Booking season is upon us! Newly engaged couples everywhere are looking for fab wedding vendors, planning out wedding day logistics, and trying to communicate those plans with friends & family! A wedding website is an easy way to share information with guests, as well as let them to know who you are as a couple and share your photos! That is why wedding websites have become all the rage among modern brides!So I am super thrilled to announce a new perk to being an Ashleigh Taylor bride in 2011. We now offer a FREE wedding website to all new clients who book a wedding collection!The website will showcase your engagement photos, and your wedding photos too once the big day comes! It will also have a place to share important wedding info like your love story, the wedding day info, and even links to your registry! There is also a cool facebook integrated Guest Book where your friends & family can leave their well wishes & congrats! Should you wish to add a link to your wedding blog or info regarding your rehearsal dinner or shower, we can hook you up with that too! ;) After you book, you will receive a questionnaire of what info you want (or don't want) on the site and we will take it from there! No hard work for you! Just an easy-peasy fabulous wedding website!!So are you stoked??Check out a Christina & Syl's Wedding Website to get an idea of how yours will look!
This week I bring you another inspired DIY project from the ever fabulous Wedding Chicks! Its DIY ideas for how to use old-fashioned silhouette portraits as part of your wedding decor, as well as some downloadable templates!!! I am obsessed with this idea and this silhouettes are oh-so-cute and chic!There really is NO END to what you can do with the silhouette motif! You can put it on your save-the-dates, invitations, programs, menus and escort cards! You can print them and frame them in cute mix-n-match frames and hang them around your reception! You can have your cake designer incorporate them into your cake! You could even make little cookies with the motif frosted on for favors! I'm telling you the possibilities are ENDLESS. And since you can DIY most of the aforementioned ideas, it is very cost effective!The color combos that would work with this silhouette motif are also a-plenty! Anything that will look good with black and white would pretty much work. But let me suggest some chic color combos! For example gray and yellow would look fab with silhouettes! Or even black-white-yellow (see the Viceroy Palm Springs for black-white-yellow colors done CHIC). As pictured below, robin's egg blue and black look fab! But I will even go out on a limb and suggest that a deep purple with gold accents could look fab as well!Sound Inspiring? GO check out this post on the Wedding Chicks to download the templates and get even more ideas!!
So I'm rolling out a new feature here on the blog! It's called "Inspired Ideas" and it's for the brides out there who need a little bit of fabulous inspiration for wedding day plans. There are SO many great wedding blogs out there with so many great ideas...and while it is terrific that there is so much out on the interwebs for brides these days, it can also be a little overwhelming I'm sure. How can one bride ever keep up with all the info?So I've decided to highlight, on a regular basis, some of my favorite ideas, color palettes, templates, downloads, and DIY projects that I've come across in the blogosphere, and hopefully point my brides in the right direction for some super cool wedding inspiration!For my first "Inspired Ideas" post, I am excited to tell you all about this SWEET free retro wedding invitation download by The Wedding Chicks. The Wedding Chicks are always offering cool customized downloads for all kinds of wedding stationary. One peruse of their site, and you will be hooked I am sure!! And these latest invite downloads do not disappoint...in fact they are AMAZING! Look:
Click here to download your customized retro wedding invites from the wedding chicks now!And of course stay tuned for more Inspired Ideas for your wedding! :)
I have been meaning to write this FAQ post for awhile. A LONG while! It is intended for my clients and potential clients that want clarification on exactly how processed the final images they receive on disc will be. But if you are a fellow photographer, I am hoping this will help you out as well!! I know I had a lot of these questions when I was first starting out! So here goes, a few FAQ on post processing!What is your editing style?My editing style is vibrant but still classic and true to life. I like my photos to be timeless, and therefore I try to stay away from trends. Ever noticed how mom's wedding album from the 1980's looks so...dated? Sorry, mom, but it does! I NEVER want my clients to look back on their images and cringe and say "Ugh, what were we thinking?!" So I personally am not a fan of textures, antiqued images, or selective coloring (when most of the image is black and white and a part of it is left in color) or any other hot trends. If you like all those effects I just listed, that is totally fine! It just means I am probably not the photographer for you!All in all, I really believe that if I edit my images to look just like a slightly enhanced version of how the photo looked when I shot it, if I edit my images to stay true to life, the photos will feel more real and genuine. They will last the test of time. And they will ultimately best document exactly how things were on your wedding day. And that is super important to me!How many images from my wedding will I receive?A typical 8 hour wedding will yield somewhere between 800-1000 images. Think of it this way, I shoot about 100 images per hour!Will the final images I receive be edited?All of the 800-1000 images you receive from your wedding day will be color corrected, which is a form of editing. You will NEVER receive anything straight out of the camera. Rest assured that all your images are given attention, care and have been enhanced in some way. Now here is where things get a little confusing...The images you will see on the blog, in your slideshow, and also the images that will go into your album will all be fully edited by me!Most brides get a little confused on what the exact difference is between a "color corrected" image and a "fully edited" image. I'm hoping to clear up that confusion. Here is an example of the same image going through the three editing stages. The first image is straight out of the camera (abbreviated "sooc"). This image has NOT been altered at all. It is exactly how I shot it. As you can see, it is exposed properly and the colors are more or less pretty good. There isn't a TON that needs to be done to this image. Mainly what I see here is that I want to warm this up a bit, add a tad of saturation/contrast to make it pop a little bit more, and also brighten this image a bit (specifically the skin of the bride and bridesmaids). I almost ALWAYS feel that I need to slightly brighten skin tones when I see a sooc image.
