The Client Field Guide: All you need to know about your wedding photos
We realize that the whole photography process can be a little mysterious, so we thought we’d put together a field guide for new and potential clients describing exactly what it is we do and what it is you get. Excited yet?
This guide will be covering:
- Your Booking Process
- Your Engagement Shoot
- You Wedding Day
- Your Photos
- Your Digital Negatives
- Your Wedding Book
Your Booking Process
You’ve set a date, reserved a location, and naturally, the next thing you want to do is find an awesome wedding photographer 
. So, you stumble across our site! You get to know us a little bit, and contact us to get our prices and see if we’re available.
We’re available (hopefully!) and now, we can put a quote and contract together for you to look at online. Along with your electronic signatures and quote approval, you pay a retainer payment equal to half of the total quoted. After receipt of your check or online payment and a signed contract from us, you are officially booked!
Screenshots of your client login:
Your Engagement Shoot
Option #1 – Our place: You guys come up to Santa Barbara and be our guests. If we haven’t met already, we’ll spend a little extra time hanging out – maybe have a few drinks and have a bit to eat. Then, we head out for a photo shoot (described below). If you’re up for it afterward, it’s dinner time!
Option #2 – Your place: One of us (probably Austin) will drive up your way and go on a photo shoot from there. You guys would be the navigators, but together we could find some epic photo spots and a good place to eat afterward .
The Photo Shoot:
You’re going to have an awesome time away from all the wedding planning, where you can be yourselves, have fun, and really enjoy one another. The whole purpose of this shoot is to allow you two to really see each other – which is usually a rare thing when a camera is around. When this happens, the best photos start happening.
This is a chance to experience who you are right now as a couple, and together create some images that bring you back to that experience every time you look at them.
Your engagement photos will be online to view and share with friends within about four weeks. From there, you can download your digital negatives and/or order prints.
Your Wedding Day
Before the Ceremony
We usually arrive while the bride is getting her hair done. Dara stays with her and I go find the boys. From there, we document the day, Austin & Dara style. If you really love us, you’ll let us set you up with a private meeting before the ceremony (aka a First Look shoot). This allows for more pictures and less stress later on when all of your guests are waiting to go eat! But of course, if you’d like to go the traditional route, we can always do that too .
During the Ceremony:
Dara and I go into stealth mode as we shoot during the ceremony – we’re like ninjas. We especially love to take pictures of your friends and family in the crowd during your vows so that you can see their laughs and tears! Afterward, stealth mode is turned off as we organize all of the family shots that your moms want now, and you’ll appreciate later. The wedding party photos follow those, which we have a lot of fun with. At this point, if we haven’t done the pre-ceremony meet and greet, we like to spend at least 30 minutes with you as a couple, and get you back for a timely grand entrance.
At the Wedding Reception:
During the reception, if your package includes a Day of Wedding Slideshow, one of us will work on that, while the other covers toasts and any other moments that happen up until the dancing begins. Near the end of the night, we bust out our 23″ screen to display the best 50 or so images from your day, and start dancing get back to work!
See what your Day-of-Wedding Slideshow might look like.
Your Photos
Online Proofing and Ordering:
Within a few days of your wedding, your slideshow will be online for all your friends and family to see, and those photos will be print-ready, meaning they will be ready to order immediately! Within about 8 weeks, you will get an email with a link to the remainder of your photos (just as you received your engagement photos) – all organized into categories and ready to print, share, order, and download. Boom!
Want a step-by-step guide on how to order your photos? Here you go.
Your Online Gallery will look something like this:
more screen shots here.
Photo Editing:
On average, we shoot about 3000 photos at a wedding. From there, we narrow it down to the best 600-700 photos and begin working on them. After we’ve culled them, we organize them, make sure they are all in order, and then hand them over to our photo editor who batch edits them all. When we get them back, we spend about 12-20 hours touching them up further. We then begin uploading them which can take as long as 5 days. Next, we put your images in the queue to be sent by mail.
Your Digital Negatives
Digital Negatives are photos in .jpg format that have been color corrected and touched up. They are sold to you along with the rights to make as many prints as you would like from them for personal use, but the official copyright stays with us.
There are three options when it comes to your digital negatives:
- Download them from your Online Gallery
- Get them on a thumb drive
- Download them AND get them on a thumb drive
Okay, so that’s technically only two options 
. The cool thing is that you can download them as soon as they are up. The drives takes an additional 4 weeks to get in your hands.
A few quick points:
- The photos in your wedding book and those posted on our blog are given extra attention, so they may look slightly different than the digital negatives given to you.
- Friends and family may purchase individual photos digitally on your print website, or they may buy a disc through us directly. In your contract, you have agreed not to copy or distribute these files, and we appreciate that.
- Digital files sold in physical form are subject to sales tax, but digital downloads are not. More info: Wedding Photography and California Sales Tax
Your Wedding Book
Your wedding book will be designed by us, and then printed and bound by either Kiss Wedding Books or Renaissance Albums – both awesome book companies. Your Wedding Books will be made of the finest materials and given extra love to last generations.
Here’s a video of one of our recent wedding books:
Love + Design:
Since Austin’s first love was graphic design, this part of what we do is held sacred. Austin spends about 30 hours on each book, so you can imagine the love that’s put in to them.
Our design style is all about telling the story and knocking your socks off with HUGE and BRILLIANT images. Our average spread (2 pages) has 3 images in it, so in a normal sized book you can expect no more than about 60 images.
To be super honest:
Despite what package you have gone with, you will want to upgrade your wedding book. I’m telling you that right now, because we see it every time! You are going to LOVE your images so much, that even with the extra few spreads we throw in, you will want more of them- and maybe even a larger book, or extra copies. And of course, we’ll be more than happy to do this for you!
Delivery:
From the time we start designing to the delivery of your book, you’re looking at about a 12 week turn around time.
THE END.
Did you seriously read all of that? Woah, you’re awesome. If we forgot something, make sure to let us know so we can add it on!
Things to do next:
Get more answers on the Questions + Answers page.
Tell us who you are! Contact Us and tell us about YOU and YOUR wedding!
Want more pictures? View some of our Wedding Slideshows.
