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Behind The Scenes |
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Behind The Scenes |
When you think of wedding photographs, most people think of the wedding album. Some recall seeing the photographer at the wedding, but few understand what is required to create beautiful memories of your wedding day.
We´ll let you in on a little secret. There is a lot to do before — and after — the wedding to make sure you get the photos you’ve always dreamed of; We´d like to give you a behind-the-scenes look to see what it takes to create a wedding album full of warmth, love and memories. That way, you´ll know how to guide us to fulfill your wishes and dreams.
It will probably not surprise you to learn that the time we spend with you on your wedding day is only a small portion of the effort required to create emotionally fulfilling memories. In fact, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A great deal of planning and preparation is required to make sure we’re ready for the wedding day. After the wedding, there is even more production work to select, edit, print and assemble your wedding album and photographs.
Let’s take a brief look at what we do to make your pictures look their absolute best.
You know what you want, at least in a general way. We like to start by learning about your plans. Of course, we also need to know all of the details — the dates, times, and locations, and any special situations. Most importantly, we also want to hear about your vision for perfect wedding memories.
The most direct way to learn what you want is for you to tell us. We’ve created an online form [link to form] to capture this basic getting-to-know-you information. The first step is to fill out this form to get the process started.
Once you’ve filled in our information form, we’ll schedule our first consultation so you can get to know us. We want to make sure you’re 100% comfortable with Creative Arts Photography. After all, if you’re going to share your wedding day with us, you need to know that we’ll get along and work well together.
The initial consultation usually takes about one hour. This is our chance to get to know a little bit about each other. We’ll give you a quick tour of our studio and show you samples of our style. This is a great opportunity for you to tell us what you like and what you don’t. We’ll also show you some finished prints and a variety of album designs.
During this time, we’d like you to tell us about yourself, your wedding plans and your dreams for wedding-day memories. Of course, we’ll have lots of questions for you. Please ask us lots of questions, too. The more we know about each other, the better we’ll work together.
By the end of our first consultation, we will know what you have in mind — the number of wedding-day locations, the number of photographs you want, and the style you prefer. You will have a very good idea whether Creative Arts Photography is a good match for you.
Based on what you’ve told us, we will prepare a written proposal for our wedding photography services. After presenting our proposal, we will contact you to answer any questions you may have.
When you’ve decided to choose Creative Arts Photography, you commit your wedding date on our calendar with a written contract and retainer.
We will send a checklist and shooting schedule so you can select the family combinations that you want photographed. We ask that you return this to us as quickly as possible. This is one of the planning tools that we use to prepare for your wedding day.
Also during this period leading up to the wedding, we will:
One Week Before Your Wedding
As we enter the final week leading up to your wedding, we have to review all plans and confirm all arrangements. We will:
We generally attend the wedding rehearsal. (Sometimes scheduling conflicts make this impossible, but will make every attempt to attend.) This gives us an opportunity to meet the families, preview the locations, figure out lighting conditions and logistics, and see how the ceremony will flow. This also gives us an opportunity to develop a rapport with your family and friends, and will make them more comfortable on the wedding day.
By now, all the plans are set and confirmed. We use this day for our final preparations. We always:
Before heading out to the first location, we make one last review of the checklist, the itinerary, and the contract to double check details and locations. This is also time for our mental preparations. We have a set routine to stimulate our imaginations and get our creative juices flowing.
We will arrive at the first shooting location one hour before our contracted time. We assemble and set up our equipment and make final location and lighting decisions. Before the bride and wedding party arrives, we take location photos to capture its ambience.
As we mentioned earlier, this page describes what goes on behind the scenes to get ready for your wedding day, and afterwards. We discuss our role during the wedding day itself in the article: A Typical Wedding Day.
During the wedding day, we usually schedule both a primary and an assistant photographer. This keeps us from missing any important shots, and allows us to have two cameras available during the most important events. We strive to always have a photographer shooting pictures.
Also, in order to insure that nothing happens to your precious images, we backup our cameras and flash cards throughout the day. This prevents loss of images due to equipment failure, theft, or acts of nature.
And finally, if you like, we will make ourselves available to offer advice and suggestions to keep your wedding flowing smoothly. We’ve participated in a lot of weddings, and can generally help you and your wedding party keep little problems from cropping up, and easily resolve any issues that you may encounter.
As we near the end of our contracted time, we will check with you to see if there are any additional requests for photos or time.
Once we have finished taking photos, packed our equipment and headed home, our day is still not done. First thing upon arriving at the studio, we backup all of your images one more time. You can never be too careful.
The Day(s) Following Your WeddingOn the next workday we get all of the images ready for you to preview. We typically shoot over 1,000 images during a wedding, which have to be renumbered and rearranged into a logical sequence. We also eliminate test shots, bracketed exposures, and any other unusable or unnecessary images. Finally, we analyze each image for correct color, cropping, and exposure and make rough corrections where needed.
At this stage, RAW formatted images are written to photo DVDs for archival storage. We check each DVD to ensure the integrity of every image. We catalog the images and then convert each image to JPEG format. The JPEG formatted images are also saved to photo DVDs.
Low-resolution copies of the jpegs are written to Preview DVDs for you and your family. We print a thumbnail catalog and include it with your preview DVD, along with order forms and price lists. In most cases the previews are ready for delivery within three days after the wedding.
Brides usually send a list of prints and a list of the images they want in their albums. If you would like, we can offer help planning your albums or photo orders.
Based on your image and album selection, we will design and assemble the photos for your wedding album. Upon completion, we will send you a preview of the design for your approval.
Upon approval of your album and prints, we will do any necessary image enhancements such as retouching, fine tuning color and lightness, and cropping images for your album or for loose prints. Once all images have been properly edited, they are sent to a professional lab for printing and binding. Loose prints are generally ready for delivery within two weeks.
The album is assembled, bound and ready for delivery. Depending on the album, it may take between 4 – 16 weeks for final delivery.
As you can see, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes effort to make sure your wedding photos are safely delivered to you.
At Creative Arts Photography, we make your wedding-day memories as pleasant as possible, and last as long as possible. You can trust us to deliver the wedding album and photographs you’ve always dreamed about.
© 2009, Creative Arts Photography
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