know that anybody who can read a recipe and follow instructions can probably get into the ballpark of a good meal. I’m not a great book designer, either, but I am a good one, and I know that turning raw photos into a well-cooked book is harder than turning raw veggies and meat into a well-cooked meal. One stalk of asparagus is much like another and there's not a lot of difference between plates, either. But every photo on every page of a book requires careful, special consideration. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">•<br> </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Option 1: Hire a pro</strong><br> </p> <p dir="ltr">You asked about a “good quality” book. Part of the difficulty providing an answer to your question lies in the fact that I have no idea what you mean by “good quality,” and I bet you don’t either. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">If, like Oscar Wilde, you have simple tastes and you are satisfied by what nearly everybody describes as the best, then give this job to an experienced and respected book designer. This person might also be an experienced and respected professional photographer, but doesn’t have to be. If the photographer who took the photos for you in the first place is experienced with book design, then by all means, go back to him or her. But outside the expensive end of the market these days, an awful lot of excellent photographers have limited experience in book design. That’s why, if you’ve got the money to pay for it, I recommend that you find a book designer.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">You’ll want someone in your city. Visit with them and review actual books that they've made for clients, then pay them to do the job. You might find someone willing to do it for less, but I'd expect prices to start at $1000. There is a lot of work involved in making a book, and the cost of printing a 'professional' flush-mount wedding album starts around $200 (for a small book with very few pages or 'sides') and goes through the roof from there. It's not difficult to spend a couple of thousand dollars for printing and binding alone (i.e. for the wholesale production of the book) and the photographer/designer will of course want to be paid something over and above that for the work involved.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">NOTE: If you do hire somebody good to do this job, one of the first questions they’re going to ask you is, Do you have the raw files? Do you? Unless you shot the wedding yourself, you probably don’t. Most photographers don’t give clients the raw files, and many won’t even sell them. If you have high-res jpegs, the job can be done. But raw files would be better.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Do be aware that simply hiring an experienced book designer to design the book and having it printed by a very good quality printer doesn’t mean that you’ll get a top-quality product. I've attended a lot of seminars given by superstar wedding photographers like Jerry Ghionis, Yervant, Robert Valenzuela, and others. Personally I think some of them are actually shooting for the magazine cover — but what they all talk about is <em>shooting for the book.</em> They shoot for the book for the same reason Willy Sutton robbed banks: because that’s where the money is. At that level, the cost of the book is measured in hundreds of dollars per side (‘page’). In some cases I'm familiar with, the book alone cost almost as much as I paid last year for a new truck.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">•<br> </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Option 2: The old-fashioned album</strong><br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Now, there is good news. You do not have to mortgage the house to achieve your goal. If you want the very best quality presentation of the photos in a ‘package’ that will last well for decades, don’t look for a bound book at all. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Instead, look for a high-quality old-fashioned album, one with big, acid-free blank pages and plastic page covers, with the ability to buy and insert additional pages. Pick the best fifty or so images from the wedding and have them printed by a professional printing lab. Finally, arrange the images any way you like in the book. If you take this approach, you can have something lovely to pull out and show your grandchildren on your fiftieth wedding anniversary. A big advantage here is that you’ll get really high-quality prints this way. Matching this print quality in a bound book causes the price to jump by a huge amount.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">CAVEAT: Preparing the images for printing at a pro lab will still require work and skill, if you want it done right. But the advantage here is that you can assemble the album piece by piece, checking the quality constantly. That is, you can spend $50 on printing, decide whether you like what you got, and change labs if necessary. (But almost any lab in the country should be able to do a satisfactory job with the printing, so if you're not getting the results you want, it's probably because you're not sending them the files they need or you're selecting the wrong options. Time to talk to somebody.)<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">This is really good advice and I take no credit for it. It’s a time-tested idea, and was first suggested to me years ago as alternative to more expensive wedding albums by our own Bob Bernardo. So you really should think about it carefully.