Weddings - whats your criteria for binning ?

dseered

dseered

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Ian
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Yesterday I covered an awesome wedding, I was there from 8 am till after 1 am and was shooting all day and night solid. Still downloading so I don't know how many shots I got but it is well into the 000's and the first impressions are they are pretty much all keepers.

There was so much going on so it kept me really busy but what do I throw away, estimating 2500-3000 shots ?

What criteria do you use to bin, obviously out of focus and bad composition but if the rest are different and good what do you do ?

Oh and 17 hours with that the 1d and 70-200 2.8 IS hurts alot the next morning !
 
i guess if you have 10 or so of the 'same' shot choose the best and dlete the others,

look for people shutting there eyes, yawning etc.
 
You must of done very well to have such a good keeper rate. I know for me this job wouldn't be that hard lol.

I think you are just going to have to be brutal in your critique of each photo, if there is so much as an eyelash out of place, bin it.
 
Thats the thing, it was a moving around wedding and knowing the work I would have to put in today I tried to get everything bang on when shooting.
So lots of the same people but at different venues, I am just so chuffed with the majority of them its going to be so hard !
I guess thats a good thing though, caught napping at the cake cutting though :(

Oh and where are the wedding photo competitions, think I may have a couple of belters that I would like to be entering !
 
Funny you should ask, just taking a break from going through yesterday's wedding. Firstly I've cut down on the number I shoot in the first place, but it's too late for that for you! Yesterday I shot 700 in total, down from my usual 1000-1200. I really look for shots and the right light now rather than just firing away all day.

When I get to editing the first step is to remove shots suffering from camera shake or OOF unless compositionally it's great and I think I can recover something from it (I hate it when that happens). Next step is to remove the copies. There's usually a number of simlar shots where I can compare and get rid of ones where people are pulling a silly face or blinking.

After that it's a matter of weeding out the average from the good, which is probably the longest bit of it all for me. I try to get it down to a max of 250 otherwise I think it's a bit overwhelming for the B&G. You have to be quite ruthless I've found.
 
One of the problems shooting so many shots is the couple will never be able to choose the 90 or so for the album, just be brutal and cut them down, if lighting or colours don't match bin them, same with expressions, just keep the really top few hundred. Wayne
 
If it were my wedding photos then I'd like the choice.. so bin the obvious.. and let the bride and groom have the stress of choosing. I've only been married once and photography is only a hobby so I don't know if thats a professional option but see if anyone else here on the forum concurs?

I hope it works out.
 
Be really brutal, I would look to present 4-500 max from that no. of shots, preferably below 400. Look to include shots if that are great, as opposed to including ones that are simply not bad.

If you think the vast majority of what you've shot is a keeper, then you are not being critical enough on yourself. Either that or you're a photo god.
 
@Levihaynes when it comes to choosing I think it's part of the job of the photographer to do it and unprofessional to let people not used to looking at pictures to choose the best. IMO it is like saying to them I don't know which ones to choose.
 
Yep, be brutal and do several passes. I review shots in LR and the first pass is for outright rejection. Then I do a 2nd pass and flag possibles. 3rd pass I rate them and then finally drop all those below 3 stars. I often do those over a couple of days so I can look at them with fresh eyes. Also consider which shots that tell the story of the day and drop those that don't progress the story.
 
Some good advice coming through, just had a full first pass with, a friend dropped my car off from yesterday and she came in and reviewed with me but with a female perspective, we didn't differ that much but did point out some things that I missed - ahem, only got slapped once for a cleavage shot, didn't know I had taken that one officer ;)
 
I often do those over a couple of days so I can look at them with fresh eyes
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good advice
also give the client what they want - their expectation - they want to look good, but they don't want to look at 1000+ photos

hope this helps
 
When I had to chose my final prints for my college work I'd usually ask someone else, like you said you have. I'd also choose a selection then go back to them the next day like pxl8 mentioned. It's not exactly the same thing.. but same principle.
 
Group your pictures into themes ... once there, choose the best 10 of that theme! I don't know what parts of the wedding you've shot, but generally you would be able to make out ~20 themes and if you manage to filter out the best 10 for each of these then that would leave you with 200 shots!

Now, how do you go about with this? For starters, remove all the oof and those with handshake. Go to bed, have a goodnight's sleep and start first thing in the morning when your eyes are fresh and relxed.

Start to filter things out by grouping them into the themes, and then rank them 1 to 5.. the 5 are the BEST OF THE BEST, 4 are the GREAT KEEPERS, 3 are OKs, 2 are worth keeping and 1 are so-so. In the end, choose your 10 best per theme from those ranked 5 or 4 .. all those ranked 3 and less delete them (as you've obviously got a lot to filter through).
 
sounds good, and hopefully the b&g will love them!
 
Always a good idea to sleep on it and look with fresh eyes.

Where's the cleavage shot??????


:D
 
fair do's for going from 8am till 1pm!!! :clap:

I did one the other week from 10am - 8pm and nearly made myself ill, it was a really hot day I guess but I was pooped!!!

If any one can recommend some great places to send wedding photos off to that would be cool. :shrug:
 
you got to be brutal.
if they arent virtualy spot on. bin em.
if you not sure if you like em or not, bin em.
only exception is a one off shot you realy want, that can be brought up to standard with photoshop.
luckily for me, my mrs does all the editing , with minor imput from me.
i just offer my opinion, wether i think they work or not.
you always take loads of duplicates to make sure you havent got closed eyes n such.
if you get a group of em. pick the best one, maybe two. bin the rest.
we regularly take upwards of 1000 shots between us at a big wedding.
usualy culled by at least half that by the proof stage.
8 am til 1 pm. wow. your nuts.:lol:best ive managed is twelve hours.
 
robbys82 said:
If any one can recommend some great places to send wedding photos off to that would be cool. :shrug:
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I take it you mean for printing. I use Loxley for all my wedding prints now. Absolutely top class quality but don't expect photobox prices.
 
sorry i could have been clearer with that, competitions and things I meant.
Yeah I use loxely too, I've only just started using them but ROES make life a lot easier!!
 
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