Jenn and Jason were married this August at the St. Albert Parish and held their reception at the Edmonton Petroleum Club. The weather was great, the wedding party was a ton of fun, and the reception was fantastic!

Here are a few samples from their complete photo set:

Here are a few of our favourites from their engagement series:

Check out the cool photos we got of them hanging out, playing pool, and enjoying a movie in the home theatre!

Patricia and Terry were married last month at the beautiful Edmonton Country Club. We even had a chance to shoot some photos at the brand new Fort Edmonton Footbridge.

Here are a few “sneak peeks” from their complete photo set:

Katherine and Jay were married under the beautiful vista of the Rocky Mountains in Jasper, Alberta. As you can see from the “old-tyme wedding photo” below, we had a blast with their photos!

Here are a few sample photos from Katherine and Jay’s Fine Art photo set:

Lynn and Chris wanted their photos to have a definite urban feel to them which we were able to accomplish using some alleyways and architecture in downtown Edmonton. We had so much fun taking these photos and working with this couple. We’ve since photographed their wedding and will be posting images from their big day after we’ve completed processing them.

We hope you enjoy these photos from Lynn and Chris’ engagement session:

Robin and Gus were married in the Wedgwood Room at the Fairmont Hotel MacDonald in Edmonton. The couple chose to configure the round room with stand-up cocktail tables and served an amazing finger food buffet. As a special treat for their guests, Robin and Gus had prepared a very special first dance–the tango! AJ’s Group provided the evening’s entertainment.

Here are some photos from Robin and Gus’ amazing wedding:

A romantic but fun photo suggested by the bride.

A traditional bridal portrait.

Traditionally posed photos are beautiful and timeless. There are certainly opportunities during the wedding day to take traditional photos, with the most popular being during the “formals” session. We like to think of our formals sessions as “contemporary formals” as we shoot them on-location as opposed to in a studio. These sessions usually occur after the ceremony in a beautiful park or garden, or near great architecture. As well, if there’s time after the ceremony but before we leave the church, we sometimes bring the bride and groom and some family members back to the altar or aisle for a few additional formals there.

A "photojournalistic" image.

One of the most popular buzz-words in wedding photography today is “photojournalism” or “photojournalistic” photography. WikiPedia defines photojournalism as:

“…a particular form of journalism (the collecting, editing, and presenting of news material for publication or broadcast) that creates images in order to tell a news story.”

Wedding photographers who focus primarily on this style generally attempt to stay outside of the action of the wedding day and do not interact much with their subjects. The idea is to capture the story of the wedding day without actually affecting it. They tend to shoot their photos with long lenses and only very rarely direct the action to “make” a photographic opportunity happen. It’s a beautiful style that leads to great candids and captures moments that might otherwise have been missed.

Interacting with the wedding party in the limo.

Interactive wedding photographers like to get involved with the wedding party and guests, and don’t mind directing their subjects if it leads to creating a great picture. Sometimes the interactive wedding photographer even becomes like an honorary member of the wedding party, grabbing pictures in the limo and during the “goof-off” moments throughout the day. An interactive style also really lends itself to great shots during the reception, taken from the dance floor or even from behind the bar!

The groomsmen suggested a funky air guitar photo!

 

We love when our brides and grooms ask if they can make suggestions about what kinds of photos we’ll take or where they want to have them taken. Many of our favorite images have come from the wedding party’s suggestions for poses or locations. Of course, we know of many locations that we like to shoot at, and some that we don’t, but we’re always very open to the ideas our clients present. We know how important it is to get the shots you’ve envisioned for your wedding day and we make every effort to capture them.

When you pick your wedding photographer, make sure you ask what style they use and if they will be willing to vary their style if that’s what you prefer. Ask them if they like to have fun and be part of the action, or if they prefer to hang back and shoot from the outskirts. Be sure that they fit the style that you’re looking for.

We use a mix of these styles that we feel creates a well rounded wedding photo collection for our clients. Feel free to look through our sample galleries for photo and location ideas, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss the style of wedding photography you want us to use on your wedding day!

A fun engagement session!

Many wedding photographers offer something called an “engagement session” with their wedding photography packages.   We include engagement sessions in many of our own wedding photography collections.  But before we discuss why to have an engagement session, let’s look at what they are and where they came from.

Engagement photo sessions have been around for a long time.  Before home computers, the Internet, and Facebook, the intent of the engagement session was to create a photo that the bride-and-groom-to-be could post in the newspaper with the announcement of their engagement.  (This used to be common practice!)  Usually the session was quite formal and performed in a photography studio.  Although a number of photos were taken, the idea was to get one final retouched image that would be used in the announcement.  The rest were usually not purchased by the couple.

Today’s engagement session is very different.  Instead of announcing their engagement in the paper, today’s couples share information through social networking sites like Facebook.  And who ever posts only one image of anything?!  Today’s wedding photographer generally takes over 100 images in a typical engagement shoot.  At Devotion Photography, we tend to take upwards of 150 or more.  And no longer is the studio the place to be for the photo session.  “On-location” is the place to be now.  Outdoor venues with interesting architecture, beautiful parks, or grungy urban settings are great places to take your engagement photos.

The engagement session of today can also lend itself to being more like a lifestyle shoot as well.  If the couple is into motorcycles, we’ll get some shots with their bikes.  If their first date included a walk through a playground and a romantic moment on the swing set, we’ll photograph them on those swings!  Do they watch a lot of movies together?–we’ll take photos in the the theatre!  We love to find our couples’ shared hobbies and activities and show them off through the engagement photos.  You can get some ideas from our Engagements or More Engagements sample galleries.

