BEST OF DIGITAL WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY

Once viewed as a second-class way to make a living, wedding photography now draws the best and brightest photographers into its ranks. It is an art form that is virtually exploding with creativity and with wedding budgets that seem to know no bounds, the horizons of wedding photography seem, despite economic ebbs and flows, almost limitless.

Joe Photo of San Juan apistrano, CA, photographed a dream wedding, which included six different locations all over the world. This image of the bride was made outside of Paris. This kind of coverage is indicative of the changed face of wedding photography.

The digital shooter is not hampered by having to change rolls of film frequently or by being caught with the wrong speed film in the camera. In-camera digital storage media now exceeds 1 gigabyte of data for virtually unlimited shooting, and film speed is instantly adjustable, from frame to frame, if so desired.

Steven Gross is a keen observer and a highly successful wedding photojournalist who shoots only black-and-white weddings. His images reflect frozen moments unobserved by most of the wedding patrons.

Many photographers have not yet made the huge investment in digital; opting instead to digitize film images by scanning; a cost-effective means of offering clients a full range of digital products. And some photographers have spent years perfecting their shooting technique using films they thoroughly understand and enjoy using. To these photographers, the digital change means a radical departure from business as usual.

Joe Buissink is a master wedding photographer from Beverly Hills, CA who prefers the look of film. His digital arsenal includes both film and digital Nikon cameras. He is the master of the subtle moment as shown here, where he captured this young wedding attendant in the midst of a self-approving moment.

Regardless of whether a photographer shoots weddings digitally or with film, the impact of Adobe Photoshop has permanently changed the style and scope of wedding imagery. The photographer in the comfort of his home or studio can now routinely accomplish special effects that could only be achieved by an expert darkroom technician in years past. Photoshop and its many plug-in filters has made wedding photography the most creative venue in all of photography. And brides love it. Digital albums, assembled with desktop publishing software, have become the preferred album type of brides and the style and uniqueness these albums bring to the wedding experience make every bride and groom a celebrity.

One of the biggest complaints of wedding photographers who have gone digital is the long and exhaustive workflow. Money saved in film and processing seems to go right back into expensive digital equipment and computers and ever-changing technology. More than the cost, the time spent in front of a computer monitor has drastically increased.

What is often not discussed is the ultimate control of each and every image shot digitally. Most of the photographers featured in this book are digital artists, and while they are not above using time-saving shortcuts in the image-processing side of things, they still spend a great deal of time perfecting each image that goes out to a client. Perhaps this aspect of contemporary wedding photography, more than any other, has accounted for the profound increase in artistic wedding images. This fine-art approach in turn raises the bar financially for such wedding photographers, allowing them to charge premium prices for their weddings. Says photographer David Beckstead, “I treat each and every image as an art piece. If you pay this much attention to the details of the final image, brides will pick up on this and often replace the word ‘photographer’ with the word ‘artist.’”

Ask any wedding photographer shooting film if he or she mentally inventories the number of exposed and unexposed rolls during the wedding day and they’ll all tell you that they do it. They also mentally calculate the fees of buying, processing and proofing that film. Not so with digital, where there are no film and processing costs. The net result is that most photographers shoot many more images at any given wedding—usually on the order of 500 to 1000 individual images.

Digital capture also provides the ability to instantly preview images, meaning that if you missed the shot for whatever reason, you can delete that file and redo it right then and there. That kind of insurance is priceless. Says Kathleen Hawkins, “Think about it—you're photographing the first dance, capturing the couple from all angles and possibly using your assistant to backlight them. You see that the background light is not bright enough or that your on-camera flash misfired. With digital, instead of waiting a week or two to see that you blew it, you can adjust the lighting and move on.”

Also the flexibility of digital capture is unsurpassed. You can change film speeds from ISO 100 to ISO 1600 or higher from frame to frame. You can alter the white balance at any time to correct the color balance of the lighting, or you can even change from color to black-and-white shooting modes with certain cameras—all at the touch of a button. The creative freedom afforded by digital capture is unprecedented.

The ability to review an image on the camera’s LCD monitor is one of the tremendous benefits of digital capture. It may take a few test shots, sometimes, to adjust the camera, but that’s infinitely better than shooting several rolls and then waiting until after the wedding to see what happened. While learning to read your images on the LCD monitor is sometimes tricky, particularly at first, the more you shoot and transfer files to the computer where they are re-evaluated, the more proficient you’ll become at determining optimum exposure and focusing accuracy from off the LCD.

Lighter than air, as if dancing on a breeze, Phoenix, AZ-based wedding photographer David Beckstead, captured this couple at the height of their joyfulness for all time.

For Connecticut’s Charles and Jennifer Maring, digital has opened up a wealth of creative opportunities, transporting them from being merely photographers to the status of artists and graphic designers. Their unique digital albums include an array of beautifully designed pages with graphic elements that shape each page and layout. Their story-telling style is as sleekly designed as the latest issue of Modern Bride. The Marings not only work each image but also design each album. Says Charles, “There is a unique feeling when designing the art. I don’t know what an image will look like until I am 2/3 done with it. I also don’t know where the vision comes from. I relate this to the art of photography. A higher place maybe.” This talented couple believes so totally in controlling the end product that they also own their own digital lab, named R-Lab. “We have been totally digital for six years now, and the challenge and precision of the change has actually made us better photographers than we were with film,” says Charles. He believes the outside of the album is every bit as important to his upscale clients as each page therein, and has been known to use covers ranging from black leather to metal, to red iguana skin. He has even found a local bookbinder with his own working bindery for finishing their digital albums.

The Internet also plays a huge role in the life of the digital wedding photographer. Online proofing and sales have become a big part of every wedding package. Couples can check out “the take” of images while on their honeymoon by going to the photographer’s web site with the prescribed password—all from the comfort of their hotel room or a digital café.

The use of ftp (file transfer protocol) sites for transferring files to the lab for proofing and or printing has now become routine. Album design software, which often relies on the use of small manageable files, called proxies, allows the photographer to quickly and fluidly design the album and upload it for proofing or printing.

It is easy to get caught up in the hardware of digital photography. It is expensive, exotic and amazingly productive. Yervant Zanazanian, an award-winning Australian photographer puts hardware in perspective. “A lot of photographers still think it is my tools (digital capture and Photoshop) that make my images what they are. They forget the fact that these are only new tools; image-making is in the eye, in the mind and in the heart of a good photographer. During all my talks and presentations, I always remind the audience that ‘You have to be a good photographer first’ and ‘don’t expect or rely on some modern tool or technology to fix a bad image.’ ” It’s good advice.

It is no doubt a changed world, where wedding photographers are concerned. The many aspects of digital imaging will continue to impact wedding photography in seen and unseen ways for decades to come. Charles Maring welcomes the technology. “The main thing that will distinguish photographers in the future will be their print design and album design concepts. Just as photojournalism has become a mainstream concept in fine wedding photography, design is the future.”

As you will see from the photographs throughout this book, the range of creativity and uniqueness displayed by today’s top digital wedding photographers is incomparable. I wish to thank the many photographers who have contributed to this book—not only for their images, but also for their expertise. As anyone who has investigated the technical aspects of digital beyond a surface level has no doubt discovered, there are contradictions galore and volumes of misinformation surrounding everything digital. It is my hope that throughout this book you will find many of those mysteries unraveled.

I also wish to thank the many photographers who “shared” trade secrets with me for the purposes of illuminating others. Some of their tips and tidbits, which appear throughout the book, are as ingenious as they are invaluable.