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So I know a lot of you are waiting on my recaps (I am, too!). I just got my CD of photos from the wedding but there are only 460 of them. And to be honest, not all of them are good. I was wondering what is expected from a photographer and second shooter who worked for 10 hours on the wedding day?
I get not wanting to include the blurry/funny face-type photos to protect reputation, but 460 photos total?!? I take about 200 photos everytime I go out with my girls for crying out loud!
Also, did you get ALL of the images taken that day? Did your photog allow you to choose photos from the entire lot?
I feel like my photog picked HER favorites, edited them, then sent those back with no regard to what I might have wanted.
I think this varies by photog, but I agree that that sounds like not many, in this digital age. We got about 1100 shots (which excluded the eyes closed, etc ones - that or there weren't any 
).
I had 2 shooters for 5 hours... 610 photos. These are all the "good" ones.. i.e. peoples eyes are closed or they weren't ready for the shot. From the 610, he's letting us pick the ones we wanted to do extra editing on.. then we'll choose shots for albums.
Our fabulous photographer gave us one disc with 180 of her favorites (which we used mostly to pick our album photos out of) and then we had rights to all photos, so she gave us several discs with approximately 1800 photos on there. She must have taken out all the eyes closed/bad face pictures because of the 1800 there really isn't a bad one in the bunch. I know that she shot about 2,000 that day (with the second shooter).
Of course I believe that our photographer is physically incapable of taking a bad photo, so maybe she had a higher proportion of amazing pictures!
Okay, that's what I thought. I'm just very upset right now about paying so much for a mediocre photographer. 
Maybe you can ask her if there are other images she didn't send your way. Hopefully, that's the case!
Your question finally motivated me to visit my photographers site and count how many photo's he took, 687 exactly. We had a two person team. They shot the ceremony (absolutely no before/getting ready shots at my request), portraits afterwards and the first four hours of the reception, approximately 7 hours total.
:( If I get any less than 1000 I'm going to be REALLY sad. I'm pretty specific on what I like and while I LOVE LOVE LOVE our photographer and trust them completely, I'm afraid that their favorites won't be mine!
2200. It was one of the largest galleries our photographer had ever put up.
They were with us for nearly twelve hours and we took a ton of pictures before the ceremony. We had a first look, then regular portraits of us, and our bridal party pictures. We had a third shooter for the ceremony and reception.
I doubt that your photographer is purposely keeping any great pictures from you. I'm sorry that you're not happy with the number you received :(
I'm not about quantity of photos per se, I'd much rather have great quality (which most of her photos are), but I'm just disappointed that she obviously picked her favorites and there are some very basic shots missing (e.g. a wide shot of our ceremony setup from behind the chairs). I have sent a message asking about additional images and never got a response:
"I did get a quick chance to look at them (been busy with the job search!). They're awesome! But these are just the edited ones right? I'll get more images on the cd that aren't edited, correct?"
I got the exact same 460 photos that she put up in her proofing gallery online on my CD. As far as knowing she probably picked HER faves, I know this because after my boudoir shoot she sent me a list of the photos SHE would pick for the book I was gifting to my hubby and I would not have chosen many of the ones she picked out.
I'm with KM-I hope I get at least 1000!!! I'd be so sad otherwise! I'm sorry there seem to be some missing!
@Labrador - SAME HERE. She seriously edited about 20 of them, the rest (about 400 or so) were so amateur hour and blurry with RED EYE, for gods sake.... I feel sick everytime i look at them. >:(
this sucks, i definitely need to double check with my photog to make sure i get all images, but it's in her contract that i do... but this is spooky scary crazy :(
I'm so sorry you're disappointed Mrs. Lab :( I know it probably isn't much consolation, but I saw your photog's blog post of your wedding, and the pictures she posted are gorgeous. I agree that you have every right to be upset - I had 2 photographers for 7 hours and received over 1000 pictures (all of which are good, ie no closed eyes, blurry, etc). If she doesn't respond to your email, I think you should try asking her about it again. ((hugs))
As a photographer, we give all images no matter how many with basic editing i.e. color correction and let the bride choose around 400 of them for image enhancement. So in total you should get about 800 to a 1000.