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">•<br> </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Option 3: the modern 'pretty good' bound book</strong><br> <br> But I understand that the page-printed books have a certain special appeal, and if you really want to go this route, then by all means, go with one of the well-known services like AdoramaPix or Blurb or Picaboo. I’ve even had good results ordering direct through Aperture from Apple (although I’ve never figured out who does their printing). AdoramaPix was recommended in this thread already and others here at photo.net have spoken well of it. I've used half a dozen other services, most of them more than once. But there ten or twenty times more services that I've never tried. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">These services are geared to people who don’t make books every week or every month and they’ll help you as much as possible. Some of them (most of them?) will even do custom color correction, although you’ll still want your images to be as close to ‘perfect’ as possible when you upload them. Be aware that even this option is going to require work on your part and it won’t be cheap, either. Get into this and I predict you’ll change your mind about wanting 100 pages. But that’s fine: you should change your mind about that. I don’t care who shot your wedding: You don’t have 100+ pages worth of photos that merit being printed in a bound book. And <a href="https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/maewest141679.html">Mae West to the contrary notwithstanding</a>, it is indeed possible to have too much of a good thing.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Also, try to moderate your expectations. I don’t know what you expect and it’s possible that when your package arrives from Blurb, you’ll cry tears of joy to see how beautiful your book is. On the other hand, you may not — certainly won’t if you were expecting a one-time print order you paid $150 for to be as beautiful as that coffee table of Ansel Adams images you saw last week at the bookstore. It’s absolutely not a bad idea to place a small order at first and see what you think. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">•<br> </p> <p dir="ltr"><strong>Why is this so hard?</strong> <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">You might be asking yourself, Why is this so hard? Better question is, Why does anybody think this should be easy?<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Producing an wedding album isn’t a single activity: it’s a concert of activities, including the taking of the original photos, judicious selection of the better images, color correction and editing, proper export of the images, page layout and editing, selection of media (paper and covers), printing, binding and delivery. You want a truly excellent result, you need excellence at every stage of the process. Creating a really nice wedding album is like putting together a really nice one-person show in an art or photo gallery. It’s not just a lot of work: it demands that knowledge and talent and good taste be brought to bear on a large number of decisions.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Taking (or having) really nice photos is just the first step. After that, you need someone who knows how to edit images for printing, someone working with the right ICC profile(s) on a properly color-calibrated system so that, for example, the bride’s dress doesn’t look peach-colored if it wasn’t. The images that your photographer delivered to you were (probably) processed for digital display; but if you’re going to spend a lot of money on the printing, you’ll get the best result if the images are re-processed for printing, ideally from the original raw files, so that you can do the best job possible of dealing with output sharpening (and noise reduction, if necessary). Once you’ve got the content ready, you need design skills and good taste to put it all together in a way that not only makes sense but will continue to make sense for decades. Good taste is really important, and unfortunately, the consumer-oriented services can’t help on that score.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">In short, there are a lot of ways to go wrong. I'm moderately experienced at this and I'm surprised occasionally at the way the printed book looks: In an album I made a year or two ago, I'd done a two-page full-bleed 'centerfold' type spread in which the bride and groom were looking meaningfully into each other's ideas across the middle fold. It looked <em>great</em> on my computer screen, and I had (I thought) separated the two faces a bit to accommodate the fact that some of the image sort of gets lost in the fold. Even so, in the first book that came back, their faces were too close to the folder. I fixed it, kept that one for myself, and placed another order for the bride.</p> <p dir="ltr"> </p> <p dir="ltr">Point is, your book will almost certainly have problems. With luck, they'll be small. You might not even notice them when you first get the book. Maybe you'll never notice them. And that’s fine and good. Enjoy the book!<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">But remember, this is a book that you’re going to look at over and over again. Even a non-pro will start to notice certain mistakes after looking at the same pages again and again. If you are not the sort of person who straightens the diplomas on the wall while you wait in a doctor’s office, if you are not the sort of person who corrects other people’s spelling or rearranges the table settings at restaurants, if you are not the sort of person who quietly critiques the design of every website you visit — then don’t even think about undertaking this job on your own.<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">•<br> </p> <p dir="ltr">To recap. If you want top-quality printing for the best price, get the best photos printed by a pro printing lab, then place them into a high-quality free-form album. While you’re at it, pick the two or three very best photos, have them printed large and frame them! But if you really want a book, then pick one of the consumer-oriented services. Few of them guarantee your satisfaction, so don't place a $500 order unless you've already made a less-expensive trial run with that service. But the consumer-oriented services will make it as easy as possible to do a pretty good job and in this context, pretty good is probably good enough. Indeed, good enough is all any of us can truly hope for: perfection is not attainable. <br> </p> <p dir="ltr">Will</p>

