It was nice to see in my email that I have been noted as a WeddingWire rated business. I have not actively asked my previous wedding couples for reviews on my photography services, so it was really nice to see that some of them did this for me! As far as weddings go, I second shoot or assist primary photographers on weddings more than do these on my own, but I do enjoy covering these events.
Weddings are a lot of work for the photographer! It is a full 10+ hour day of shooting, and lots of editing time afterwards. Comparatively to ballroom dance events, the editing time can be lengthy because of many different lighting situations throughout the day. You can go from inside to outside, church to hotel, restaurant to hotel ballroom. They are really amazing days, but they will take a lot out of you. In fact, I have never come back from a wedding thinking, that wasn’t that much work! Thank you to everyone that sent in a nice review that earned me this badge from an organization that covers all types of event vendors. If you feel so inclined, please leave me a review here!
Managing thousands of photos can be daunting task when returning from a shoot. The Library and Develop modules are where I live when using Adobe Lightroom. These have almost all the functions I need to manage and edit large sets of photos from events that I photograph.
Lightroom Module Selection Bar
Photography Software
I have talked about the Library and Develop modules in previous posts, but today, I want to focus on the Print Module. This is the next most used section for me. From here, you can prepare images for printing at the lab or at your home printer if you have one available. None of the photos from TimeLine Media are printed at home – all are sent to professional labs prior to sending in the mail. Why? The labs are experts at making prints. They print these optically onto photographic paper, not inkjet printing. There is still lots of development being done with professional inkjet printers, but I still prefer the optical prints on Kodak or Fuji paper.
Printing Options
The Print Module, much like the Develop module, also has presets available to use in your work. Lightroom comes with some built in presets that define what size print you like to make, and on what size paper on which you are printing. This is very helpful if you have a specific frame size in mind for your photo. You simply select the size photo, and you can instantly see if the photo fits well, if you could go larger, or if you need to change the perspective of your photo. All of these changes are easily made within either the Print or Develop modules:
Photo size selector
The next panel down allows you to change your page setup. Here you can change the background color of your page, or add a watermark. This helps to see if you final print will look better on a traditional white or black matte background, or if you would look better on a funky background that is uniquely fitted to your image:
Page setup
Ballroom Brag Book
Once you have all of your settings completed, you can save your favorite setup as a preset. This will allow you to apply this template for printing to any photo. You only need to select the photo from the Library Module, and drop it into the preset template in the Print Module. This is where you can add your creativity to your photography by creating new templates. I recently used this to make a ballroom dance book for the Arthur Murray studios in the area.
The book was 10″ x 10″, so I created a new template with these dimensions. My thought was to have a large collage with as many photos as I could fit on the cover to show how many great photos we have made over the passed year. Since the cover was square, I had the idea to make each image square. With this in mind I made a 1″x1″ square, then copied and stacked another 1″x1″ square on top of it. To complete a 10″x10″ cover, that made 100 photos! It took a long time to create the template, but I was really pleased with the results! It was a great way to get attention at the photo booth. If you want to use my template, I have attached it here-
When sharing photographs today, it is increasingly evident that people want to share their photos digitally, online, in their social networks. But I still receive many requests to have photos printed on paper. These prints can be passed around when shared, or mailed across continents to give as gifts, and some make it into frames to hang in offices or living rooms. My favorite, though, is when people ask about making albums. This is a service I have been doing for a few years now, and I have received lots of good feedback from clients that liked how it turned out!
Photo Albums
The albums are printed onto photographic paper, mounted onto a solid backing, and bound into a black leather cover. This protects photos, and makes them easier to pass around, and share at home or take with you to share anywhere you like. There is a design element too that is easier to produce in book form. When you open the pages to the book, it is possible to make a horizontal image more panoramic in its display by having the image span two pages. Using this, it seems like the images are even more enlarged, and pop off the page. Here are two examples of how it can be done with a landscape image, and a ballroom dance image:
My wife came up with the idea for the names for the brag books. There are three sizes – the standard size being 5×7 – the “Ballroom Brag Book”. With this book you can span landscape images to one 7×10 image across 2 facing pages. The smallest book is the 4×6 or “Baby Ballroom Brag Book”. The largest of the books is a beautiful 10×10 book where you can make 20×10 spanning images on facing pages. This is what I use to demonstrate the books when we travel to events. It is called the “Brilliant Ballroom Brag Book”.
Album Design
These albums can be made from photos at any event we have photographed. Between 12 and 20 images will display best in these books. If you have that number of images, it can actually be cheaper to have them put in books than individual prints! I will put together a draft of the layout for you. Afterwards, I will send you a pdf copy for you to look at an approve before the book is printed. It is delivered in a nice case for storing the album. If this is something that you wondered about when you went through the site I hope this helps. Please email me or call with any questions about them. These are great for sharing, and I actually have fun putting the layouts together!
