.png?resize=75%2C75)
Your wedding photographer’s number one job is to deliver you images from your wedding day that you will love and look back on for years to come. How many photos should you expect to receive? You should ask your photographer!
The More Photos the Better… Right?
Not so much. Some wedding photographers will offer you every photo that they shoot at the wedding. Do you really want 2,000 photos from an eight hour span of time? That’s 250 photos per hour; 4.167 per minute; about 1 every 15 seconds. Can you imagine sitting down to look at that many photos? For one thing, it’ll look like a flip book. For another, what is the quality level of all those photos? I don’t care how much talent somebody has, there’s no way that 2,000 excellent images are going to pass through their camera in one night. Lastly, at those types of quantities you are either going to be receiving unedited photos or batch edited, but most likely not individually edited photos so that each is optimized to be the best it can be.
The Visual Story
Your wedding photos should tell a story. The story should have a flow to it. A good story has a beginning, middle, end, and doesn’t go on longer than it has to. There needs to be enough images to tell it in its entirety, from getting ready to the ceremony to the creative bridal photos to the party at the reception. In our experience, the ideal number for a typical wedding ends up being between 350 and 400 final images. This varies and fluctuates depending on many factors, but it gives you an idea of the ballpark you should expect to be in. Others may do less, others more, but we have found that this is our ideal amount to effectively relay the emotions and experiences that were had on your day. Any less and we have a hard time telling a complete story.
Different Factors In Wedding Photography Quality
There are other important factors besides quantity. Like the old adage goes – quality over quantity. Having a ton of images doesn’t do you much good if they’re average, or even worse, below average quality. On the other hand, having a reasonable amount of high quality and thoughtful images from your wedding is a valuable and irreplaceable commodity. Some things that factor into the quality of an image are of course the eye of the photographer for the initial capture, assuming they are operating with professional grade equipment that has the technical capability to record high-fidelity photographs. The second (and behind the scenes) factor to a quality image is the post-production. Make sure your wedding photographer is doing proper post-production. Are the photos individually edited? Are they batch edited (this is when one set of parameters is globally applied to all or a large quantity of the images)? Are they edited at all? Presets only? JPG out of the camera? Is your photographer shooting in RAW format? More on this in a later post.
The Bottom Line
Ask questions. Make sure you understand what you’re getting before you sign on because everyone has different ways of doing things. I’m not saying one way is better than another, all I can speak for is our experience and what we find to work best for us and our brides and grooms. Ask your wedding photographer why they supply the amount of photos they do. Is it a randomly picked set number? Is there a good reason for the madness? The more educated you are in your search the more satisfied you will be with the final product. Ask.
Series information
Next we’ll be talking about the importance of having an engagement session.
If you missed the intro to this series, you can catch it right here – How To Choose Your Rhode Island Wedding Photographer Series Introduction.
