My Wedding Workflow

Wedding workflow is something that I seem to be asked about a lot, and it makes total sense! It is something that has taken me a few years to hone in on and I am thankful for all of the creatives that have inspired me and shared their processes and tricks with me! So, here I am to hopefully help out another creative the way I was helped in the beginning. Now, by no means is my way the absolute way, but it has worked for me and I truly believe that even if this only helps one other photographer, it is worth sharing!

First let me explain how I love to backup up memory cards on a wedding day. I use two 5D Mark III body cameras (yes I am going to upgrade to the Mark IV very soon) throughout a wedding day and in each camera I add both a 32gb SD card AND a 32gb CF card. I have every image copy to both cards so that I already have each raw file backed up on two different cards. As a photographer, we have all experienced the the horrors of a corrupt memory card, and so this system helps me with peace of mind throughout the wedding day that if one card corrupts or is damaged, there is another one that still has every image before I have even backed it up on my hard drive. The only downside to this that most people would think would be that SD cards are a little slower than CF cards. However, I have never had any issues with this keeping me from capturing the best images on a wedding day.

1. I always begin by uploading each memory card using a card reader (Transcend USB 3.0). I upload every RAW file to two different external hard drives. I usually use the 2 TB Seagate Slim external hard drive. Recently I have found a 4TB External that I love, but it is not wireless and is pretty big to travel with, so this is what I use as a backup.

2. After downloading all of the images, I cull them. The process of choosing the best of the images I took from the day and narrowing down 3,000-4,000 images to the best is one that used to take me forever! However, ever since I discovered PHOTO MECHANIC, my life has truly changed! Photo mechanic does not take any time to render each photo, whereas LR takes a while for every photo to show up clear. If you are a photographer that does not use photo mechanic, I highly recommend downloading it because it will change you workflow completely!

3. As I cull my images, I cull for my favorites or what would be blog post images or Instagram posts in one color and the rest in another. Sometimes, if culling begins to take a toll on me (which we all know that has happened), I cull from the reception to the getting ready and details! This just helps get through the images that aren’t as creative first and then I get to end on some of my most favorite images.

4. I normally import the favorites and the blog/social media images first into LR to edit for the sneak peeks for that wedding. Then I like to import the rest of the gallery to edit. I edit all of these images in LR ( I use Lightroom Classic CC). Once these photos are edited, I export them as a catalog with the edited favorites and the unedited images to my editor. I have outsourced my editing for a year and a half now and it has given me back so much of my life! When you are editing 30 weddings + endless portrait sessions, it is worth it to outsource some help.

5. Once I received the edited images back and I have imported them all, I then upload them to Pixieset. (This is a direct upload to the client gallery on Pixieset and it is so easy!). Once these are sorted into different sub categories (Details, Getting ready, Ceremony, Portraits, Reception, Vendor Gallery), the gallery is then ready to be sent off to the client.

6. Export the edited images for the blog post and voila – done!