Ask Your Photographer (6)

“I get emails all the time from different people asking similar Photography, Wedding and Portrait related questions, and Ask Your Photographer is an attempt to answer them.”

Question. “How many photo’s do we get…?”

Answer: – I don’t place a limit on the number of images I capture at a wedding, and for me, the average wedding produces between 350-500 edited images. Of course there are a lot of variables to consider, the amount of time available to shoot, the style and pace of the day, if there is a second or third photographer shooting as well, the list goes on and on.

Overall it works like this:

Understandably, there is a great deal to shoot during a wedding, candid moments, details, multiples of any posed or group shots to cover for the blinking or stray eyes etc and I don’t delete any images as I shoot either. Even when a client has not ordered an album package, I still shoot with an album in mind as it gives a sense of unity to the images, like they all belong together. So there is plenty of overlap.

After the wedding, the images go through a tough selection process where I then cull 25-50% of them. This is to remove the shots that just didnt work, a flash didnt fire, multiples of the same scene/pose, and those candid shots where a stray arm or leg wanders into the corner of the frame (or something similar, you get the idea right?).

I have been doing this long enough to know that the harder I am at this point, the better the final result, its in line with that good old saying “Less is More”.  In a future post I will detail my editing “workflow” for all those who are interested.

If you look through a good wedding album you will see that it takes less than 200 images to tell the full story of a wedding day, and it should be obvious that there is a practical limit to how many quality images can be captured in a specific timeframe. “OK, but if it takes less than 200 shots, then why do you give 400?” I hear you ask. Well, its simple. There are a lot of things that happen on a wedding day, and some are just not “album worthy”, but they are the kinds of things the Bride and Groom will want to remember, and so thats why they are are included.

In having said all that… I have seen and heard of Photographers who supply their clients with over 1000 images from a wedding day and I have to admit it makes me laugh out loud. Either way, consider the following (writing this with a headache that wont go away has prompted me to NOT include some Math). This is the way I see it. If a photographer supplies 1000 photo’s and its almost every image they have shot, that shows at the very least a lack of confience  in their own work and a poor relationship with their client. If they did edit out a lot of images and still supply 1000 photo’s, it still shows a lack of confience in knowing their client and also shows they dont have the experience to know better.

I realise its not always as simple as that, but I still find it more than a little ridiculous, and I hope by now you know why.