Feedback from Sunday's wedding

I received feedback from Nikki and Michael yesterday regarding their wedding on Sunday - see their wedding gallery.

Even though we couldn't buy the weather we still had a fantastic day! The pictures speak a thousand words. You will have our recommendation to anyone that asks.

Not only did you do a brilliant job of the photos, it was a pleasure to have you as part of our wedding.

Thank you very much.

Nikki and Michael Hill

Many thanks for this.

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

Wedding at Ramsgate Registry Office and Smiths Court Hotel, Margate

I had the pleasure of photographing Nikki and Michael's wedding at Ramsgate Registry Office and the Smiths Court Hotel, Margate on Sunday - see their wedding gallery. Unfortunately, it was another rainy day but we did get a small window of opportunity to do some outside shots in the gazebo at the registry office.

Nikki and Michael were fantastic though - they got on with enjoying their day and didn't complain once. Nikki was 7.5 months pregnant and still managed to have a smile on her face all day. Regarding the groom, Michael had the biggest wedding ring I've ever seen - look at the two in comparison in the top shot.

Thankfully the Smiths Court Hotel had a wonderfully light dining room. They didn't blink an eye as I rearranged all their furniture to set up for the group shots. My 35mm f/1.4 L and 85mm f/1.2 L lenses were perfect for this situation, allowing me to throw the background out of focus.

Check out more of my photography here: wedding photographer Kent

Wedding at Maison Dieu and Dover Castle

I had the pleasure of photographing Naoko and Kazu's wedding at Maison Dieu (Dover's rather fine Registry Office) and The Keep of Dover Castle - check out their wedding photos. As appears to be the norm for August 2008 it was mainly overcast for most of the day (no rain though), but the sky cleared in the evening and I was able to get some great sunset shots.

Naoko and Kazu certainly pulled out all the stops for their wedding with a Routemaster London bus taking us up to the magnificent Dover Castle for the reception. It was the most cosmopolitan wedding I've ever photographed with a huge range of nationalities represented (drawn to the UK to work with Cancer Research).

Check out my photography here: wedding photographer in Kent

This weekend's weddings

My batteries are charged, my memory cards reformatted, my lenses cleaned and my bag packed and ready to go - it's wedding time!

I'm off to Maison Dieu House and Dover Castle today to photograph Naoko & Kazunori's wedding and Ramsgate Registry Office and Smiths Court Hotel, Margate tomorrow for Nikki and Michael's wedding.

Monday will be a day at the computer applying my digital wedding workflow.

Fingers crossed for the weather!

Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photographer

Feedback from portrait session

Just received some lovely feedback from Christine and her parents who I photographed recently in the Westgate Gardens, Canterbury - see their portrait gallery.

Dear David,

Just wanted to write and thank you for the wonderful photos that you took of my parents. As you know, it was to commemorate their 43rd wedding anniversary and I have so many excellent photos to choose from!

As we had never been on a professional photoshoot before we did not know what exactly to expect but your enthusiasm and professionalism put us at ease right away. Your idea to use the Westgate Gardens as the background was a fantastic one as it provided a beautiful, semi-formal but relaxed setting.

My parents really enjoyed the photo shoot and thought the world of you. They send their thanks and appreciation as well.

We can't recommend you enough! We wish you much success in the future.

Christine Lee, August 2008

Check out more of my photography here: Kent portrait photographer

Wedding feedback

Calling this feedback positive seems like a bit of an understatement - check out their wedding gallery to see whether I merit it!

David was professional from first contact to delivering the final product. We were very impressed with his website and found the galleries and testimonials particularly informative.

I have worked with a lot of photographers during my career and would rate him as one of the best. He has real talent and you feel the passion he has for his work. He made us feel totally at easy in front of the camera and interacted effortlessly with our guests. He was professional, friendly and relaxed which helped us enjoy our day even more. It was a real pleasure having David with us and we will strongly recommend him to all our family and friends.

We were so pleased with the finished images - just fantastic. He captured every detail and every special moment. I would not hesitate to use him again and already have some projects I want him to be involved with in the near future.

The day after the wedding it was great to view the images on his website and, again, thank you David for acting so quickly. We've since had lots of positive feedback from our guests about both David and his images.

Not only did David deliver a first-rate service but after the day we would like to call him a friend. We wish him every success in the future.

Thanks again.

Elizabeth and Richard Bryant, August 2008

Thank you Elizabeth and Richard - this makes it all worthwhile. Wedding photography can be a very rewarding career on many levels.

Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photographer

My digital wedding workflow

In response to a reader's question I present my digital wedding workflow. It's very efficient and allows me to finish processing a wedding by the next day.

1. RAW files loaded from memory cards to a folder labelled with couple's names.

2. Imported into Lightroom.

3. Quick eyeball of all photos in library module. If a shot is spoilt by blinking or grimacing, or if someone has walked into shot, use X key to mark image as reject.

4. Verify and then delete rejected shots.

5. Work through all the images in the develop module (I can do 200 shots an hour when I'm in 'the zone' - use the paste develop settings within Lightroom to save time).

6. Tonal adjustments are the major correction to make. Tone curve to strong contrast (I apply this to all the images in two steps by copying the develop settings from the first shot and then pasting to all the rest). Recovery and exposure sliders to adjust highlights. Fill light and brightness to adjust shadows (this can introduce considerable digitial noise if the image was shot at high ISO). Contrast and blacks to further tweak contrast.

7. Adjust white balance and vibrance. If interior shots are bathed in fluorescent light, adjustment to tint (green-magenta shift) is necessary.

8. I use the 'Previous' button at the bottom of the develop module extensively. It pastes the previous photo's develop settings. Notice that I am not making changes that are unique to a shot at this stage (such as crops and rotations) as I do not want to paste these between images.

9. I now export all the images as JPEG files (Quality 80%, resolution 240) and use the post-processing 'Export actions' facility within Lightroom. I've created a Photoshop droplet based on an action which removes digital noise using Neat Image and then sharpens the image (file size can expand to 6MB). You need the pro-version of Neat Image to do this. I've created a custom noise profile for my EOS 5D - Neat Image can read the ISO setting in the EXIF data and apply the right level of noise correction. I prefer Neat Image's noise removal and Photoshop's sharpening to the equivalents in Lightroom.

10. I have a top-of-the-range MacPro but it still takes 3-4 hours to complete the above step - I often run it overnight.

11. I import these files into Lightroom with the couple's names and the suffix 'tweaked jpegs'.

12. I now adjust cropping, straighten shots and make any other minor tweaks which are necessary.

13. I choose my picks from these to make up my web slideshow.

14. I export all the shots twice as high res (files now typically 2MB) and low res (resize 1000 x 1000, resolution 72, typically 300KB) images which are burnt to DVD.

15. If I want to do any really special treatments I can use the adjusted RAW files and export to Photoshop as 16-bit TIFFs.

Please feel free to post any comments.

Check out my photography here: Kent wedding photography