[whodatmama]

Fantastic job Bre!! You really captured the emotion of the day. You are really good at the "decisive moment". It's hard to know the exact moment to snap the photo so that you capture what you see/feel. You def excell at that. These pics are just beautiful. Your tones are super duper uber perfect. Lovely be conversions too. So spill it. What are your steps pp? Also, do you concern yourself with RGB/sRGB in your camera and Photoshop? I'm super duper uber impressed woman!

[nat1970]

Great job

Originally Posted by clickychic

Fantastic job Bre!! You really captured the emotion of the day. You are really good at the "decisive moment". It's hard to know the exact moment to snap the photo so that you capture what you see/feel. You def excell at that. These pics are just beautiful. Your tones are super duper uber perfect. Lovely be conversions too. So spill it. What are your steps pp? Also, do you concern yourself with RGB/sRGB in your camera and Photoshop? I'm super duper uber impressed woman!

Okay, here was my process...

1. Open images 200 at a time in Camera Raw
2. Make exposore and white balance edits. Occassionally added a bit of lens vingetting.
3. Trashed images that were no good (really bad ones like if the bride's eyes were closed, etc)
4. Hit "done"
5. Ran a batch output converting all images to JPGs and running Imagenomics Noiseware at the "default" setting
6. Opened images 100 at a time in CS3 (they are now JPGs) and made additional edits- crops, the occassional levels adjustment, ran actions, etc.
7. The b&w action that I used is "B&W Beauty" by Pioneer Woman. The action I used in 3 and 18 is "Seventies" by Pioneer Woman.
8. In numbers 13, 38, 55...I did some lighting effects. I went to Filter > Render > Lighting Effects and played around. I mostly used the Spotlight one.
9. I am now currently going through the images and getting them ready for my blog. I'm including a clean white frame and watermark (on the frame, not the image) for the first time so it's extra steps.
10. For the blog process: running an action that does a basic white frame and thin grey line around the image. Then I drop my logo/website onto the flattened image by having a duplicate layer open in another window and dragging it onto my image.

I've spent about 8 hours on them so far not including the blog stuff

So yeah....7 hours the day of, about 10 hours in post processing, 1 hour for intitial meeting, 2 hours or so of corespondence....a little over 2 full days of work for $695. If you don't take into account my expenses it seems like decent pay compared to "normal" jobs. hehe. I would really feel more comfortable charging in the $1500 range but I'm note quite there yet. I feel like I'm getting close to being worth that much

[rachaelh]

Awesome Job!

[tyggrlili25]

Bre those are Gorgeous! you are a phenomenal photographer!
My favs were the first one of the dress and #43...but they were all great!

[LadyCoconut]

#43 is straight up money and they will no doubt frame that one and probably use it for Christmas cards this year or next, depending on when they get their photos! The bride has a rockin' body and that dress looks great on her. I loved the hand muff things the BMs had.

I really like #16 but the vignette feels a little heavy to me

the editing in #18 reminds me of some of Ben's, haha... I'm going to tell him to stalk these photos - are they up on your blog yet?

Glad to hear the bride's mom is okay... must've been a shock to see her In all seriousness, still sucks that they lost a parent so close to their wedding & the holidays.

Is that Barbara Streisand in #31?

I don't know who the ppl in #50 are, but they'll love that shot of them

You did a great job and they definitely got a great price and you got a ton of great shots for your portfolio so it was a win-win for sure! And man were you quick on the turn around, especially for the holidays! Can't beat that!

[LadyCoconut]

Ben was on the computer in the other room looking at this thread and here's what he just came out and said --

#24 should be on your blog, that he thinks the light looks really good

#13 he really likes & thinks would look great in B&W too

#43 is a good shot

He said at a glance (he didn't look to critique so I'm pushing for commentary, lol) to go lighter on the vignette and use less flash and go higher on the ISO since you have a camera that can safely go up to 1600.

The light looked really good on the dance floor shots, like you were just bouncing light off the ceiling.

As a whole he thinks its fantastic and for $700 they got a STEAL and are so lucky to have booked you. He said as a whole it was totally stronger than his first couple weddings and that you've come so far in the last year.

He also said it looks like you were shooting under difficult circumstances to begin with... indoor ceremony & reception all after dark... no daylight opportunities and there's photogs that totally freak out about not getting time to shoot portraits outside but you did a great job.

