With photography, post production used to involve a few tweaks in the darkroom before printing a final image. Now, the digital revolution has brought along with it a great variety of computer software that allows us to perform extremely complicated enhancements and image manipulations. These enhancements and manipulations have become standard procedure for most modern wedding photographers. I happen to be a bit of a purist when it comes to photography so post processing is something I like to keep to a minimum. A slight correction of the colour balance and an increase in contrast will usually suffice.
The problem with having so many options in post processing software is that some wedding photographers tend to go over the top and end up having photographs which look epic and overly dramatic. A look not suited to the mood of a wedding.
As a wedding photographer you should always bare in mind the amount you are getting paid for a job and take that into account during post-production. You don't want to be working overtime on post-production without the appropriate income.
At a typical wedding you may shoot up to 1500 photographs so when it comes to post production you need to have some sort of strategy in place to organise the files as effectively as possible. with over a 1000 images to deal with you know you are going to have groups of images taken in the same or similar locations, with the same or similar exposures. This means that you can use pre-sets on post-processing software to edit the batch all at once. This saves a lot of time and is really useful if you are on a tight time schedule.
Selecting which images to use and which ones to bin is the first, and most important part of the editing process. It takes place before any of the image manipulation and must be done successfully in order to satisfy your clients. Having a consistently strong set of images is key to exceeding your clients expectations and building your reputation as a wedding photographer.
As I have said before in a previous article, with wedding photography flattery is the key. So certain production techniques like skin softening or teeth whitening can really make the difference to your wedding photography.
My wedding photography concentrates on the quality of an image as an image. The aesthetic quality is of most importance. If the subject matter isn't there then you have nothing. Don't rely on using post-processing software to save an image that can't be saved and don't let the endless possibilities of programmes like photoshop or lightroom over complicate your images.
As a final pointer - Always remember that making the image is secondary to taking the image.
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