WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY FAQ's

 

 

Wedding photography is one of the biggest decisions of your wedding planning process alongside choosing a dress, venue and ceremony location. We take our weddings extremely serious, and want you to know that we treat every wedding we shoot as important as our own. When you put your faith in us, we commit to your photography being the best we can absolutely provide. Below are a few points that are often brought up in a consultation, which you may be curious about in advance of calling us.

 

 

COVERAGE & TIMELINE

Our average booked weddings will utilize 7 or 8 hours of coverage, with occasionally needing 9 hours. We do have custom packages that are less or more, based on the nature of the wedding. In some cases, a couple may only need 6 hours, where as sometimes they need as many as 10. However, it is rare to go over 9 hours of coverage on a wedding day. This is because the preceremony (getting ready) portion of the day does not need to be covered by photographers for the entire hair&makeup timeframe, and we typically do not need to photograph to the last song of the night either. Too much of either the beginning or ending of the day tends to be repetitive photos, or time where there is not much to shoot. Therefore you may overpay for a package that you do not need. We prefer that you get what you need, and not overspend on hours of coverage when you can put that budgeting towards a wedding album or another part of the wedding day.

 

EXPERIENCE

SkySight Photography was established in 2004, with the first wedding season beginning the following the year. The photography community is full of amazing photographers in the Pittsburgh region, and we know that you have a lot of choices when it comes to choosing the right one for your wedding day. How are we different? We know there is a lot of competition, but we pride ourselves in our experience level and due to that, our quality is a direct reflection of our years in this field. We are easily able to handle every lighting scenario that is thrown our way, make decisions quickly, and work under extremely tight timelines and circumstances. Because we've shot close to 500 weddings, we've seen and successfully managed all the ups and downs that weddings can throw at us without any major hiccups to our workflow. This is why I highly suggest that anyone searching for a wedding photographer be sure that the one you choose has a long history of providing top notch quality to a large number of previous wedding clients. Going with a photographer just based on price would be concerning that these factors are not taken into consideration.

 

BACKING UP

We take data management very serious. The first precaution we take is using double memory cards throughout the wedding day. We only shoot with cameras that have dual camera memory slots, which will save every image we shoot in duplicates. Therefore if there were ever an issue with corruption on a memory card while shooting, we have an automatic backup the second the photo is taken. As soon as your wedding is complete, we begin backing up the images the very same night. We transfer images to hard drive space, backup to separate hard drives, then also make a copy on our server at our studio which is a NAS system with internal automatic mirror backup. We keep the images in two locations (our home and studio) so they are in separate physical locations as well. In reality, we possibly overcompensate for backing up but we always like to be as safe as we possibly can.

 

POST PROCESSING / EDITING

Our process for editing your photos begins rather quickly after the wedding ends. The entire process will take several weeks, to two months at most. On average we turn around your wedding images in about a month depending on the time of year. When editing, we go through a few phases. First is the culling stage, or picking out the right photos to keep. Out of the thousands of images taken on your wedding day, we'll keep about smaller percentage of them by eliminating duplicates and images that didn't turn out. Those images are then edited through Adobe Lightroom to match our style and be consistent with the photos you see in our gallery. Color correction, cropping, lighting, sharpening and luminance, are among the many edits that will be done on all of the photos you'll receive. Your photos will be in good hands during this time, we make sure to take proper time and attention to them and give you an amazing final gallery/album of wedding photos. If you want further editing on your photos, we can go into detail in your consultation about blemish and stain removal, detailed edits on body size, braces or glasses glare removal, etc.

 

ALBUMS

The coffee table albums that we offer are a beautiful high end album, custom designed with your choices for cover, paper type, size, orientation, and number of pages. The albums are not included in packages, but are available for a la carte purchase before or after your wedding. You can also register for your album, which is explained more below. The album company we use is located in Italy, and our first album we ordered through them was in 2008. Since we have been a long time customer of this company, we have great raport with them and have never had a client return their album to us with issues.

 

REGISTRY

We offer a registry for your wedding album and/or prints, canvas, and small albums. A great addition to add to your shower registry alongside other items for your new home life together... why not add framed prints from your wedding, or an album. This way you can concentrate your photography budget on the essentials, such as the base package and an engagement session.

 

COORDINATION

Alongside being photographers for the day, we wear another hat. We will help coordinate your day before and during the wedding. Prior to the wedding, we will send you a packet of information to fill out which includes preferences, family photo lists, and detailed questions about the timing of your day. Once you complete that packet, we'll review it and make ourselves a cheat sheet for the day of all the photos you want taken with family members, an exact timeline to follow, and notes about what you may or may not prefer in your photography. Once the timeline is completed, we'll send it to you in advance to be sure it matches up with your timing with venue/caterer and dj. During the day we'll make sure that family members are accounted for as much as possible, keep you on track so you get to your reception when you are scheduled to arrive, and everything has been completed according to our plan. We'll bring clear umbrellas for the bride and groom if it is raining and carry extra water and snacks just in case the bride or a wedding party member gets ill or faint. Our goal is for your day to not just end with great photographs, but that the day flows so well that you had so much fun taking photos that it was a great memory. We'll be sure to move quickly so the portraits don't drag on too long, and be sure that you and your bridal party have fun every step of the way.

 

STYLE

Our photography style is best described as classic, timeless, bold, natural but also dramatic.  We like to think that we create a cinematic vibe to our photography, giving your wedding day photos a beautiful visual story. We don't use trendy filters that will date your images, or make them look less than the high quality our cameras produce. 

 

SAMPLE TIMELINE

A timeline will be custom designed by Autumn for YOUR wedding. Below is just a sample of what it might look like! 

 

1:00 photographers arrive to start shooting details and getting ready photos in separate hotel rooms for guys/girls 

2:00 photographers leave hotel rooms, along with bride/groom separately to go to church

2:15 arrive church 

2:30 ceremony begins 

3:30 ceremony ends, start photography of family portraits 

4:00 leave church for outdoor photo locations 

5:30 end photography on locations, go to venue 

5:45 arrive venue, photographers begin shooting details in ballroom 

6:00 cocktail hour ends, guests find their seats in ballroom 

6:15 bridal party is announced 

6:20 first dance

6:25 cake cutting 

6:30 toasts/prayer 

6:45 dinner is served 

7:45 bride and groom visit their guests 

8:00 parent dances begin 

8:15 open floor dancing 

9:00 photographers end coverage