<p>Kenneth, I think you have analyzed your situation quite clearly. I shot full-frame for a good while but when the Olympus E-M1 came out, I sold my (Sony) full-frame bodies and all my beautiful lenses and now shoot micro four-thirds exclusively. So I understand your dilemma perhaps a little better than some of our colleagues here who don't realize how good the E-M1 and E-M5 can be.</p> <p>I won't presume to advise you. I'll just tell you how I'd think about this problem if I faced it myself (which in fact I might in the near future).</p> <p>•</p> <p>If it were me, I'd stick with my E-M1, for a couple of reasons.</p> <p>Of course, the only way to be completely confident of doing a good job is to be completely comfortable with every aspect of your it: camera, lenses, flash, etc. As a rule, I've never used ANY equipment until I felt really comfortable with it. (Lenses are a bit of an exception. I do occasionally rent, although even lenses have their quirks.) Since I'm very familiar with the FL-600R and how it works with my E-M1 — and with the E-M1's wireless system, which allows me to use multiple FL-600R's — it might be an easier decision for me than it is for you. And if you decide your comfortable with the Canon system, well, then that would be the smarter and safer choice.</p> <p>But I also like the immediate feedback I get from the EVF regarding exposure. This means a lot to me because I shoot full- manual almost exclusively. I have only shot with the E-M5 a couple of times. Image quality is superb but I can't remember what the EVF is like. The EVF in the E-M1 is so good that I long ago forgot that it's an EVF — and I'd hate to live without that feedback while I'm shooting. I seldom chimp now: I know before I press the shutter that I'm going to get the exposure right.</p> <p>I switched to micro four-thirds partly because I wanted smaller everything. Easier to carry, easier to handle. I like that advantage. (With a flash mounted and a grip attached to the E-M1 so I have plenty of battery power, the E-M1 is not exactly SMALL, but MUCH smaller than my Sony A99 + flash + grip.) And for the shooting that I do, the loss of a stop or two in high- ISO performance is not a big problem. The E-M1's IBIS is fantastic.</p> <p>The FL-600R is, in my opinion, more than adequate for shooting an event like a bar mitzvah or a small wedding. (Note that a lot of our professional colleagues here are using much more powerful lighting for things like group shots.)</p> <p>I will close by saying that, while lens choice is important for any and every system, it's especially important for us micro four-thirds shooters. I don't have any of the new f2.8 professional zooms that Olympus has released since the E-M1 came out and I hear they are very good. But I've always liked shooting with primes, and my kit now has only one zoom that I wouldn't use at a wedding or bar mitzvah (a 40-150 that I use for shooting outdoors on vacation). Otherwise I'm using only fast primes — nothing slower than f2.0. Works for me.</p> <p>Good luck with the event whichever way you decide.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Steve,</p> <p>For years I shot family portraits on big holidays for the Dallas Arboretum. I wasn't "roving" — my "studio" was set up in a lovely part of the gardens — but in other respects my problems were similar to the one you're trying to solve.</p> <p>Well, my problems were similar, but not the same. I was taking a small fee for the portraits at the start of the shoot, AND I needed to gather info from them about where to send their complimentary print. So what I did was (a) have them complete an info form with name and address on it and then (b) I'd take a photo of the subject while they held that form up near their face. This allowed me to confirm the connection between faces and the info.</p> <p>So the big questions are: How much info do you need? How much info do THEY need? If you're just going to take the photos with no commitment on either side, and all you need is to make it possible for them to find the photos of themselves so they can decide whether to place an order, then the easiest way would be to give them a business card that has written on the back the TIME they were photographed. You'd need to make sure that all of your cameras had the time properly set exactly. You could then somehow make it possible for users to search by capture time.</p> <p>(Because the time would be so crucial to this system, I'd probably introduce some redundancy into my system by occasionally taking a photo of my watch, or perhaps by taking a photo with an iPhone.)</p> <p>You COULD try using Picasa's (or some other program's) face recognition, but in my experience it's not close to 100% reliable and I fear you'd spend a fair bit of time dealing with the failures.</p> <p>The system I used (clipboard with info sheet photographed near client's face) worked okay for me. My sessions only lasted a couple days and I didn't have to keep track of colossal numbers of families (usually 100 or fewer per holiday). I sometimes had an assistant with me but usually I did not, so it was crucial that I be able to handle this on my own. Anyway, I expect somebody else with more experience of this sort of thing has a higher-tech better solution.