@owlbride: Yeah, I'm definitely happy with most of them in terms of quality. But I feel like there should be more basic establishing shots and other pretty "duh" moments to capture (bouquet toss anyone?). Especially when there are 2 people shooting. And since I bought the rights to ALL the photos, I should get them ALL, regardless of editing. Like what lifeinshutterclicks said.
No bouquet toss?! Definitely talk to her! I can't imagine that at least one of the two didn't get a shot of that.
She did shoot the bouquet toss but there's only 1 shot and it's not very representative of it.
And the kicker is that I've already voiced all my concerns to her. But she says she's "fulfilled her contractual duties". I keep trying to find reasons for me to be unjustified in my feelings on her work for that day, but it's responses like this that make me feel confident that I really did have a poor experience with her. And the sad part is that I considered her a friend before the wedding and now I feel very bitter towards her.
This is so wrong. Tell her to give you all the images if they are unedited or raw. You dont get 460 images with two photographers. Etiher she screwed up most images i.e. they are out of focus or the second photographer did.
Have you made the full payment?
*Tear* for you! I'm not sure what your photography budget is.... and maybe this is just because I've been watching bridezillas all day....but if we don't get ATLEAST 1000 with two shooters for nine hours and the price we are paying... I will totally FLIP OUT! My FI is super into photography (it's like his "dress" of the wedding) so we went with one of the more expensive packages. I'm soooo sorry that you have to go through this. Thank you for bringing it up so that the rest of the bees can save some MAJOR future vendor conflicts. I would definitely read through my entire contract and as for ALL shots...
Did we have the same photographer? We also had two shooters and there is not one single pic of my MOH walking down the aisle (only had one attendant), only one of ME walking down the very looong aisle, no pic of my hubs face when he saw me walking down the aisle, no pic of our introduction, etc. It SUCKED. i swear, if our wedding wasn't on the same day, I'd think we had the same photographer.
Yeah i only got about 500 pictures all together. and they are nice but I had two photographers for five hours and i was a little dissapointed, the pictures i got were all good but i felt the same way, like i should see the unedited ones and be able to decide
I'm sorry you're having a hard time with your photog. We agreed in our contract to very minimal editing on the part of our photographer, and access to all our digital negatives. She did an excellent job on our engagement photos, so I trust her to only remove the ones that are really unusuable. We got close to 500 pictures from our e-shoot. Did you ever get the rest of the photos from your boudoir shoot?
Sorry again, Lab. I can understand the sadness.
We had 2 shooters for 8 hours, and got about 800 shots-- but there's not a closed eye or weird face in the bunch, so I know they were picked from a much larger group. I'm sorry you're having such a rough time with yours! :(
We had two shooters for 8 hours. He posted an online gallery of about 610 photos which were all of his favorites (and were edited).
Our photographer also sent us ALL the untouched digital negatives and there were about 8,000 (yes, eight THOUSAND) photos. Many of these 8,000 were the same shot or had eyes closed or were taken just to test the lighting, but it was amazing that they took this many shots!
I really appreciated that he sent us the untouched photos because some of my favorite shots were not included in the 600 he put on his online gallery. Although all the shots he chose were very nice and great shots, some of the ones he didn't include captured special moments (that perhaps only my husband and I picked up on because we know the history of our guests, etc...).
Would you be able to get your photographer to send you the untouched negatives so you could pick out additional ones that she didn't include?
I dont normally post here, since I am rarely on, but I am a photographer and as a photographer, I can say that it really depends on how many photos they take and how many are good. Usually in an 8 hour day, I take 1500 or so photos and give my clients anywhere from 500-850 depending on how much activity was going on.
You have to remember that anything more than 900 photos is A LOT of photos and to be honest, as a bride who was married in 2006 myself...I really only look at the ones that went into an album because those were the best ones and the ones that reflected the day the most. The others are cool to have, but obviously aren't as relevant if I don't look at them as often.
You hired your photographer because you trusted them...and I can assure you, they pick they ones they feel are the best, and the ones that tell your day the best. :) Hope that helps a bit! :)
I'm starting to realize that my photog team was not as stellar as I had first thought. We only got 444 shots. They missed A LOT of the key shots, like me walking down the aisle, DH's face as I walked down the aisle, etc. It sucks that we had to pay them in full before the wedding, so it's not like I could take it back. And you don't get the photos for like 8 weeks anyway. I wish I would have gone with a less expensive photog, maybe even a student. It just seems like a professional photog would know what the KEY shots are!