[Rachel82]

You did a wonderful job Bre!!!

You did such a great job, I love them all!!!

[heatherrose415]

you did AWESOME!!!!!!!!!! I love the lighting too!! Were you bouncing it up???''

and the bride is gorgeous!

Originally Posted by LadyCoconut

#43 is straight up money and they will no doubt frame that one and probably use it for Christmas cards this year or next, depending on when they get their photos! The bride has a rockin' body and that dress looks great on her. I loved the hand muff things the BMs had.

I really like #16 but the vignette feels a little heavy to me

the editing in #18 reminds me of some of Ben's, haha... I'm going to tell him to stalk these photos - are they up on your blog yet?

Glad to hear the bride's mom is okay... must've been a shock to see her In all seriousness, still sucks that they lost a parent so close to their wedding & the holidays.

Is that Barbara Streisand in #31?

I don't know who the ppl in #50 are, but they'll love that shot of them

You did a great job and they definitely got a great price and you got a ton of great shots for your portfolio so it was a win-win for sure! And man were you quick on the turn around, especially for the holidays! Can't beat that!

Woah, you rock for all of the comments!! Seriously! Tell Ben thanks too!

You're totally right. The vingette is too much on 16 and a few others as well. The lady in 31 was one of my administrators in elementary school! No clue on her name, but I'm certain that she was a vice principle. lol. I never said anything to her, I totally forgot!

The only images that were shot below 1600 were the getting ready pics (anywhere from 640 to 1000 and no flash used due to lots of mirrors) and the ceremony (800). Everything else was shot at either 1600 or 3200. I had switched to 3200 for a few non flash shots that turned out to be junk and forgot to dial back down to 1600 once I started using the flash again! Thank God for noiseware I was using the Speedlite 580EXII set at a 0 exposure. A few times I might have dialed it up....but not very often. I think the cake eating pics where the only ones where I dialed it up?

[::MummyToThree::]

Bre they are gorgeous!!!

on a side note did you not get to eat?? at our wedding we had a side table set up for the photographer and they got a meal.... I have never been to a wedding where the photographer/videographer didn't get food.

[sweety_pie]

Beautiful Pictures!

[Joliving4Jesus]

Absolutely stunning, you are so talented, I am always looking out for posts from you...great photographer! Where do you find good actions at? I haven't seemed to be able to come across any decent actions and don't even really know how to use them yet, boy do I have a lot to learn.

Also, how do you open 100 images on photoshop? If I try to open more than about 25 it goes so slow I can hardly work on them.

13 is my FAVE i also love 42, 43 and 47

Tam, when I saw her 3 weeks before the wedding to give her the prints from her engagement session she asked me if she should order a plate for me. It was kind of awkward the way she asked so I said that I didn't need anything. She then informed me that the dinner was like $80 per plate! I think she was relieved that I said no!

Originally Posted by Joliving4Jesus

Absolutely stunning, you are so talented, I am always looking out for posts from you...great photographer! Where do you find good actions at? I haven't seemed to be able to come across any decent actions and don't even really know how to use them yet, boy do I have a lot to learn.

Also, how do you open 100 images on photoshop? If I try to open more than about 25 it goes so slow I can hardly work on them.

Aww, thanks The actions I used on this set are by Pioneer Woman that I got for free. I downloaded them a long time ago, I think this is the correct link? I googled. Pioneer Woman Photography - Ree Drummond

When I bought my laptop I bought one that I knew could handle my photo editing needs. My DH is techy and he picked it out It has no problem opening a ton of images, and my images are HUGE with the 5D! My work computer, for example, would probably burst into flames if I tried opening that many photos

[Joliving4Jesus]

I will check out her site and see what I can find!

Wow, you must have a mega laptop, my husband is a server engineer for IBM e-learning so he is super computer techy and got me a pretty hardy laptop but it still doesn't handle a lot of pictures on photoshop at once...but since the laptop was free through his company I am sure it isn't the best one out there

It's a Dell and it was only $700 DH spent a lot of time looking at them and said this was the best value for my needs. Of course we could have gone better (aka a lot more expensive) but it's been perfect so far!

[dancefever]

Just lurking, but those are awesome!