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Bob,</p> <p>I'm now using Lightroom for simple edits and for DAM. Everything gets imported into Lightroom first, and there I do keyboarding, captioning, etc. But I'm doing more and more editing in other apps. For black and white conversions I'm likely to go to Google/Nik Silver Efex Pro, and since I have all the Google/Nik apps, I use the others occasionally. And for some photos — especially landscapes and photos needing lens and/or perspectival correction — I'll go to DxO Optics Pro 10. I use DxO OP10 also to convert if I really want to get rid of noise in a noisy high-ISO shot. But my main processing app now is Perfect Photo Suite 9, which can do nearly everything with photos that Photoshop does, but it's aimed exclusively at editing photos, and I personally find it MUCH MUCH easier to understand and use than Photoshop. Perfect Photo Suite does layers very well so it's pretty easy to remove distracting backgrounds, swap in a faux studio backdrop in a portrait, etc.</p> <p>Is Lightroom easy to use? Yes, I think so. Ease of use is in the eye of the beholder, of course. But once you grasp that Lightroom's controls are really very logically organized, it starts to feel like child's play. For basic adjustments to exposure, color, definition (i.e. clarity and sharpness), I find Lightroom easier to use than Picasa. And it's also very good for brushing in adjustments, like brightening a bride's dress, removing some garbage in the background (sometimes), etc. I'm especially fond of the fact that LR has so many keyboard shortcuts. But Lightroom doesn't support layers or copy and paste.</p> <p>I do all my printing from Lightroom, too. </p> <p>Congratulations on the Phase One and have fun with all those megapixels!</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>I've done it. For me, anyway, it was a very bad idea.</p> <p>I did it at one of my early weddings. I'd been shooting other vaguely similar events (First Communions, Confirmations, graduations) for several years but wedding photography is a whole 'nother ball game and I was hardly ready to be a role model. I agreed because the photographer was a friend of the bride's and had approached her initially. She said it was okay with her if it was okay with me, so he contacted me. We spoke for a bit, and I gave him my terms, which were simple: I basically didn't want to see him and I didn't want him getting in my way. I also asked him to show up at the rehearsal so we could meet and talk about things a little more carefully. He agreed to these simple conditions.</p> <p>And then it fell apart. He didn't show up for the rehearsal, so I met him at the wedding. Again and again, he did get in my way. During the group shots after the wedding he actually pulled the bride off to the side to do some portraits. That would be fine, in theory, and I suspect that he had a chance to get a couple of good shots. But I had to go to him — while everybody was standing around waiting for the next shot to be set up — and demand my bride back. Things went downhill at the reception, where — contrary to my instructions — he showed up again and again in my photos.</p> <p>The main lesson here isn't <em>don't let somebody shadow you.</em> It's <em>take control and don't lose it. </em>I'm quite willing to say that that the big problem in my case wasn't the other photographer — it was me and my relative lack of experience. I learned a couple of lessons and it never happened again.</p> <p>I will add that you don't have to let the shadow take photos. I've had the fun and privilege of assisting star photographers from time to time. I'm happy to be an assistant: holding lights, reflectors, setting up tripods, carrying bags, etc. I've always learned a TON just from watching. </p> <p>I don't think you want a competitor — or a distraction. You don't want to waste a single minute having to jerk somebody else's chain. If they're willing to carry your bags, help with crowd control, arrange the bride's dress, etc., that can be useful and should be educational for them as well. What I've learned is that <em>shooting is the easiest part</em> of the wedding photographer's job.</p> <p>My ha'penny thoughts.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>I've purchased equipment from Adorama for years without a single problem. On the other hand, although I have heard nothing but good things about their print services, for some reason (don't know why) I've never used them. Well, Kenneth K.'s posts in this thread have made me want to try. I just been looking at this area of their website. Their options are quite good—and their prices are excellent.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Not sure what you mean by "decent" photo album. Album design's like everything else in life: harder than it looks. And the quality of album production varies quite widely. That said, you certainly CAN do it yourself and get something you'll be happy with.</p> <p>And there are LOTS of options.</p> <p>•</p> <p>I'm assuming you aren't thinking about the ultra-deluxe Italian custom-printed option. The high-end, really nice wedding albums that many pro wedding photographers sell to their clients will start at around $300 for a small album and rise in price rapidly from there. It's not unusual for the photographer's "wholesale" cost for such an album to be $1000 or more, which is why the bride's going to pay $2000 or $3000 (or in the case of the superstar photographers like Jerry Ghionis, Yervant and others) $10,000+ for the product that is delivered to them. But if you're going to spend this kind of money, the images better be really really good to start with.</p> <p>I assume instead that you are interested in an attractive, reasonably-well printed consumer book. I've used Blurb, Snapfish, Picaboo and Apple, all with pretty good results. These services provide software (with, if I recall, both standalone apps and web apps). If you're a Mac user, you can use Aperture, iPhoto or (now, in the latest update to Yosemite) the Photos app to design and publish your book. Of all of these options, I've liked the books I ordered from Apple the best. This surprises me, because Blurb has the biggest reputation in this self-published book market. I do think Blurb's software provides a lot more options (more templates, text options, etc) than Apple's.