I'm sorry this happened to you. :(
The approximate number of photos you will receive should be stated in the wedding contract. My normal wedding, 1 photographer, 8 hours, has between 500 and 650 edited photos. There could be more if there is a lot going on and people are active. I personally never give out raw files. True raw files are so huge most people would not be able to open and process them anyway.
Mrs. Lab, while I do feel bad that you were unhappy with your photographer that day, as a photographer myself, I always feel like I'm doing my clients a favor by pairing down the number of photos for them.
For my own wedding, I paid 5k for an amazing photographer. Every shot he took and gave me was stunning. Were they "his" favorites, SURE, but did I trust him enough to know that what he gave me were the best of what he had? YES. I had him for about 7 hours and received MAYBE 300 photos. I was very happy with that and enjoyed not having the stress of sifting through 2,000 photos myself. I have to say I still kind of don't understand people wanting to do this (no offense). Anyway, I trusted his judgement and so far all of my clients have trusted mine.
That being said, I don't know about your photog, but I try to give as many photos as possible. I delete anything blurry/unusable. I omit clearly duplicate images --sometimes there are 5 at a time that are virtually EXACTLY the same. If an expression is different, I include the photo, when several are very similar, I include the best one. After all that, you'd be surprised how much fewer we give than we take.
@labrador: Our photographer put like 100 photos online, then gave us a disk of about 1,000 photos. We were mostly happy with what was there, but we were unhappy because it was then we realized they didn't take some photos that we specifically asked for and photos we remembered taking. When we e-mailed to ask about that, we were told there was another 800 or so they were pretty much duplicates of everything else so he just "trashed them." So we went back and forth and they finally agreed to make us another disc with those images. Wouldn't you know, we thought some of those "trashed" pictures were better than some of the ones they preferred! Not to mention, there were some pictures they trashed that weren't on the first disc they gave us. E.g. The two of us with the ring bearer and flowergirl -- "Oh all the pictures were overexposed so we trashed them all." UH EXCUSE ME!? We were like, maybe you should have considered we would at least want to see them! Or at least give us the chance to see if someone more capable than you could somehow save a picture of us with them since it was the only one from the day! Grrr...sorry for the rant, but yeah, just wanted to let you know you aren't alone. And on top of that, ask your photographer, maybe she also "trashed" some pictures that she thought weren't great, just tell her you would like a copy of them anyway.
@MightySapphire: The same thing happened to me! Not one.single.picture of my husband watching me watch down the aisle. I was like WTF!? Did someone take a nap while I made that long walk? And isn't that one of the most important photos of the day?!
There is only one thing at this point I want to add that hasn't been said; and that pertains to hiring "2 photographers."
I don't care if it's a husband/wife team; a solo dude/gal and her "2nd shooter."
A 2nd shooter is NOT a 2nd professional. If they were, they would have their own business and not be working a 10 hr day for measly pay. We do not hire "seasoned" professional photographers to shoot with us. They are newbies, people who want to get their feet wet, and people who want to learn how to shoot weddings without mistakes looming over their head. You should not count on the 2nd shooter providing more than 10% of your images, and while there are of course instances where this is not the case, the overwhelming majority of the time the pro will only pull maybe 1 shot per sequence of events to complete the "story."
I think it's rather sad how so many people are so focused on there being 2 shooters they don't realize it's not 2 pro's they are hiring. When you book your photog make sure to ask things like how many images they usually turn over. If you are booking a 2nd shooter, ask how long they've been working, a sample of their work, and ask how many of the 2nd's shots you usually receive.
2 is not necessarily better than one, regardless of what "current news" is telling you.
I'm truly sorry you aren't happy. Have you reviewed your contract? Is it more so that there isn't "enough" or is it the technical quality of the images does not represent her portfolio of work at the time of contract/booking? Because, legally, that what it will come down too. What's in writing, and what expectation was there at the time of signature.
Well most second photographers are those who knows their work and are just building their portfolio thats how i started off. Again, see in your contract and your package details did it mention all digital negatives.
