How to Stay Ahead in Your Wedding Photography Workflow?

In some cases, you and your client may have spent months working on the wedding's details. Now comes the longest part of your work, the post-processing, after countless emails, meetings, and the wedding day itself. The wedding couple will not see (or care about) your workflow as a photographer until well after the wedding is over. When you get back to your house or office after taking digital photos, the post-processing phase begins and lasts until the clients have their final copies.

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Wedding Photography Workflow

Many photographers have their own editing software or style preferences that influence their post-shoot processing. Anyhow, after five years of successfully running a wedding photography business, I've established a workflow that allows me to efficiently add my own unique style to each photo. Read this post to learn the best practises for handing off the finished product to your clients after the wedding day.

Remember that the goal of any proposed changes to your photography workflow is to increase efficiency through the use of established norms and practises. So, we gathered the best tips to improve your photographic workflow and get your business running smoothly again.

Check The Updates

Normal software updates are implemented during busiest hours. Unintended consequences are common with midyear software updates. Now is the moment for action. It's easy to let workflow-enhancing changes slip your mind when you're focused on patient care. Then, modify it so that it works better for your photography company.

Look for Bottlenecks

Why was it that nothing was accomplished when urgency was most in the midst of the wedding season's busiest time? Finding and fixing process bottlenecks is the most effective way to avoid a workload crisis next year.

Remove Extra Steps

In the photographic pipeline, crews can easily get bogged down by extra steps that aren't necessary. It's simple for mistakes to be made when numerous employees are responsible for performing the activities in your workflow. For instance, you can be sending each other the same photograph multiple times when only one transfer would do. Repetition of a process may not seem like a significant concern at first. When you are in the midst of the busy season, however, every minute counts.

Reducing the number of steps in your workflows will free you up to concentrate on what really needs your attention.

Are you prepared to begin modernising your processes? The time is now. Next time you're in a rush, you and the clients will thank you.

Make Sure to Back It Up

You need to help them as quickly as you return from the honeymoon as possible. Please, once more, provide your backing to this cause. The wedding images you shoot for your clients will, of course, be very important to them. Don't risk losing memories by waiting to back them up.

There is still a great deal of work to do, so even if you have been on site for 8 hours or more, you shouldn't just go to sleep. You should start backing up your client's photographs right away and save them in multiple places. Your customer paid a hefty sum to know their photos are in good hands with you. They can't rest until they've duplicated all their files in case something goes wrong. Never learn a lesson the hard way without a backup plan.

Download

You should establish a folder on your computer with the client's name and a subdirectory labelled "RAW" if you shoot in RAW format, but we will return to that point in a moment. All of the images from each card should be copied to the new "RAW" folder on your hard drive.

It's important to remember that RAW files are enormous, and that you'll probably need to upgrade your hard drive and/or add more memory in order to deal with them efficiently. The same holds true for Mac users; it's important to establish a regular backup routine.

Make a Copy

You should make a copy in a clients' folder on an external hard drive after saving everything to your hard drive for safety. When not in use, the external hard disc must be stored in a fireproof safe. Some photographers will utilise many external hard discs to back up their work.

Backup Online

When you're absolutely exhausted and can't keep your eyes open for another second, start a backup of the RAW files somewhere safe and sound online or in the cloud. It's good news, that's for sure. If your internet connection is slow, you may sleep through the upload process, which could take several days.

Importing and Culling

This is undoubtedly the most fascinating part of what you do.

Culling

Eliminate unwanted shots by sorting them by camera. Finding images to keep in this manner is the fastest method. To remove a lens, go to Metadata (or hit the / key) in the Collection Module and click on the lens's name. Click the P icon for the photos you want to save and the D icon for the others to indicate which ones you would like to keep and which ones you want to throw hit X for delete. Once you've given each lenses a star rating, you can see how they all stack up in the Library section. Next, go through the Library and delete more books until you get to your target number.

Be Smart About Culling Images

The client should be shown between 500 and 700 of the very best wedding photos. And I'm not referring to the three thousand pictures you snapped. They don't need any more photos taken in poor lighting or with their eyes open briefly. There is no reason to have five different poses all looking the same. Inevitably, clients will only purchase the finest photographs. Don't erase major sections of the event, but be selective about the photos you share with the newlyweds. Choose your shots carefully at the wedding. Please aim carefully; I am aware of the dangers of overshooting.

The most tedious and unpleasant part of your work is culling, or looking through all of the wedding images you took, giving them stars, and choosing which to save and which to discard. So, it's not wise to "shoot and hope" with your cameras the whole day long during the wedding. Your time spent editing photos after the wedding will be inversely proportional to how carefully you choose them. There are other services you can engage to perform the culling for you, if the cost is acceptable.

After I finished the first part of my wedding workflow, which involved backing up the photographs, I went through and removed any duplicates. This includes culling any content that won't be useful to the client, such as duplicates, low-resolution photographs, or awkwardly framed shots.

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Mark Your Favorite Photographs

When the wedding images had been culled down to the finest of the bunch, the next thing to do in the process was to review them and give your "best" photos a higher star rating.

Basic Edits

Here is where all the action is!

After you've deleted all the unneeded photos, you can move on to performing basic edits in Lightroom. Cropping, straightening, altering brightness, contrast, shadows, highlights, etc., are all excellent uses of picture editing skills that may be put to use here. At this point, your personal photographic style begins to take shape. That's why it's better to use RAW instead of JPG; you'll have more editing options afterwards. There are a lot of photographers that turn around if they get to this point and are satisfied with their work. If you really want to impress people with your photos, though, you'll need to take a few extra measures.