Below is the "color corrected" image. For you photogs or photography enthusiasts out there, the color correcting is done in Lightroom. I actually do not color correct the images myself. I send them to Kenny at Fotofafa because he seriously makes my images fab and makes my life and my clients so much happier (more on that below). Anywho, ALL the images my brides receive from their wedding will be COLOR CORRECTED. And this is where most brides get confused...what is color correcting and how is it different than a full edit? The color correcting isn't quite as fine tuned as a full edit, but as you can see it is pretty close. The colors are much warmer, a bit more vibrant, and the image is much brighter. I think we can agree this image is an improved version of the sooc image! It is simply prettier! And I want to make sure that ALL the 800-1000 images that my brides get from their wedding are pretty images!
Lastly, we have the fully edited version. All the images I blog and put in your online slideshow are fully edited. You will receive these bonus edited images (which usually ends up being between 40-75 images) in addition to all the color corrected ones. Additionally, ALL images that go into your album will be fully edited. Any prints or other products you receive in your collection, or that you choose to buy, will all have been fully edited by me.So how is the fully edited image below different from the color corrected image? Well as you can see this one is a little more fine tuned. Instead of brightening the whole image, I was able to JUST brighten the skin of the bride and bridesmaids. I also slightly upped the saturation/contrast of this image and slightly warmed it. I did not choose to warm it up quite as much as the color corrected image. I like this version best because it is the most natural looking to me, while still being bright and having vibrant colors!
Here is one more example of one image going through all three stages:
As you can see in the example above, the sooc image seems a little dark because they were back-lit. Also the colors are a little cold and blue-ish. The color-corrected image is much warmer and brightened just a bit. It is definitely an improved version of the sooc image! Lastly, the fully edited image is a bit more fine tuned. I not only brightened the entire image, but I also went in and brightened the bride and groom's skin which gives them a little more pop! I warmed the image but very subtly and also added a subtle amount of contrast and saturation. I love that my final edit is classic-- the colors are true to life, but still very vibrant. Which is a defining aspect of my style. I also love how the bride and groom pop a bit more than the original sooc image!Brides also often ask me if I retouch skin or edit out pimples and such. To be honest, I don't usually need to do this much. I shoot in such a way (with the lens wide open) that seems to make every one's skin look creamy and smooth. I also always try to overexpose the skin just a TAD, which is another little trick that makes skin look smooth. Our eyes read brightness as smoothness, so if the skin is just a tad bright our eyes read it as smooth and delicious! However, if someone does have a blemish they are unhappy with I will go ahead and take it out when I fully edit an image (for the blog, slideshow, album, canvas, or professional print). Color corrected images, however, do not get treatment like blemish removal.My final note on this whole retouching thing, I really try to keep your images looking natural. That means having YOU look like YOU. Sometimes I get requests like "can you edit me so I look 15 pounds thinner?" or "Can you make my nose smaller" etc. The thing is, and I am gonna keep it real here, I am a PHOTOGRAPHER, I ain't a magazine retoucher so, no I really can't do that. I just don't have that skill. But even if I had that skill, I'd still have to say no. Because I want you to look like you in your pics. I want you to feel confident in who you are. I want you to see that the beautiful girl in your photos and know it isn't retouched, it really is YOU. Exactly how you are! Because seriously? All my brides are gorgeous inside and out!What about engagement, mr. + mrs. and boudoir sessions? Are those images color corrected or edited or both?For an engagement, mr. and mrs., or boudoir session you will receive 50 images. All these images have been fully edited by me! You will not receive any images that have only been color corrected from one of these shoots. For boudoir sessions I spend the most time hand editing the photos to make sure everything is looking its best, which is also why boudoir sessions cost more than regular portrait sessions! But again, no magazine retouching here!Why do you outsource your color correcting for wedding images? How does it benefit me as a client?I outsource my images for a few reasons. For one, it is a MAJOR time saver. Color correcting around 1000 images takes some serious time on my part. And in the thick of busy wedding season, I can get really backed up with edits. Before I started outsourcing it would take me wayyy to