Wedding Photography Rocks!

For the 4th of July, I stayed behind my computer all day from morning until 1am. You could say I began having a mini breakdown... I miss my husband and my 2 boys. Any one may wonder "Why In the World is Wedding Photography so expensive?!". First of all, you can find photographers out there for $500-$2,000 but things are(n't) happening as they may be happening in my process. Wedding Photography is WAY more than showing up for your wedding & taking a bunch of pictures. So to give you just a mild glimpse into what goes into ONE wedding for a photographer, I am going to quote my friend Anne Ruthman and my process is almost identical to hers here (other than the Pictage part):

" 1. Wedding Day - capture images in RAW format, with professional Canon cameras, lenses, and flashes and with a really good knowledge of light and composition
2. Backup - Download all images to backup hard drive and to main hard drive
3. Favorites - Select and give extra special developing to my absolute favorite images, turning them into the works of art that I originally felt and perceived when I first captured them, start to feel like maybe I don't suck too badly
4. Slideshow & Blog - Export images in different sizes, select music for slideshow, stitch music together if needed, add watermark and extra sharpiness to blog images, upload blog images to flickr, upload slideshow images to personal sever, write blog post
5. Edit - realize that even with great cameras, lenses, and lighting, pictures only look "OK" and that some are just downright awful and should never be seen in public. Delete the downright awful pictures and keep everything that could be mildly career destroying, but might be interesting for a grandkid to find in 80 years.
6. Develop - Take the mildly career destroying images and clean them up with color and exposure corrections, maybe a slight crop or straightening in the event that I happened to be walking at a tilt on the wedding day (note: images cannot be printed from undeveloped RAW files, these are "digital negatives")
7. Upload & Archive - When the stars have aligned, I can upload all of the images from the wedding in 1-2 days. Usually the stars are scattered all over the place and it either takes forever to upload, with constant babysitting, or I just mail off the final images. All of the final images are archived on servers in California, and then finally placed on the online proofing website- Pictage. Pictage then has to verify all of the files to make sure none of them are corrupted before releasing them to you. If there are any corrupt files, I have to go back and fix them.
8. Print & Burn CD/DVD - Double check to make sure DVD image numbers match Pictage image numbers in order to prevent future headaches and ordering confusion, burn a copy to send and a copy to keep, print with personalized image
9. Album Design - Assemble favorite images into an initial draft design for an album using geometric equations of golden mean mathematics (j/k!!)
10. Album Customization - Get feedback from client about album design preferences and create changes
11. Album Printing & Binding - Album is hand-printed and hand-bound in the united states, sent to me for final approval, and then sent to client for happy enjoyment!
12. NEXT!"

I have been doing all of this all by myself... until now. Steps 1-12 are hours and hours and hours of time... I have been working at times up to 80 hours a week. My friends - wait.. what friends?? Are they still waiting around for me?? My family, my children, all of my relationships that are not business related have been waiting on the sidelines.

So, changes are in motion and I almost glad my 4th of July was miserable because I will NEVER have another 4th of July like it. I love photographing weddings more than you can possibly imagine, and now things are changing so I can continue loving it rather than dreading the post production. HURRAYYY!!! Good.. NO - GREAT things are on the horizon!!