For Photographers - Hand editing Vs Filters

TAILOR MADE

If you haven't been married before and you are looking at wedding photography for the first time, it can difficult to distinguish a quality product.  A quality product is one that is produced with love, a personal touch, and due care and attention.  This needs to be throughout all lighting conditions, good and bad.  This is where correct lighting and editing work comes in.  Editing requires so much skill and if you look through my portfolio you will see that every image has been lovingly edited to suit the couple and the story of their day.

The way a camera records light and colours is always different every time you move your camera, the truth is that NO camera is as good as the human brain at deciphering the environment. It is up to the photographer to get the lighting right on the day and edit appropriately afterwards.

When looking through pictures a good way to gage a quality product is to always look for difficult lighting conditions such as images that are indoors in dark conditions.  

OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHY IS BEAUTIFUL, BUT WHAT IF IT RAINS?

When you browse the web you will see that good indoor shots under poor lighting conditions are rare to find because it is so difficult to shoot in low light.

In contrasting lighting conditions such as next to a window in a room lit with many lightbulbs you will find that the light coming from outside is too bright with a blue tint and the light inside is too dark with an orange tint.

The biggest difference between my camera and your iPhone is that I have the ability to manually set each shot using my knowledge of light.  And, that is it really, so its a case of knowledge and skill over equipment.  But essentially our equipment capture the same thing.  It is in the edit suite where the polish really happens.  And below is an example of what you get from natural photography/little editing and skilful, quality edit work.

ARTISTICALLY CRAFTED EDIT WORK

My approach on the day is having the settings punched in manually for every lighting condition so on the day I can blend into the day and no one has to wait whilst I create images like the one below.

The shot below was taken inside an ordinary wedding venue, the Station Hotel in Newcastle in fact.  This image was one of the 600 images the couple received and this took 3 hours to edit.  Filters don’t look too different to the DSLR version here so the edit takes longer but u is worth it. This took 30 seconds to set up and photograph and the couple were back to their guests.

If you or any of your guests are interested to find out how I craft my images, ask me when there is a break during your wedding breakfast.