</p> <p>A page-printed book from one of these consumer services will cost $50, or $100 or maybe more, depending on the number of pages in the book and a couple other options.</p> <p>•</p> <p>But I would suggest you also at least consider an alternative.</p> <p>After making lots of printed books over the years I've come to the conclusion that the best approach overall — the best way to get high quality at an affordable price — is not to make a page-printed book at all, but rather, to do it the "old-fashioned" way. That is, order prints from a pro lab, then arrange the prints carefully in an attractive photo album — one of those with plastic page covers that hold the photos in place.</p> <p>If you order a page-printed book from Blurb, Apple etc you may have some trouble getting the color and/or brightness/darkness of certain images just right — and you might not realize that the bride's face is too pink in a certain photo until you get delivery of the book. I don't think these services provide much in the way of custom color correction.</p> <p>And it's also the case that these products provide good printing — but not the best. A 40 page book from Blurb or Apple can easily cost $100 or more. Now, these are perfectly okay books. A book from Apple or Blurb isn't just better than no book at all; it can be a treasure. I have here one of the first books I made from my digital photos, in 2001. It's attractive, sturdy, and because of its content, the book is personally important to me. But I don't expect it to look as good in 50 years. And even today, the quality of the printed pages simply isn't as good as the quality of prints of the same images that I've made myself with my Canon Pro printers or the prints I ordered from labs like Bay Photo, Mpix Pro, Pounds, BWC, etc.</p> <p>So if you order really good prints from a lab and one or two prints of the prints don't come out quite as you hoped, you can figure out what you did wrong, fix the problems and order reprints of just those images. And in any case you'll end up with better prints — more vibrant colors, better detail, etc — than you'll get from a consumer page-printed book. And then, you can arrange the photos in the album any way you like, and rearrange later as the fancy hits you. Indeed, an advantage of this approach for do-it-yourselfers is that you can assemble the album on any schedule you like. Buy an album that allows you to add pages later, and start making prints and arranging them. You'll learn as you go along.</p> <p>Remember to handle the prints carefully, and have clean hands, or better, wear gloves.</p> <p>If you go this route, you can just order (say) 5"x7" prints of everything and stick 'em in the album. But you'll make a better album if you plan its design out before you order the prints, so you can order a mix of 4"x6" prints (for less important shots), 5"x7", and a few 8"x10" prints for key photos.</p> <p>Whether you order a page-printed book or order prints and arrange them in an album, you'll want to process the images as well as possible on the computer first. Do as much as you can to get the colors right on your computer (big subject, that) and then order from a lab that will do custom color correction for you. Ordering from a pro lab doesn't cost that much more than ordering from the local drugstore: the problem is mainly that it's more work to place the order. But it's worth it.</p> <p>Good luck.</p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Anton,</p> <p>Couple points in the format of questions with (my suggested) answers.</p> <p>.</p> <p>Q. <strong>What's the right shooting mode on the camera, in a church in low-light?</strong><br> A. The only right answer to this question is: whatever works for you. Of course, to know what works for you, you need a fair bit of experience.</p> <p>I prefer to stay in M (manual) mode all the time, for nearly everything — especially if the lighting conditions aren't changing much from shot to shot. Shooting in a church, I want to know that the aperture is going to stay as wide open and I want to know that the shutter speed is going to remain slow but fixed (say, around 1/30th sec). Working in M mode, I do use auto-ISO with a range (typically of 800–1600 or 2000). The photos may be a little noisy sometimes but I don't have to worry about camera shake and don't usually have to worry about motion blur. The way I look at it, if I'm in any other mode besides M, the aperture or the shutter or both may be changed by the camera.</p> <p>But that's me and doesn't have to be you. I know a lot of photographers much better and more experienced than I who work in A, S (=Tv on some cameras); there are no doubt people making good livings shooting mostly in P. (You know, I'm sure the old joke that P stands for "Professional.") But I'm serious. There's no reason you can't make P mode work, at least if your camera allows program shift (or better yet, a Pentax with "hyper program").</p> <p>So if you want to shoot in shutter-priority, that's fine. Note however that, in the church, shutter-priority is probably going to be pretty similar to shooting as I do, in M, because you can't set the shutter much slower than 1/30th second and you can't open the lens up wider than f4 (using the lens you mentioned). So it's going to be up to the ISO to make things work. Whatever mode you're in, you still need to know what your settings are — always. That's why I always say that M mode is <em>easier</em> than shooting in A or S or P. But it really doesn't matter. Use what works for you.</p> <p>When I'm at the reception using flash, I do often switch both camera and flash to auto modes.</p> <p>.</p> <p><strong>Q. What are the right exposure settings for shooting in the church?