long to get my clients their images. And really, that's not how I roll. I don't like taking a long time to show my clients their pictures. I mean, I remember what it was like to be a bride! Waiting to relive your day is AGONIZING. So anything that helps me turnaround images faster to clients is my friend!The other reason I outsource is because honestly? I am not a specialist in color correcting. I did not get into photography to become a color corrector...I got into photography to take fabulous images. And to work with happy, fun, vibrant people. So while I can do a basic and decent job at color correcting, it's neither my strong suit or my passion. But the cool thing is that it just so happens to be someone else's strong suit and passion. And that means they do a way better job than me. By outsourcing to someone who is more skilled in-- and more passionate about-- color correcting, I am able to deliver my client THE BEST product possible! Which is what I aim for in every aspect of my business....I hope this post was informative and may have answered some of your questions regarding how I process my images, and for my clients I hope you have a better understanding of how your final images will look when you receive them! If anyone has any more questions on this topic, or even any other FAQ they'd like to see answered here on the blog, please let me know below in the comments section! I am happy to help!
Last Thursday, my friend Sarina and I headed over to The Smog Shoppe in Culver City for Hitched Event. Hitched is kinda like a bridal show. But for hipsters. And like 10 million times cooler than your average bridal show. There weren't exactly booths per se for each vendor. But there were little displays here and there that gave you the idea of what your wedding could look like at The Smog Shoppe and also gave you a taste of each vendor's style and goods. Although I am no longer a bride planning a wedding, I wanted to go to meet new vendors, see what is up and coming in the wedding industry, and to see Smog Shoppe in person. It's right by my house and I had heard it was a gem of a wedding venue. But I had never seen it, so that HAD to change! heheI gotta say I really dig Smog Shoppe as a wedding venue!! Like, if I can pleaseeee book a 2011 wedding at Smog Shoppe I will be an incredibly happy camper!! It's a super hip indoor/outdoor space. Very modern but also a little vintage. There's something about it that's just FUN. It's definitely not a very traditional or elegant venue. But it is definitely a great spot for brides who want something different, modern with a hint of vintage, vibrant, chic and fun. It's an elbows on the table kinda venue while still being classy. And that is just so my style.I really, of course, enjoyed the Enjoy Cupcakes trailer! I was lucky enough to get to work with Amber and Kevin of Enjoy and Jenni and Jamie's wedding! There cupcakes are DELISH and their set up could not be cuter. I was recovering from my tummy flu that day so I couldn't try all their samples (gosh darn it) but the two cuppies I did manage to have were divine! Seriously brides, run don't walk to Enjoy Cupcakes!I also enjoyed looking at the display Lo Boheme and Untamed Petals had up. Both girls make sassy bridal hair adornments and I am in LOVE. I love love love sassy hair adornments on brides. Flowers. Birdcage veils. Feathers. Augghh. Just swoon.Another major highlight was all the different tablescapes that were set up. Each one was so unique and had such great style. Any bride would be lucky to work with any of the event stylists and floral designers that were featured. There was seriously some really lovely work. My favorite was probably by Jesi Haack (a planner/stylist that I am just dyingggg to work with) and Dandelion Ranch (amazing florals) because theirs was so very dramatic and clever. They created a hanging centerpiece and used tin cans as the vessels for all the flowers. It struck me because it was so beautiful and yet, it could probably be done on budget as the main motif was tin cans. I know money is tight right now for everyone and every bride has a budget to stick to...but brides! You don't have to sacrifice good design and style. If you think outside the box even tin cans (which you can easily collect over the year of planning) can look so chic as wedding decor! So yeah, Jesi + Dandelion Ranch rock on with your vision!Lastly, Sarina and I had our kicks in the Smile Booth which is a portrait style photobooth. They don't do prints on site but you can download them on their site after the event. Which is what I did. I love that they had such cute props available for us to use...I mean how can I turn down a sign that says "Ride Em Cowboy!"
So all in all I really liked Hitched Event and I hear they will be doing round 2 soon! So 2011 brides, you should consider going! They had a lot more fun, creative ideas than your average bridal expo. And really hip vendors!! I would seriously be happy to work with ANY of the vendors showcased at Hitched. All of them are A+++ So follow Hitched's blog and go to the next one! It'll get your planning juices flowing!