Nontraditional, Offbeat and Alternative Wedding Photographers » Lara Swanson Photographer in VA, MD, and Washington DC

I’m excited to introduce my new album option – the Iris book. It features a gorgeous blind-stamped linen cover with full-page images (up to 100 pages/images per book). This is perfect for the couple who wants a fine art option but not the Couture price; it’s sleek and romantic in contrast to Kiss’ heft and volume. I will hopefully be receiving a matching book case soon to show off as well to check out the best way to keep the Iris protected.

(If you see any weird lines across the covers of the book, it’s just because of the short depth of field used to photograph it!)

The Iris comes in a few colors – below is the taupe:

Gorgeous linen cover:

Inside each book before the first page are marbled end sheets:

Then a piece of vellum sewn in to protect the first page:

Here’s an example spread. It’s one image per page, and the image will be full-bleed on two edges of the page:

Gorgeous, clean binding:

I
t’s a gorgeous book and I love it! This album does take longer to print and ship than the Kiss or the coffeetable albums, but it’s worth the wait. You definitely save design time with this book, since you’re just choosing the order of the images and not the design of each spread!

If you haven’t signed up for the newsletter yet, be sure you do so right away so you know all about a huge discount coming up!

Inspired by Seshu and a group of photographers, I wanted to fill you in on my digital workflow! While I customize my workflow for each wedding (because every client is different, and I use different equipment for each assignment), there are some standard things that I do for the vast majority of my weddings. Since I’m prepping for the upcoming wedding season by cleaning lenses, ordering all new cards, and cleaning up my workstations I figured this would be the perfect time to describe my typical workflow!

The night before

Oh yes, everything begins the day before. Charging batteries, erasing cards, cleaning lenses, packing my bags. I have a laundry list of “to do” items that also includes printing out your shotlist questionnaire, directions, and setting up my equipment so that I will be ready to go. I also make sure that my camera bodies all have the same time set – imagine using four cameras at a wedding then realizing some of them weren’t set to the same time! Makes for some loooong hours ordering the images later :)

Backups

I offload all of the images to my computer using Image Capture on my Mac (it’s so fast!) and a Sony card read. I then back them up (and then back them up again, and sometimes AGAIN). I have offsite backups as well as onsite to ensure we keep these images safe! I set up my FTP software to run overnight to back up everything offsite, and use external hard drives (I recommend Western Digital) onsite.

First edits

I use PhotoMechanic to sift through and organize my photos. I do a first edit of my favorite photos, which will turn into the teaser slideshow. PhotoMechanic is incredibly fast and is my favorite tool in the whole workflow.

Teaser

The teaser images get edited in Photoshop based on my clients’ preferences – do they like really vibrant images? Should I vintage-ize them? Do they want really romantic images or photojournalistic storytelling? Once these edits are done, I drop them into ShowIt Fast, my slideshow creator. I sync it up with a song (perhaps their first dance song?) and use FireFTP to upload it to my server. I then email my client (and CC the wedding planner if I know his or her email address!) the link and thank them for a wonderful day :)

Second Shooters

At this point, I check in with my second shooters. I have a separate server set up just so my seconds can send me their images. They’ve each got an FTP username and password as well as directory so things don’t get overwritten. I ask them to also sync their camera bodies with the correct time so we don’t run into the same ordering issue, so everything should be good to go when I download their images. Using FTP makes everything so much quicker – no need to wait for disks or cards in the mail, and they can edit on their own!

Second edits

Now it’s time to organize and take out all of the “blinks” – the images that I’m sure my clients won’t want later. :) I organize the images into folders based on the subject (ceremony, portraits, details) and go through with PhotoMechanic to select the ones I want to keep. This removes duplicates, photos where people are blinking, blurry photos, etc.

After this paring down, I use Adobe Lightroom to correct exposure and colors. Usually this doesn’t take very long, but Lightroom makes it super easy to apply one setting to multiple photos. Let’s say the cake cutting had horrible lighting and threw off my color balance – I can just correct one photo, then apply that correction to the rest of the cake cutting photos! I export the images out of Lightroom to a new folder. Now I have two buckets – originals and edited.