Review your photography contract! If you don't know what its saying, you should post it on here & I'll try to help ya out. Or you can PM me, but if its on here other photographers can help ya if they can. That's only if there's a lot of photos missing.
Most photographers will give you as many photos as they can. I'm a wedding photographer & just so you know, most weddings average between 400 to 1000 photos, most in the 600 range. It does take a LOT of time to edit photos. Let's say they took 15 minutes to edit each of your photos, that's 460x15 = 6900 minutes/60 min in an hour = 115 hours just in editing. I hope my math is right? It does take a lot of work editing photos & I'm sure your photographer did their best. But you never know, maybe they have more they could give you? You can ask for any unedited photos if they have them?
We got just under 1,000 images on our DVD. There were maybe 10 images, if that, where they weren't good (i.e. someone's eyes closed, unflattering angle, etc.). But our photog did say that she didn't include about 100-150 images that were REALLY bad and couldn't be cropped/adjusted to make it any better.
Labrador - we have 2 shooters, 8 hours of primary shooter, 5 hours of second shooter, we have been told to expect 1000-1500 images to pick from, we will get all of those in lower resolution (printable to 4x6). From those will will pink 250 to be fully retouched, and edited, all of which will be provided with full colour, black and white, and mocha treatments (so 750 including the 3 treatments)
@ KLP2010 - I think your post made a HUGE assumption that isn't necessarily factual. I disagree with your statement that the second shooter is a not a professional, or is a newbie - our photographer contracts out to another pro photographer for the second shooter. We were given the options of who was available, was able to review their portfolio's and visit their own websites to choose our second shooter. She normally would have just chosen for us, but my fiance is a semi-pro photographer as well, so she let us pick our second. Our second shooter has her own photography business and her packages are actually higher priced than our primary photographer. So we are getting her work at a lower price. It totally depends on what relationships photographers build in your community. Here many of the pro photog's will second shoot for each other.
We had two pro photographers for the ceremony and one pro photographer for the remaining time for a total of 6 hours and we got 930+ photos from the photographer. She gave us the rights to the photos, as well as, 3 DVDs with all the photos they took. I don't believe any were left out. I was lucky though as my boss who takes professional pictures took a lot of pictures as well so I have pictures from 3 different point of views.
From speaking with my photographer, she had said the total number depends on how many they can take but she guaranteed more than 400 which I was OK with because I spoke with another photographer before and he had stated that he takes about 250 photos. Yikes! Now that was too little for the long period of time I slated.
I got 560 photos. But that's what I expected. He told us when we booked him that we'd get only 450 max. He liked us so he gave us extra. Not all of them are good, so many of them are of details. I wish there had been more of people. And some of them are of people I didn't care that much about instead of photos of close family members. But overall, the photos looked great.
My photog also picked his favorites. But I kind of like that. I had a friend who got married and her photog gave her every single shot of the day. She has over 5000 photos. I have asked her many times if I could get copies of some of those (since I was a BM in her wedding) but every time she sorts through them on her computer the pc crashes. It's just too many photos. So it's kind of nice to have a photog who sorts through them for you and picks the best.
I was going to email my photog too and let him know if I could get certain versions of the photos he sent me. Like some photos he sent me in B&W only and I would really like the original color photos. He said he would be willing to do this. I still have a $200 credit with him, so before I buy my $1000 photo album from him I want him to send me the other versions of the photos I want. I'm using the fact that I'm going to buy an expensive album as leverage to get the other versions of my photos I guess.
Maybe you could do something similar? Tell your photog you want to buy a ton of prints or an album from her but you wanted some more photos of this certain part of the day...
@ MightySapphire - Whoa!! They didn't get you walking down the aisle? I'd be really pissed about that too. It's kind of a "gimme" that it's one shot that has to be taken.
While I do agree with KLP to a point - I will say that I DID hire 2 professionals. They are a husband wife team who met at a convention & already had their own careers before they joined forces. If I don't get close to 1000 pics (which includes the "bad" ones) - I really will be upset. I can understand having only a few touched up but I agree that those should be chosen by the bride & groom, not the photographer. Yes, you hired them because you trust their judgment and expertise - but regardless of their opinions you should be able to chose which pictures end up being the "keepers" and the ones that are most special to you.
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