When it comes to wedding photography, it’s easy to believe you should receive every single photo that your photographer takes. After all, your wedding day is one of the most significant events in your life, and capturing every moment seems like a no-brainer. However, there is a compelling case for why you don’t need every single photo taken on your wedding day. 

Wedding Photography Overview

Wedding photography is a hard job. Often photographers are taking thousands of photos. Over the course of an 8 hour wedding, a photographer may take 5,000 or more wedding photos! A good photographer is going to be snapping away nonstop and capturing EVERYTHING! But after the job is done, us photographers have to go through and look at every single photo. 

I have had many potential clients ask if I give EVERY single wedding photo. I have had clients not sign with me because I do not offer this. And I am totally OK with this. Why? Because literally you do not want every single photo taken! 

Why You don’t want every photo

Several reasons:

• Blurry photos: It happens. There are times we are shooting and capturing things and we move, and the camera misses focus. We are able to remove those. You do not want. a blurry photo. I mean, what would you really do with that?
• Closed Eyes: See above. Same concept. What would you do with that. 
• Looking at something else: Everyone has phones these days. When your guests or family are trying to capture the shot too, often someone in the photo may have their eyes off looking at the other person. Do you want this shot? Nah. 

The photo above is an example. Yes, I took about 15 of this shot. Of those, a few were blurry. It happens. You don’t want this photo. 

Avoiding Repetition and Clutter

Having thousands of photos from your wedding day can quickly become overwhelming. When every single photo is included, you run the risk of:

1. Repetition: Many photos may look similar, diluting the impact of the truly special shots.
2. Clutter: A massive collection of images can make it harder to find the ones you truly cherish, turning your wedding album into a cluttered mess.
3. Time-Consuming: Sorting through thousands of photos to find the best ones is time-consuming and can take away from the joy of reliving your wedding day.

According to Brides.com, focusing on a smaller number of high-quality images can lead to a more enjoyable and meaningful experience when revisiting your wedding album.

Let’s Take a Look at Other Photos You Simply Won’t Want Included In Your Final Gallery 

Suns Out Tongues Out? 

Nooooo… You don’t want this. It is NO fault of this beautiful bride! People lick their lips lol. Especially when you are sweating from the heat. Your mouth gets dry. It happens all the time! Again – you don’t want this as a wedding photo. 

Closed Eyes

This is why we do not just take 1 photo ever. We always take multiple of the same! People blink their eyes. Literally everyone. You will blink. And it will likely get captured during your wedding photography session. If we only took one and this is the one we got… well you’d not get this shot probably. Or have this delivered which you do not want!  

Another example. This time eyes ALMOST fully closed. Nope, don’t want. 

Understanding yet? You don’t want this. What would you do with it? 

Same as all the above comments! 

This is exactly why we do multiple! You blink. No biggie because we took so many of the same shot and the other one looks PEEERRRRFECT!!! 

Group Photos

OK literally every wedding, my clients say wow I did not realize how family photos would be herding cats! It always is. This is why we ask for the list of family combos. To make it as smooth as feasible! 

But as groups get larger, people will blink at different times. Often you can hear me saying OK everyone blink, OK now no blinking no blinking! But as you can see below, the photo has +6. What does that mean? Means my software detected 6 of the same photo. 

Why do I do this? Because if needed, I can face swap. Maybe one person blinks in a bunch of them, and theres one that everyone has their eyes open except 1 person, I can take a photo that their eyes are open and face swap into that other shot. You won’t print a photo with eyes closed for family shots! 

 

People blink. Again, this is natural! 

 

Looking Away

It doesn’t matter how many times I say look right here, people will look around. Multiple allows us to make sure we get the shot. 

We will make sure that the shots have everyones eyes at the camera. 

Blurry

Just like above, in the whole batch of wedding photos, there will end up being some that the camera just simply missed focus for whatever reason. When we have multiple it makes sure that if the camera missed focus, we will have some in focus to deliver! 

If you’d like to learn more about our wedding photography services, please reach out! We’d love to chat!