Wedding

What's the best way to optimize photos so that I can deliver quality to my clients while reducing the file size for faster uploads into the cloud? This has been a question I’ve been thinking about for sometime. I have tinkered with settings in Lightroom to try and find the right export recipe but it wasn’t till another photographer told me about JpegMini that I finally felt I had the solution. Using image optimization technology they developed, JpegMini was able to deliver maximum quality at minimum file size. I ran it through some tests and here are my results.

Don’t believe everything you see or read on the internet, guys. Case in point, "We Still Coming." There has recently been a photograph allegedly supported by a text message screen-capture making the rounds online. It alludes to a wedding barbecue being crashed by a group of strangers because the bride-to-be sent out an invitation to the wrong number. Although the final communication shown, “We still coming,” is hilarious when viewed next to a photograph of a white wedding party surrounded by a group of young African-American men in casual attire. The thing is... the whole story is a lie - sort of!

Back in 2004 I was given the Nikon D100 digital camera for Christmas and I started making money with the camera within a few months. I fell into wedding photography and within 2 years I was making almost 100% of my income shooting them. In the last 10 years I never learned how to process a RAW file (effectively) or use Lightroom until last week.

If you're a wedding photographer then you're all to familiar with Uncle Bob photographers: people with a camera getting in your way, breathing down your neck asking about settings and gear, and otherwise making your life dificult. This parody instructional video teaches Uncle Bob how to get the best pictures he can at a wedding while also being a huge annoyance to the wedding guests and photographer.

It's hard to look at our photography with objective eyes. We know how much planning went into the shoot. We know how complicated the shoot was. We know how many hours in Photoshop we spent. The sad truth is, none of that matters. Your image should speak for itself. Let me help you rate your photography fairly.

I've been shooting professionally for just over four years now – “professional” as in starting a legitimate business where I charge money to take photographs of my clients. We could wax poetic on the distinctions between “amateur” and “professional” that don’t involve the exchange of money, but the area that I want to focus on has to do with the responsibilities and perceptions that come along with people hiring you as a business.

If you watched the Fstoppers "How To Become a Professional Commercial Wedding Photographer" DVD, you might remember a scene where Lee Is shooting by the water. He later told us he was too concerned for the structural integrity of a dock to put a wedding party on it, stating he didn't want to be "that photographer." Well, Lee might have avoided it, but this group sure didn't.

New York based wedding photographer Richard B Flores is taking his job very seriously. Like all of us, he works hard on the day of the event and of course the following days while he edits. But Richard is doing something maybe not many of us do: he spends the day before each event heavily prepping his equipment - from cleaning, to syncing and charging. Check out his BTS video showing the prep day and read his explanation for each of the steps.