A Vancouver wedding photographer’s perspective on editing.

As a professional wedding photographer, each year without fail I receive a handful of inquiries asking if couples can have a discount on our services. Usually this request for a discount comes with a pitch – “You won’t have to edit the pictures; you can just give me all the RAW files.” My short answer is always “No, you can’t have unedited files.” That said, I want potential clients to understand why. One of the most important things we can do as consumers is to be educated about what we’re shopping for.

Skipping the editing might seem like a fair trade from a distance. Editing takes up around 50-60% of my work day, so having 60% of my time back to drink coffee and walk my dog, or dig in the garden is pretty much my dream. The truth is professional photographs don’t come out of the camera ready to print. So what do I spend my editing time doing exactly?

The Mundane Work of Colour Correcting

A typical wedding day takes a professional photographer through a variety of lighting scenarios. The day might begin in a kitchen with overhead fluorescent lights. Next we might move to a dark church, or into a lush green forest. The reception could take place in a hall under tungsten lights. Or my personal editing hell: with bright orange fairy lights under an open sky. The work I deliver to my clients must be consistent from beginning to end. Colour correcting takes up around 40% of my editing time.

I bring my own lighting, and colour correct in camera where possible. Sometimes though, I’m not allowed, or it simply isn’t practical. These places could include a church or religious site, a location that requires boating or hiking in with minimal gear, or places where lights will be a distraction. In these cases I have no choice but to invest time in post-production colour correction. I may also make a creative decision to use a particular white balance setting to create a specific look in post-production.

Exposure, Contrast & Levels Balancing

The camera is a tool that has limitations. Unlike our eyes, cameras only see and process a limited amount of light information. When we’re talking about contrast in photography we’re often referring to the luminance range of an image. This means the range of light between the darkest part of the image to the brightest part of the image. This range is measured in exposure stops. To give you an idea of this, our eyes see roughly 30 stops of light at any given time. A camera can only record somewhere between 8-12 stops in a single frame. No matter what settings I have my camera set to, it will not record what I see with my eyes.

Images must have the exposure, contrast and levels balanced if I wish for it to reflect what I see. Exposure and contrast affect the mood of an image. It is not uncommon for professional photographers to take creative liberties with this. A skilled editor will manipulate exposure, contrast and levels to enhance images.

Black and White Conversion

Deciding whether to convert an image to black and white is an important creative decision. Colourful festivities translate beautifully in full colour images. There are times, however where colour detracts from an image. When emotions are high and I want the viewer to focus on the emotion I often make the creative choice of converting an image to black and white. Clicking the desaturation tool isn’t enough though. Once converted to greyscale, reds and greens become just about the same tone, and details get lost. Skilled editors tone the luminance of individual colours separately, and yes, it’s as time consuming as it sounds.

The Big Crop

There are many reasons why a professional photographer may crop an image. I will crop images in order to improve the overall composition. I use the crop tool to minimize and eliminate distractions such as bright red exits signs, and people accidentally walking through frames. Another reason to crop is to create a stronger focal point for the image. Cropping is also necessary when changing the aspect ratio of an image you would like to print.

Cloning and Retouching

If there is one thing I avoid like the plague, it’s cloning and retouching. Retouching images is extremely time consuming. Retouching is monotonous, thankless work, so I do everything in my power to get the shot right in camera. Sign posts, garbage cans, graffiti, and people in the background can all detract from the overall composition of an image, but they cannot always be avoided in public spaces. A single image that requires heavy retouching can take hours to complete. I spend approximately 2-10 hours on each wedding I shoot retouching images.

Time is energy and so is money

I deliver 600+ images to the average wedding client. Ten minutes of post-work on each image easily adds up to one hundred hours of work. Sometimes I can edit an image in a minute or two, other times it take an hour or two.

How a photographer interprets an image and edits it, is the very thing that sets them apart from other photographers. Asking a professional photographer to skip the editing is akin to hiring Gordon Ramsey to cook for you, and asking him for half-boiled, unseasoned chicken in exchange for a cut off the bill.

Invest in a professional wedding photographer whose work speaks to you, but remember:

Beautiful wedding photographs don’t make themselves. We put a lot of work in before we push the shutter, including collaborating on ideas, coaching couples through posing, location scouting, and other prep work. On the day of a wedding we work hard to tell compelling stories through meticulously chosen compositions. The camera however, is a tool with limitations, and it only gets us part way to our final vision. Professional photographers invest an equivalent amount of time into shooting as they do into completing their vision in post production.

You receive the greatest return on your investment when you allow your photographer to complete their work.