Ai yai yai yai!

just awesome, originally uploaded by Mr. Wright.

Weddings present a number of challenges, but the most unexpected for me comes during post-processing and image presentation. The most important task in terms of making your client happy and yourself look good is to simply weed through the hundreds, if not thousands, of frames and put your best shots forward.

The editing ranks as a secondary concern for two reasons: 1) even though it will bug a photographer to no end, most people won't notice if the shot lacks an absolute black and an absolute white with a smooth tonal range in between; and 2) there's really an upper bound on how great any wedding photo can be, especially from an artistic standpoint, which means realizing your particular vision for an image may take it from pretty good to good -- not from good to great, as you'd like.

That hasn't kept me from spending a rather inordinate amount of time on wedding photos these past few weeks, but I can pin that blame on my own perfectionism and sentimentality. When working for a relative stranger, part of the reason I come so cheap is that I make the client play the part of photo editor. They choose the 35-50 shots they like most and I'll give them a quick once over and forget about all the other frames. But when I'm shooting for friends, the workload quickly mushrooms into the hundreds since I'm a sap. My attachment to the people in the pictures influences my decision more than the pictures themselves. That leads me to like a lot more frames -- e.g., "Oh, man, this picture perfectly captures so-and-so's expression" -- as my shutterbug roots run roughshod over my efforts to act like a pro.

Technology, of course, only complicates things. For instance, I'm always torn over whether to put the images on Flickr, because I like to delude myself into thinking that prospective clients or employers might look at my photostream. Do I really want to slap up 200 technically shoddy wedding shots? How to weigh the value of my photostream against public (a few friends) clamoring to conveniently view the photos? C'mon, man, get over yourself. You've got public pictures of you drunk off your gourd; this isn't exactly genius grant application you're putting together... And so on.

As always the advance of technology, to which I owe my psuedo-career behind the lens, is also responsible for the traps I fall in without fail. In the same way that digital photography drastically reduced the price-per-frame -- lowering the bar for entry into the industry far enough to let me in as part of the Flickring masses -- it means I value each frame less, meaning I shoot with more abandon and end up with more fair to middling images. And because each image takes less time to "perfect," it's easier to say "Forget it, I'll do 'em all," and hurry through the edits. If I had to print these by hand, or just pay for the prints, or scan the images first, you can bet I'd be more selective. But I don't have to be, so in the end, I probably spend more time editing the glut, and the resulting large set is inferior to the more condensed alternative. It's visual verbiage.

I know this. Rationally, I get it. Yet I still can't break myself of the compulsion.

Anyways, speaking of verbiage, this whole deal was intended to say that I'll be using the blog to single out the 8-10 worthwhile shots, such as the one above, before they are lost to the depths of my photostream.

(And if you happen to be a client or employer reading this, please start with my Portfolio set before going through my spring break shots. Thanks.)