Besides the great photographs that the wedding photographer is bound to get, the engagement session has a very practical purpose as well.  It gives both the photographer, and the bride and groom an opportunity to work together before the wedding day in a less hectic and stressful situation.  The added familiarity that is created during the engagement shoot helps everyone feel more relaxed and comfortable with each other on the wedding day, and builds trust between the photographer and the couple.  It also gives the couple an extra opportunity to not only discuss, but really show the photographer what types of photos they like to participate in.

Every photographer’s engagement session package is different, so be sure to find out what your photographer does and doesn’t include.  Ask how many finished photos you’ll get, how many negatives are shot, and if you get to keep them all.  Also ask if any special artistic or creative editing will be performed. Please feel free to contact us to discuss what we include in our engagement collections.

So go out and enjoy your engagement photo session!  You’ll have fun, get to know your photographer, and end up with some really great photos that you will definitely cherish forever!

What are Proofs?

I’ll start by saying that every photographer is different, and that every photographer has a different idea of what a photographic proof is.

Back in the “old days” when a photographer was finished shooting your wedding he or she would take the shot film to the photo lab and get a quick set of prints made. These prints would generally have very little editing done to them, if any. The lab would possibly adjust the exposure to ensure that the photo could be viewed, but for the most part they often looked like they had just come out of the camera…and they had!

The photographer would then go through these proof prints (usually 3×5’s or 4×6’s) and chuck out any of the pictures that had failed or looked like they could not be corrected in the lab. Hopefully there weren’t many to throw out. Remember, compared to the digital photography of today, film was (and is) incredibly expensive! Very, very, very expensive! A typical wedding photographer even ten years ago only took a few hundred pictures at most during the course of an entire wedding day.

You would then be presented the entire proof set in a slide-in album or proof box full of the loose prints. From these proofs you would pick which prints you wanted “enlarged” and place your order with the photographer. If you were ordering an album, you may have also used the proofs to help the photographer decide which photos to include in the album.

There were definitely some drawbacks to using proofs this way. For one, the proof set may be the only complete set of images that your photographer provided to you. That made these small, loose prints precious, and over time, handling them could cause them damage. They also faded and generally had to be kept hidden away. Also, because they generally had no “retouching” done to them, they didn’t necessarily look their best. And only so much editing could be done to film based photos anyway without an incredible amount of darkroom work on a per-image basis. And chances are, your photographer kept the negatives. So if you wanted extra prints, you had to get them from him or her.

With the digital photography explosion over the past few years, proofing has changed a lot. For one thing, your wedding photographer takes more pictures than the film based photographers of yesterday. A LOT more. Lots and lots and lots more! We generally take between 2000 and 3000 total images during a typical full-day wedding!

Because we take so many pictures, we take it upon ourselves to choose the “proof set” of images that truly represents your wedding day story. For our weddings we choose between 300 and 400 photos depending on the collection. Also, photos can always be added to or removed from the proof set fairly easily because prints aren’t made of every proof anymore, but instead are kept on hard drives and optical discs.

These images are all inspected and corrected, not only for exposure, but also for white balance. Digital photography allows us to easily adjust how bright or how dark a photo is and correct any strange color casts that can come from mixed lighting or improper camera settings for the given situation. The photos can then all be given a digital “bump” to make them “pop” a little more. Some digital sharpening is often performed to make the images a little clearer if they need it, and if the image is too grainy (or “noisy” as it’s called in the digital world) noise removal can be performed. Most of these corrections can be performed with a few simple clicks and be applied to all the images in the proof set very quickly.

We take our proof sets one step further. In many of our collections we include special enhancements to the images…sometimes giving them black and white, or specialty treatments, adding vignettes, skin softening, or necessary retouching.

Now what you have is a set of digital images that are potentially much clearer, crisper, more colorful, maybe more visually interesting, and definitely less fragile. Your photographer also has the option to make multiple copies of the digital files, protecting your investment and his or her work. For example, we keep copies on at least five different hard drives at two locations and we store another set in a safety deposit box. We also upload the images to an online proofing system which I’ll explain next.

Wedding photographers have access to online services which provide proofing and print sales all in one place. We affectionately call our service “your online gallery and web store”. By uploading your final photo set to the proofing service, we can offer you and your guests password protected online access to your entire proof set for viewing, commenting, and print or product ordering.

At Devotion Photography, when you order a print or print product from your online store, we’re notified of which images you’ve chosen and we apply a whole extra level of digital editing and retouching to the image before it’s printed and shipped to you. Unless you buy your prints from your online store you won’t receive this extra retouching that goes in to every print we sell! And many proofing services, ours included, offer hundreds of products that you can choose from and customize without having to go back to the photographer.

Our proofing service’s partner labs all offer professional grade printing not available to the average consumer. With choices of paper, professional color management, and print guarantees you definitely want to buy your prints through your photographer’s online store. These prints and products are much higher quality than what can be expected from a local one-hour photo or drugstore photo lab. Your printed images deserve the best, and so we include a print or product credit for use in your online store with every collection we offer.

The last thing I want to mention is the digital negatives. Once again, every photographer is different, but we feel that you should get all the images that were taken on your wedding day. That’s why we include a disc with a complete set of unedited, full-size, high-resolution negatives of everything we shoot. Your memories are precious to you, and your photographs are a record of that memory. So we want to ensure that you have access to those memories forever. However, as I mentioned earlier, these are completely unedited copies of the photos. Although you have the freedom to print these images at any lab of your choice, we cannot guarantee the quality of the print whatsoever. Remember, without the preparation that goes into your proof set these images are quite flat, with no pop and no corrections of any kind.

For more information or to arrange a consultation, please feel free to contact us. We look forward to meeting you!