Wedding workflow – Part 1

I typically process wedding photos in two phases – the first, as soon as possible after the wedding is designed to produce a slideshow of perhaps 100 images that allows the bride and groom a sneak preview of the photos from the day, while the second phase – a longer process – is aimed at getting a final set of images to the bride and groom in both colour and black & white.  From these they will, if they wish to have an album, choose the images that will be used for that.   Read on for the first of two posts on my post-wedding workflow, and why it works for me.

This topic is relevant to my photography at the moment because I’m currently in the middle of phase 2 of this process for Eva and Jonathan’s wedding, which I photographed last month.    They’ve already seen and enjoyed the slideshow that was the output of phase 1, and all going well will be getting a first sight of the remainder of the photos from their day in the next week or so.

The workflow I’ve been using for that wedding is pretty standard for me (and not just for weddings), so it’s as good an example as any to use for this discussion.

At the wedding

The first step in the  flow is to take images off the cards that I have used for the wedding.  I typically use 6-7 CF cards for a full wedding day.  All but one of the cards are 4GB, the other is 8GB.  I could have less cards with bigger capacities but there’s an element of not wanting to put all my eggs in one basket in case a card fails, so more smaller cards seems safer.  The trade off is needing to change card frequently, which is why I’ve settled on 4GB as my default card size – it will store 200+ photos which is enough to cater for any one distinct part of the wedding day.  If time allows – for instance if I’m photographing the first dance after dinner – I will start taking images from the cards to the laptop over dinner, but I won’t delete the cards – the aim is to get multiple copies of the images asap.

The night of the wedding

The last thing I do on the evening of the wedding, having returned home or back to my room if I’m staying at the hotel, is transfer the remaining images from the cards onto the laptop.  If I didn’t get a chance to do any transfers of data during the day itself this process will involve all images being transferred, otherwise it will be those that didn’t get transfered, or had not yet been shot, earlier.

I now have two copies of every RAW file shot – one copy spread across 6 or 7 CF cards, one on my laptop’s hard drive.  I’ll keep the cards with me, and separate from the laptop, until I get home.

The day after the wedding

The next stage in my workflow, and my first stage in image editing, is to import all the images to Aperture 3.  I import them as referenced files, with the masters staying on my laptop’s hard drive.

If I am at home, I will also at this stage copy the folder with all the images to my RAID1 disk array, which is two disks, mirroring each other, so that if one fails there’s still a backup.  I won’t edit images directly from this because it’s slower to do so over the network, but ultimately this is where the master files will exist, and the disks being redundant means there’s less chance of data loss.

The first edit-in

Now that everything is safely backed up and stored (files are now on a set of cards, and on two logical (three physical) hard disks), it’s time to do my first edit-in.  I used edit-out – in that I used go through the images quickly and reject the rubbish ones (out of focus, badly exposed etc).  Now I edit-in, where I go through and rate with 3 stars the ones I will look at again.  You get to much the same number of images to process either way, but this is a one-pass process and so quicker than the edit-out process, which can take three passes.  At this stage I’m looking at images that are worth spending time on in terms of post-processing, so I only edit-in images that I’d be willing to show the bride and groom.  For all bar the family shots, I’ll try to pick the best of multiple images of the same shot, if they exist, at this stage too.  For the family shots I edit in all good exposures – I may want elements from each later.

Slideshow selection

During the edit-in stage, while everything I select gets a three star rating, I’ll also apply a 4 star rating to key shots from the day, and try to keep this to about 100.  The types of shots that I’ll pick – the purpose being to do a slideshow – are usually similar from wedding to wedding, so this process can be quick.  Ideally it’s all part of the same edit-in, but it can be a second pass to either select more or less images depending on how many 4 star shots I have at the end of the edit-in stage.

Slideshow batch processing

Looking at the 4 star images, 90% of them can be processed as a batch by applying a pretty standard set of adjustments:

• White balance (I usually need to do this in groups of image to match light conditions)
• Contrast (+10%)
• Recovery (100%)
• Shadows (+10%)
• Highlights (+10%)
• Mid-tone (+5%)
• Curve (slight S-curve)
• Saturation of the reds (-10%)
• Vignette (slight)

These steps apply to all 4 star images, but 10 or 15 of them won’t look good so I isolate those and tweak these parameters individually.

I then duplicate all the versions and do a channel mixer-based B&W conversion – typically:

• Red: 65%
• Green: 35%
• Blue: 0%

I’ll add a 10% sepia also.

I’ll then quickly (and somewhat randomly) go through all 4 stars and select between the colour and black & white versions of each image by applying 5 stars to either the colour or black & white version.

Exporting the slideshow

That processing done, I apply the keyword “slideshow” to all 5 star shots, tweak the order of them in Aperture and export them as 900×600 pixel JPEGs with a small semi-transparent watermark at bottom left, importing them (and appropriate music) into Soundslides to build a slideshow.  The file names for export are three digit numbers starting at 001.jpg and the 900×600 pixel JPEGs are stored in a slideshow sub-directory of the main image directory on the laptop.  The slideshow is uploaded to my website, and a page created for it in WordPress.  I email the bride and groom with the URL and wait anxiously.

Because Soundslides requires Flash, I’ll also upload the 900×600 pixel files to a folder on my website as is, where a gallery script I’ve written myself presents them as a click-through HTML image gallery in case the bride and groom or their families can’t view the Flash slideshow (but this will be without music).

Before phase 1 is considered to be complete, I copy the slideshow to my RAID1 disk as a local backup.  By now, usually a week or so has passed since the wedding, and all going well the bride and groom will be able to view the slideshow while on honeymoon (if they wish).  I can track the hits on the slideshow via my website statistics, so typically know when they’ve viewed it, and if they are sharing it with others.  If they share it, or if I get an email back saying how much they love it, which so far has always come, then I relax a little and start thinking about phase 2.

More on that tomorrow.