That's A Wrap!
My 2021 Weddings are complete!
Hurrah!
I can’t even begin to describe how amazing it feels to have finally photographed the last wedding of the season. I have spent so long looking forward to this last wedding, not because I’m fed up with weddings (quite the contrary) but because this year has been tough! This entire season has been hard work. I have been bouncing from one wedding to the next with hardly enough time to recharge my camera batteries let alone recharge my own physical and mental batteries.
So once that final wedding was over, once the images had been downloaded and backed up, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and proudly congratulated myself for getting through the most hectic season ever! I had survived and, more than that, I felt as though I had contributed something special to each and every celebration along the way.
It was nice to experience a small moment of euphoria but it was an all too brief hiatus from reality. It wasn't long before I began to realise that this wasn't the end of the marathon. Yes, I had done a lot of the hard work but there was still a huge amount of work to go! In between shooting weddings I had been trying to keep up with editing weddings from earlier in the season. But with only so many hours in the day (and, lets face it, recuperation time required to ensure that I didn't have a breakdown mid-season), I was still facing an uphill climb.
At the time of shooting that final wedding there were still 15 weddings in my editing queue. This required more than a final sprint to the finish. Every wedding needed to be gone over with a fine tooth comb. Thousands of images needed to be looked over to find the best selection and that was before the editing could start - straightening, cropping, tweaking colours, adjusting exposure etc...
It was overwhelming.
I just didn’t really know where to start! Part of me wanted to stick my head in the sand, take a couple of well-earned weeks off but, of course, all of the images would still be waiting when I got back. I was reminded of the phrase - “the best way out is always through” - there was no other way to tackle this HUGE task than to just make a start. There was no point looking for shortcuts - the chances were that I would make extra work for myself in the long run. The only way was through, right through the middle. I needed to take each wedding in turn, fully immerse myself in the edit and get them finalised for my clients.
Thankfully, this year I have managed to make tweaks to my workflow to speed things up a little. I even have someone lending me a hand. But that doesn't get around the sheer volume of the images that need attention.
Perhaps one of my downfalls is that I’m a perfectionist! I struggle with saying “that will do”. I want to give my clients as many images as possible all edited to the same standard. I aim to deliver around 400 images from a full day wedding but if I end up with more than 500 (or sometimes closer to 600) I don't feel right trying to cull any more images from the selection. The images mean so much more to my clients than they will ever do to me - it's their friends, their family, their special moments that will provide precious memories for years to come . Of course, additional images leads to additional editing and I have to admit that I underestimated quite how much time, care and attention that I would end up giving to each edit this season.
So whats my point?
I suppose I wanted to write this blog post to get these thoughts out of my head and out into the world in some way. I wanted to advocate for all of those wedding business out there who are still busy beavering away - many are still involved in weddings until the end of the year whereas many others will be in a similar position to me. I wanted to cheer HURRAH for what we have achieved (and are continuing to achieve) this year and reassure them (and myself) that the end is in sight!
For any recently married couples out there who might be reading this, I also wanted to write this to say THANK YOU! Thank you for keeping us so busy but also thank you for being so patient. Every wedding supplier I know cares so much about what we do. We wish there was a shortcut, a magic wand that we could wave to conjure up more hours in the day but there just isn't! This has been a year like no other, in more ways than one, and even though we are thoroughly exhausted, we've loved every minute!
And on that note, I must get back to the edits. Only 13 to go...!