been busy

It's been a long week. Last Saturday I photographed a wedding. It was a little bit different in that I didn't do the portraits. My photography was a present from the groom's parents even though the couple had already booked portraits with somebody else. (It's common here that wedding photos are portraits only, so the all day thing that I do is relatively new.) Anyway, the people were nice, the wedding was fun, and the food was good. I took over 900 pictures in 8 hours. This wedding was a little unusual in that the couple had so many friends. The bachelor party (which was presented in a powerpoint presentation) included over 20 guys, and the bachelorette party (which was presented verbally and with a photo album) had over 20 girls.

During the week I've been busy dealing with all those pictures. First I go through and sort out all the ones that are clearly duds or duplicates. Sometimes this requires rather careful examination of several nearly identical shots to find the best one or choosing the most telling pictures out of a series. Hopefully this process will reduce the number of pictures to half or even fewer. It has been tough to learn to be so brutal with my own pictures, but nobody wants to see more than 500 pictures of a wedding even if it's there own wedding, and I'd discovered that it's not an efficient use of my time to present too many options. Then I go through the keepers again and correct them using photoshop as necessary. This hopefully also results in more pictures being eliminated. Then I upload the photos to Flickr for the couple to see as proofs, and I put the pictures together in a book. At this point I'm about half way through the photoshopping part.

Also during this week the couple from my previous wedding finally got back to me with an extensive list of changes they wanted made to their photobook. This is the first time that's happened. In this case they did not want photos of each of the guests. Obviously people would be less interested in preserving the memory of a cousin's girlfriend-of-the-week, but this couple actually wants me to remove all picture of about a dozen people, and this means a lot of work for me reformatting the book.

And then I had another wedding to photograph on Saturday. This was 10 hours including portraits. They were really nice and the food was good, so I gave them an extra half hour so that they'd get dance pictures even though they were way behind schedule. This means I didn't get home until almost 2 AM. It was a really scary drive home because I'm so afraid I'll fall asleep. Luckily by multitasking (singing, digging for things in my purse, eating, drinking, etc) I was able to keep myself awake. Usually a cola right before I leave and the adrenaline from the event are sufficient to keep me awake, but this time I was struggling already 10 minutes into the hour + drive.

Highlights from this wedding were the appetizer and wedding cake. According to the menu, the appetizer was Avocado Cheescake which I thought sounded pretty gross. But I was hungry, so I dug in. It was fantastic! It had the texture of a light and fluffy cheesecake, but it contained salmon, shrimp, and dill. The only avocado I noticed was on top as decoration, but it could easily have been concealed in the mixture--not bad since I know they're good for you even if I'm not particularly fond of them. The crust was, well, imagine a graham cracker crust made with a flavorful dark rye bread. The main course was a rather disappointing mystery-meat and potatos. Then there was dessert, and a couple hours later, the cake. It looked like a normal wedding cake, but instead of the usual princess cake that they like here, it was a dense layer of to-die-for chocolate brownie type cake, with a light lemony mouse on top, all encrusted in a fondant that tasted like cream cheese frosting. Definitely one of the perks of being a wedding photographer! I made a conscious effort not to take redundant pictures during the party (something I think I do if I get bored and want to look busy). This resulted in a total of about 900 pictures from this wedding as well even though I also did portraits and was there longer.

So after getting home at 2 AM, the alarm clock went off at 3. It was my husband getting ready to leave for the airport for a week long business trip in California (silicon valley). I got up to see him off, then went back to bed and slept to 8 (late for me). Our daughter had spent the night at her grandmother's house, so today I went to pick her up and also celebrate the grandmother's birthday. It was a pleasant, laid back day, and the weather was fantastic. (It's actually been lovely since Thursday-- ~25C/mid 70's, clear and sunny.) I hope the weather keeps up for a while so we can enjoy some real summer.