I’ve been working my tail off on post for the past few weeks, so just a quick note tonight for my photographer buddies out there. It started churning around in my head a few weeks ago, after something my husband said.
I was working on post and specifically, I was retouching a beautiful brides skin on a black and white image. My hubby walked by the office and said:
“That’s a great one, hon. And you’ve got the perfect background music for it too.”
That was all he said as he went out to the living room to "do tackles" with our two year old, but it made me pause. It was something I’ve always done during post processing, but had never really thought about. I always have wonderful music playing while I work on getting the saturation just right, removing a stray hair, here or there, or before whitening a few teeth :)
And I think that it’s something that really helps me emotionally connect with my work. I love photographing weddings. I mean, I really, really love it. During the day, I’m pretty much always grinning like an idiot. I’m not gonna lie, I’ve cried at a few mother-son dances, and when I’m driving home, I get to bask in the afterglow of all that love.
But as this is a business and not just my hobby, that means long hours of work well after the shooting is all wrapped up. I spend hours upon hours in post for every wedding I shoot. Pouring over images, culling, retouching, filtering, liquefying…you get the idea. I work on each image until it’s the exact image I think it should be. Every single image I deliver to a client is touched by me. And, those long hours can get pretty tiring. So my tip for the other wedding photographers out there, who are working long hours in front of the computer screen, is to make your work environment work for you! Use some good tunes to help you remember and relive the feel, the romance, the love you witnessed on the wedding day!
For me, a Pandora mix of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Allison Krauss, and Billie Holiday create the perfect post-processing ambiance. But find your own jam-list that gets your creative juices going. Getting yourself in the right headspace to create something artistic is really important; so don’t overlook something as simple as turning up your tunes! It can really change the entire feel of that particular part of your workday.