Renaming

I prefer to rename my images CLIENT_C001 where “C” stands for Ceremony. D for Details, P for Portraits, R for Reception, etc. This helps me later when photo orders come through, and also helps me keep things organized when I add second shooters’ images to my piles. I use Automator on my Mac to do this. It retrieves the images, sorts them by created date, then renames them with three digits, the letter and the client name.

Proofs

Thus begins the enormous upload process. Once I have all of my second shooters’ images and I’ve renamed everything sequentially, it’s time to upload. I use Instaproofs for my proofing and they have an easy FTP system so I can upload the images. It just takes a TON of time. Once they’re uploaded I go in and make sure that everything rotated correctly and is ordered in the right way. At this point, I also back up the whole set of images again, so that I don’t lose my organization and the editing I’ve done.

Blogging

At some point during this process I blog the wedding. I like to add the slideshow to the blog the day after I’ve sent it to the client, since I want to show it to the world right away! :) While I’m editing the detail photos I also pick out a few that I want to add to the blog, since they’re often a huge hit and can help other people planning their weddings. I also try to add my favorite portraits to the blog, since those are often my favorite photos from the whole day.

Portfolio

At the very end, I add photos to my portfolio. I use Showit Sites for my website, so it’s really easy to add new photos or even a whole slideshow to the site. Haven’t visited my portfolio in a while? It’s constantly updated with new stuff!

Retouching

After our clients have seen the photos, they may have a list of photos that they want retouched or further post-processed. This is a great deal of fun for me. I use a Wacom tablet and Photoshop to make these edits – it can be as simple as removing blemishes or as intense as adding textures, borders, you name it! All of these photos end up on the disk of images our clients receive. I also use different action sets: Totally Rad and Kubota’s are my favorites (I own ALL of them).

Disk Burning

I burn the images to a disk with a copyright notice on my Mac, and then it’s time for the CD art. I love this step in the customization. I use an Epson printer and Epson software to design the cover of the disk, selecting a favorite image that best represents the wedding (and that best fits on a DVD!).

Albums

For album creation, I use a number of different actions and files. I work in Photoshop and primarily use Design Aglow’s “Mix and Match Little Bird” album actions to create my pages. I tweak these based on the images and what the client is looking for. I also use textures for my pages from Design Aglow and NicholeV, and borders from graphic designers I found on Etsy. I use Etsy quite a bit to get custom graphics to incorporate for each client.

Other stuff

So as you can see, quite a few hours are spent in post-production just focusing on the digital workflow. Wedding photographers’ work doesn’t end with the wedding! And this is just for a typical event – there are so many little things that can be different for each client, like scanning Polaroids, digital gift certificates or coupon codes, ordering the slideshow on DVD, etc. And how about the destination wedding workflow? That’s a post for another day!

Hannah and Eric posted a really wonderful writeup on our photo services over on their blog. My favorite quote:

Lara was always enthusiastic about the details that everyone else was giving us shit about—riding bikes in, that’s right, dresses—and I basically told her what I could afford, and she told me what she could do for that amount.

And also,

I knew after meeting Lara last November in Alexandria that she was the right one for the job. She was always in touch, always interested in our traditions and anti-traditions, and just good company in general.

These things are extremely important to me, and I’m always so stoked when brides and grooms feel the same way. So head on over to their blog and please excuse the terribly awkward photo of us! Haha :)

We’re running a huge sale on the proofs site – 10% of all print orders through the end of November! The discount will be automatically applied to your order and shows up when you look at all of the print pricing. Be sure to tell your family and friends to log in to your proofs site and order prints while the sale lasts!

It’s not even Halloween, but those who are considering submitting orders for the holidays need to get the ball rolling now! Here are the date we need orders approved by so you can have gifts safely in your hands before gift-giving time rolls around:

• If you want to have albums in your hands before the holidays, I need your photo choices before the end of next week (10/24). Final drafts need to be approved by 11/7.
• We’ve got new holiday cards coming in, and I’ll be posting images of those next week! So start figuring out how many you want to order, as we’ll be taking these orders only through 11/7.
• Family portrait session slots are almost booked up for the rest of the year. If you’re interested in a holiday portrait for your family, contact me today to make an appointment.

Man, Jenn’s leg and garter flask holder is FAMOUS. Thanks, Never teh Bride!