Let’s face it, there is absolutely no substitute for a well done photo
Let’s face it, there is absolutely no substitute for a well done photo. The photo has perfect focus, no noise, interesting composition, and an engaging subject. It’s perfect.
Well, almost. If it weren’t for that bug that just flew past the bride’s cheek. Or that dog in the park way behind the couple that is lifting it’s leg on a tree. And so on…
The point we are trying to emphasize is how time consuming it is and the importance of a photographer who knows what they are doing.
Sometimes The Best Pictures are also happy accidents
What photo editing software does extremely well is to make a good image better. A good local eugene wedding photographer that knows what they are doing will only take photos in the raw so even the smallest details are sharp, then they can crop, enlarge, and manipulate even tiny areas of a larger picture without losing sharpness.
If that picture of Uncle Bill toasting you in the foreground also has a your Great Grandma Millie smiling sweetly off to his side, we can crop down to the image of Great Grandma, color balance, and it will look like she’s the focus. Once it’s enlarged back up to a printable size, no one will ever know she was in the background of a candid shot with your uncle.
One of the things I like to do when I’m the second photographer
One of the things I like to do when I’m the second photographer on a shoot is to hover around like a satellite snapping pictures of anything and everything. As the photographer, I only usually know the couple, not any of their friends and relatives. I never know when something small could be incredibly significant and meaningful.
As an artist from the days before digital photography
As an artist from the days before digital photography, I was often hired to paint or draw from photos. Almost always, I was instructed to use just a tiny portion of the photo as the focal point of my painting. It was the last photo of their Mom before she died off to the side of a family barbeque shot. I’ve been asked to shift the image to remove the ex-boyfriend and draw just her in front of the rose bush. I’ve even been asked to create a formal portrait from the head shot on an old driver’s license.
With digital photography, I can manipulate tiny portions of a photo to bring out the part of it that is most important to the happy couple.