Blythe had a gorgeous bouquet for the wedding and I wanted to share an image for the day but I’m going to wait to show you more until the full post. That does bring me to another topic, and actually a question I was asked: “When are the pictures going to be finished?” This is the money question – everyone wants to know, and everyone wants to know why it’s not sooner. So, I thought I’d answer both of those questions for you here.

Question #1: The photos will be done in 3 weeks.

This is actually a big jump in turn around from what I used to do. If I shot your wedding in the past, don’t feel jilted, there’s reasons for the time then too. The main reason my turn around is faster is that I’m better at editing. When you shoot 1200-1800 images per wedding, it can take a lot of time to cut them down, edit each one and make some fine tuned adjustments to the best of the bunch. I’ve refined my workflow and just have more experience with the large number of images.

Question #2: Why aren’t they done sooner?

As I said, when editing 1200-1800 images, it takes time. Let’s start with importing all of the images, all 20-36 GB of them. Once they are all safe and sound, it comes time for editing. If I spend 15 seconds per image, that averages out to 5 – 7.5 hours. Not that bad, but you add in editing to the daily routine – taking care of emails, other clients, traveling for and shooting the next wedding, designing albums, ordering prints, blogging – they don’t always take precedence. Also, I leave some time for the rest of my business and life to happen, and if I’m able to finish them sooner, of course I love to do that. After the images are edited, they are processed into jpgs, re-named by category, burned to a disc, and saved as smaller files to be loaded on to the proofing site. Once they are uploaded to the proofing site, the best 20-30 are chosen for the blog, and the blog post ensues. Whew. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work and I think when you see them you’ll agree they’re worth the wait.