</strong><br> A. If you're shooting people coming down the aisle, I recommend that you learn how to raise your hand like a traffic cop to ask them to STOP for a second. THen you can take your shot while they're standing still and very briefly posing for you. I talk to the wedding party the night before at the rehearsal. I do this almost always even if I'm able to use flash, which I usually am. At the wedding, I'm there in the aisle just inside the door. The couple walks in (say, bridesmaid and groomsman), I look at them — I'm standing in the aisle so they can't miss me — hold up my right hand to ask them to stop, I take two quick shots, then I give them a thumbs up to thank them and I step out of their way. NO CHIMPING here. You have to know that you've got the shot. You can hold up the wedding for about 2 seconds and that's it.</p> <p>Now, figuring out the right settings is a matter of experience. Of course, you'd <em>like</em> to shoot as if it were a partly cloudy spring afternoon with good lighting — at, say, 1/400th sec and ISO 200, perhaps with an aperture of f2.8 not because you need the light but only to get shallower depth of field. But the fact is, conditions are typically nowhere near ideal, so you have to figure out the limits beyond which you do not dare go. If people are standing still, you can set the shutter to 1/60th sec, 1/30th sec, or even slower, depending on your camera holding technique (if you're not using a tripod), whether you've got image stabilization helping you, and probably a couple other things. You'll want to use a wide aperture, although if your lens that isn't sharp wide open, well, then that may be a limiting factor, too. Another limiting factor is the ISO performance of your camera. The final factor: the lighting in the church. Do remember that wedding rehearsals often aren't held at the same time as the wedding the next day, and even if they are, weather and lighting conditions can change.</p> <p>One great reason to use primes (which I've generally favored, especially at the ceremony) is that you can typically get faster apertures. The "nifty fifty" f1.4 50mm lens (for full frame) is practically de rigueur for wedding photographers. My <em>slowest</em> lenses go to f2.8. But again, primes are a personal choice and zooms are both popular with pros and capable of excellent photos.</p> <p>If you can use flash — and I've almost always been able to, for the processional and recessional — then use flash, of course, if you feel comfortable with it.</p> <p>.</p> <p><strong>Q. What about white balance?</strong><br> A. There are two schools of thought on the matter of white balance. I think of them as the purists, and the slackers. I'm a slacker.</p> <p>According to the purists, white balance makes a difference to metering and thus to exposure, and nailing the white balance at the time of capture will not only save you time in post-processing, it will also help you nail your exposures and possibly get a wee bit more exposure range. This school seems to be technically correct. I admire anybody who does this. Of course if you set the white balance for the back of the church, you have to remember to reset it for the front of the church, where the lighting from the altar might be different. Then reset it as soon as you step in the lights outside. Or in the dressing room. And everywhere else.</p> <p>Which is why I'm a slacker. I shoot raw — always, everywhere. That's not negotiable. But when it comes to white balance, I either set it to 5000K and leave it alone, or I use auto white balance. I do carry a Whi-Bal card and I've been known to take a test shot of that, for later reference. But I have a lot of things on my mind when I'm shooting and I'm not calm or smart enough to add white balance to my worries. In the old days, I did spend time fiddling with white balance in post. I'm happy to say that my last couple cameras do a great job about 90% of the time and I typically leave the white balance setting in Lightroom at "As Shot".</p> <p>.</p> <p>Good luck.</p> <p>Will</p>

Congrats on your wedding and sorry you've had a problem. I'd be happy to take a quick look, and let you know what it might cost to edit them. Contact me via messages here or via my website/email. .

<p>Stephanie,</p> <p>I have bad news for you.</p> <p>•</p> <p>First, in terms of image quality in particular, there's no such thing as a "professional" camera. It's a fiction of the marketing departments at Nikon and Canon. The lowest-level interchangeable lens camera you can buy today — something that is marketed to amateurs — runs the rings around the "pro" cameras sold 10 years ago for about 10x more.</p> <p>Now, there are features pros do (and don't!) want on their cameras, so it's fair to say that pros prefer some cameras over others. Let's say that pros typically share these character traits:</p> <ul> <li>They know how to use their cameras</li> <li>They want to be in control of their cameras rather than let the camera make decisions for them</li> <li>They are more likely to shoot raw and take time carefully processing images on their computers afterwards</li> <li>They are more likely than amateurs to need to print their images, often at fairly large sizes</li> <li>They need to be able to work quickly on their cameras</li> <li>They will use their cameras a LOT, often in challenging conditions</li> </ul> <p>And so on. For these reasons, experienced pros — or for that matter, just about all serious photographers, whether they make money with their cameras or not — will prefer cameras that (for example) have two control dials rather than one; have more buttons on the outside so changes can be made to the settings quickly without requiring a dive into menus; can be configured to suit the photographer's personal preferences about the placement of functions; have sturdy (preferably weather-resistant) bodies that can withstand bad weather and/or