Alexis and Phil Revisted

I just finished Alexis and Phil's album last week, and I liked a lot of the photos they chose for the book. That is one of the best things about this business, I am often surprised by the images my clients choose for their final book.




In the newspaper business, you have photos editors who choose your images. It is an interesting dynamic, because the photo editor is constantly trying to decide which of your images will read best with the public. In that sense, the editor's job is to know and understand a photo like a layperson. That is an oversimplification, but it is at least one aspect of the photo editor's job. This is very difficult, because if you see thousands of photos a day, you do loose the eye of the layperson. Compared to wedding photography, where you get direct feedback from your clients every day. There is no photo editor to act as a middleman between the public and me. I like that dynamic, because I know, if the client does not understand the image, it is too complex of an image, end of story. Whereas, at a newspaper, the photo editor might tell me the image is too complex, and I would not necessarily believe them. I was constantly thinking my editors were underestimating the public's ability to understand photos. And thus far, in my experience working with clients, I think I was right. Then again, my clients aren't exactly the "general" public, they all seem to have a good sense of style. Like Alexis and Phil for example.



Alexis is a professional herself, and so does not have the eye of a layperson. She does however have a great eye, and was able to choose several images that I missed in editing her wedding images.



One final note, I want to make it clear that the eye of the general public is not a bad thing. Photography is about communication, and when your images communicates well, everyone will understand it. That is the goal. The goal is not to make subtle images only understood by folks with doctorates in fine art. That is why I enjoy the feedback from the general public. I suppose Alexis and Phil's images were not the best example of that, since she is in the biz. But in the true nature of a blog, this is just what I was thinking about when I was editing these images.