Useful advice! When taking a series of images using the same camera in the same lighting circumstances, you may apply your modifications to the full piece with a single tap by choosing all of the pictures to be edited and then pressing the "Sync" button.

Polishing

Presets that bring out the best in your photos.

After the rudimentary modifications are completed, many photographer choose to further enhance their photographs by adding a template to the colour scheme. You may either buy Lightroom presets from a wide range of websites or create your own.

Retouching Your Images with Photoshop

Your photographs have all been given the basic treatment of cropping, modifying for exposure, and color-toning; now you can select which ones will undergo additional Photoshop editing by selecting only those with a grade of three stars or above. Retouching allows for the elimination of blemishes, stray hairs, and the swapping of heads in photographs.

Photos in Monochrome

This is the fastest part of post-production. Most experienced photographers in the wedding photography industry will print your photos in either colour or black and white.

For the quickest processing, pick all of the photographs, apply your prefered black and white setting, and then deselect them. To achieve the desired effect, edit each black and white image individually, giving special attention to the yellow and red tones.

Simply re-upload the altered black and white copy to Lightroom and you'll be able to see the differences between the edited colour and monochrome versions.

Exporting

All of your photos have been duplicated, selected, edited, polished, retouched, and saved in black and white. The completed files can be exported to a designated client folder and then forwarded on. A file labelled "Edited" can be made.

Once you're satisfied with the results of your Lightroom editing, choose the photographs you want to export and choose Export from the menu. When you're ready, choose the export option.

Importing to an Online Client Gallery

High-resolution JPGs can be exported to the Modified customer folder on your desktop and then uploaded to your prefered web gallery. Lightroom now supports plug-ins that allow for the direct submission of high-resolution JPGs to specific internet galleries.

At Long Last,

After finalising your photos in your editing software, save them to an external disc in the clients' folder, and then publish the gallery's URL. It is safe to delete the Unprocessed files off your computer once you have made online and external backups of your finalised files (or two). If you choose to use that Lightroom catalogue again, the RAW data on your external hard drive can be readily synchronised with the Lightroom library on your computer.

Schedule and Post to Social Media

The roughly fifty photographs that garnered three stars can be edited, and then your favourites can be scheduled for release on your social media pages at various points throughout the week.

One of the most important things to do after a wedding, and something you've been doing all week for your clients. It helped get the word out about the wedding while everyone was still excited about it.

Storyboard Tool for Blogging

For your photography business to thrive, you, as the photographer, should grasp the importance of keeping up a blog. Due to the regular updates you provide, your site has a dedicated following of readers. Writing blog entries while in Photoshop has been a tremendous time saver.

Photographer Workflow Apps

A streamlined photographic process is crucial to the smooth operation of any photography business. Professional wedding photographers now have access to a wider variety of time-saving apps thanks to the rapid development of mobile technology. Here is a list of five apps that will improve your photography business's productivity and allow you to take it to the next level.

Boomerang

As a wedding photographer, your hours aren't usually typical. If you have an appointment with a supplier in the day and a shoot in the evening, you might not be able to check your email until late that night. By using Boomerang, you are not limited to sending your emails at 10 p.m.

Emails can be written at your convenience and sent at a later time. Emails can be sent automatically at predetermined times. You can set up a plan for sending an email during business hours to ensure that your customers and suppliers are not left frustrated by your lack of response outside of normal working hours.

Dropbox

Dropbox simplifies file sharing and access across multiple platforms. Anything you put there will instantly appear on every device you own. You may now view pictures on your phone whenever you want to.

As an added bonus, you can create your very own customised folders. Put your wedding pictures in order and hand out specific albums to vendors with ease by using these. Your vendors will be able to view the photographs you sent them directly from this page.

Hootsuite

Photographing weddings on the weekend can make it difficult to keep up with social media. Using Hootsuite, you can easily post to all of your social media profiles at once.

Instead of publishing your content immediately after creating it, you can use Hootsuite to plan articles for times whenever you think your subscribers will be online. You can schedule numerous posts at once and plan your whole week or months in advance.

Evernote

Evernote is a must-have for any business that needs to keep track of client information. An individual can create a unique notepad for each of their customers. Keeping track of one client's meetings and communications requires a separate notepad. The ability to sync notes across devices makes this an efficient tool for maintaining order.

Asana

Asana is a terrific app to add into your workflow because it works as a project management software that assists you keep track of each assignment you have. Projects can be personalised to particular clients, with specific lists of outputs and timeframes for when they need to be accomplished.

Each job in Asana can be outsourced to a particular user. Therefore, this is a great tool for use in conjunction with a photographic crew or other professionals. An overview of all open jobs and the persons you've given them to can be viewed quickly and easily thanks to the clean design of the interface.

Conclusion

The time has come to deliver the final product to the clientele after months of labour. It is easy for photographers to become mired down in unnecessary processes. The best strategy to avoid a workload problem in the new year is to identify and eliminate bottlenecks in the process. As a wedding photographer, you should immediately begin creating backups of your clients' photos. Your memories are too important to risk losing by delaying to back them up.

The size of photos is so large that it will be necessary to either increase the capacity of your hard disc or instal additional memory on your computer. Between 500 and 700 of the finest wedding images should be presented to the client. Having to sift through all of the wedding photos is a laborious and unpleasant task. The task of culling can be outsourced to other services if the price is reasonable. To begin editing in Lightroom, you should first go through and remove any unnecessary images.

Flaws, stray hairs, and even a change of heads can all be fixed with the help of retouching. Photographers with more experience in the wedding market will usually provide you the option of printing your images in colour or black and white. Lightroom now has add-ons that let you upload your high-resolution JPGs straight to online exhibitions. Saving time by being able to write blog posts within Photoshop is a huge bonus.