getting knocked about; have the ability to support a battery grip that allows them to shoot longer without changing batteries; have multiple card slots so they can save photos to two cards at once (for safety); etc. Every camera that meets those criteria is going to shoot raw, so that shouldn't be a worry. Megapixels shouldn't be a worry either. Virtually everything on the market will shoot at least 12 MP, which is plenty for nearly all uses. I shot for almost 2 years with 24 MP bodies and have now gone back to 16 MP. </p> <p>But it's not even a requirement that the camera have two control dials. I'd wager that virtually ANY interchangeable lens camera on the market today that costs over $600 can do perfectly capable wedding work — in the hands of somebody competent, of course. Actually, I'd say that, for a beginning photographer with no reputation, one of the most important qualities of a camera is that it <em>look</em> serious. Buy a battery grip.</p> <p>•</p> <p>The problem with buying a camera isn't the camera: It's the lenses — and the whole system (which includes peripherals like flash units, radio triggers etc). The other problem is that there are TOO MANY ATTRACTIVE CHOICES today. Once upon a time, it was easy. Not too long ago, you'd just buy Canon, or, if you wanted to be an iconoclast, Nikon. But now there are other very good choices, including Olympus, Sony, Pentax, Fuji, etc.</p> <p>•</p> <p>Now, to the other part of the bad news — the more serious part. You don't sound like you're anywhere near ready to make the move you are contemplating. I want you to understand that I'm saying this not to discourage you, but simply to help you make your next steps intelligently.</p> <p>You say you feel like an artist without a paintbrush. Well, an artist who's never owned a paintbrush is just possibly not quite ready to quit his day job and move to Montmartre. Photography right now is not just absurdly competitive, it's an industry in the midst of a revolution. Since you've made it clear you're on a tight budget, I urge you — for your own sake — to proceed cautiously both with your purchases and with your business plans. It may be that any camera on the market today will do, but if you're going to take somebody's money to shoot their wedding, you'll need not just one camera but (at least) two; and you'll need multiple, good lenses; and multiple flash units; and top-quality software like Lightroom or Perfect Photo Suite to process your images; and a reasonably powerful computer to run that software one, along with a color-calibrated monitor.</p> <p>And equipment's just the easy part. Knowledge and experience are much more important. And I'm afraid you can't buy those.</p> <p>So what I would urge you to do at this point is try to become a better photographer. You say you love it? Then do it for love before you think any more about doing it for money. Get a good camera and a couple decent lenses, or even just ONE decent lens. Start shooting everything you can. Get involved in your local camera club, or better, join your local PPA at the 'aspiring' level and start attending meetings. There's a LOT more to this than you can imagine.</p> <p>I wish you luck. </p> <p>Will</p>

<p>Yikes!</p> <p>As they say, hindsight is 20/20, and I think the editor of Rangefinder did the right thing by posting the "don't do this!" letter you linked to. But I wouldn't blame her too much for failing to prevent the publication of the original photos by the train tracks. We are inundated by still images and video/movie images of people taking absurd risks. The actor who was killed apparently thought the images he was trying to get were going to be cool and he doesn't sound like a dummy. </p> <p>It's not even obvious to me that it was reckless for the photographer to shoot seniors on or near the tracks. Illegal, maybe — but I wasn't aware of that, and besides, practically everything you do these days is illegal if somebody cares to make an issue of it. (My daughter, the criminal lawyer, asked me recently if I was aware that in Texas, the law requires that you activate your turn signal something like 100 ft before the intersection where you intend to turn. Cops use this law daily to stop cars that they consider suspicious for some other reason.) If you are just trying to get the tracks into the image — not the train — if you're shooting on tracks with lots of visibility both ways and if you've got somebody acting as an early-warning spotter, well, photographing on a train track isn't an OBVIOUSLY foolish thing to do. At least it ain't obvious to me. I cross train tracks in my car half a dozen times every day. I'm careful. I never stop my vehicle on the tracks, ever. I always look both ways. But, by exercising a little common sense caution, I eliminate the risk.</p> <p>•</p> <p>The story I haven't been able to get out of my head is the story about the bride (up in Canada, I think) that was washed away by the current in the river where she was standing for a trash-the-dress photo shoot. Tragedy for bride and her family — and for the photographer. Don't know what the exact situation there was: Maybe the photographer and the bride did something reckless, maybe it was just awful luck. </p> <p>I think some photographers do stupid things to get the shot. The book "Death in the Grand Canyon" has an entire chapter devoted to falling deaths caused by photographs. ("Back up just another foot or two, honey!")</p> <p>But life is dangerous.</p> <p>My advice: Be careful, use common sense, try not to break the law, make your insurance payments on time, say your prayers daily — and hope for the best.</p> <p>Will</p>

<blockquote> <p>Perhaps there's been a global shift in attitudes towards <a id="itxthook7" href="/wedding-photography-forum/00d4gy" rel="nofollow">photography<img id="itxthook7icon" src="http://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/icon1.png" alt="" /></a>. I know myself, I've gone from film, through dslr's, to just pulling out my cell phone as often as not.</p> </blockquote> <p>I agree. I'd expand a bit though and say that the idea of a fulfilling and profitable career in wedding photography — an idea that seemed bright and compelling six or seven years ago — has faded. Lots of factors here.</p> <ul> <li>The flood of new photographers into the market meant that it became exponentially harder to get business for (almost) everybody. </li> <li>The rise of sites like Instagram, Facebook etc has accompanied a change in the attitude of consumers to photographs. I don't know whether Instagram and Facebook etc are the causes of this change or the effects. I do know however that a lot of potential clients are more interested in quantity and immediacy than in quality. They want to see 500 photos online by the day after the wedding.</li> <li>The flood of newbies offering services for very low prices — combined with the fact that clients think that it costs nothing to take a digital photo — has caused brides to expect to get their photographer on the cheap. Caterers don't have this problem: Everybody understands that good food costs money and takes time to prepare.</li> <li>A change in attitudes towards marriage has had an impact on what clients want from their wedding photographer, although I find it difficult (and a little awkward) to describe what's going on here. </li> <li>Forums like this one are less necessary than they used to be because there are a lot more resources available now on the Internet and elsewhere for aspiring photographers than there were five or ten years ago. There must be dozens of books available on wedding photography. My sense is that even a fair number of top photographers have turned to teaching to supplement their income, perhaps because there are now more students than clients. (That'll change soon, too. The success of Creative Live contrasted with its small in-studio audiences suggests to me that it's gotten much harder to get a local audience for a seminar: the audience now has to be global.)</li> <li>Improvements in the technology of cameras have made it harder to take bad photos and easier to take okay ones. In-camera exposure and autofocus systems are amazingly good: nobody needs to know how to use a light meter, or do exposure math (you know, f5.6 @ 1/100th sec = f2.8 @ what?). The ability to shoot at, say, ISO 1600 or even higher has allowed a lot of new photographers to think they don't need to know much about the flash. Live view means never having to say you're sorry.</li> <li>The maturing of the technologies related to digital photography — not just in the camera but on the computer — has created a dizzying range of creative options for photographers, and this range of options encourages many to think that there's really no shared craft of photography that must be mastered by all, but rather that we are all free to create art for ourselves. </li> </ul> <p>What's happened in the world of photography in the last decade often reminds me of the desktop publishing "revolution" in the early 1980s. That too was a tough time for a lot of established pros. Back then, people with 20 years of experience and a lot of knowledge (about printing, typography, design, layout, editing) found themselves competing with secretaries and students who knew nothing but owned a Mac with Pagemaker and a LaserWriter. Some pros adapted and survived; others didn't. As for the new enthusiasts, some went through a period where they were eager to learn. But that period of learning didn't last all that long — maybe a decade. Eventually people got bored with desktop publishing. And when the world wide web arrived, PageMaker and the LaserWriter became obsolete.</p> <p>In a larger sense, the desktop publishing revolution coincided with the revolution in personal computing, and that larger revolution is analogous to the larger revolution in photography in the last decade. Didn't I just read that the APPLE iPhone is now the largest-selling or perhaps most widely-used type of camera in the world? The changes in the business of wedding photography are simply a small part of that larger change in the social role of photography generally. I helped run a Mac users group at a major university in the mid-80s. For several years our "MUG" had hundreds and hundreds of members. Meetings had to be held in an auditorium because so many people were eager to learn about the new technology. But by 1990, membership was falling off sharply, because the novelty of personal computers had worn off. People didn't need a users group to help them because they knew already how to use the computer; or they had a friend, or could buy a book. Across the country (and the globe) local users groups died — then got reincarnated as internet forums or discussion lists. </p> <p>•</p> <p>The lists at other sites remain active. DPReview seems to be doing well. But it seems to me that most of the discussions at DPReview have to do with cameras rather than photography. Those are conversations aimed at consumers, rather than photographers. The question "What's the best camera to buy?" has almost nothing to do with "What's the best way to photograph weddings?" The first question is easy to sink your teeth in, easy to argue about. The second question is so open-ended that it doesn't even seem like a valid question.</p> <p>I notice that some photographers continue to do well. In the part of the world that I know pretty well, some of the success stories are folks who are really amazing photographers; and some of the success stories are folks who are not so amazing photographers (although usually competent) but have the personality or marketing skills to succeed. I admire both groups of people and begrudge nobody's success. </p> <p>It's a great time to be a photographer — so long as you don't need to make money doing it.</p> <p>Will</p> <p> </p>