Bill - Best of Digital Wedding Photography

Todays wedding photographer is a keen observer of the days events. This image by award-winning photographer Regina Fleming is a study in motion and form that isolates the emotion of the wedding day.

The photographers featured in this book are digital artists who spend a great deal of time perfecting each image that goes out to a client. It is probably this aspect of contemporary wedding photography, more than any other, that has accounted for the profound increase in artistic wedding images.

This fine-art approach, in turn, raises the financial barallowing digital wedding photographers to charge premium prices for their weddings. Says photographer David Beckstead, I treat each and every image as an art piece. If you pay this much attention to the details of the final image, brides will pick up on this and often replace the word photographer with the word artist.

For Charles and Jennifer Maring, digital has opened up a wealth of creative opportunities. Their unique digital albums include an array of beautifully designed pages with graphic elements that shape each layout. Their storytelling style is as sleekly designed as the latest issue of Modern Bride. The Marings not only work each image but also design each album. Says Charles, There is a unique feeling when designing the art. I dont know what an image will look like until I am almost done with it. I also dont know where the vision comes from. I relate this to the art of photography. A higher place maybe.

This talented couple believes so totally in controlling the end product that they also own their own digital lab, named Rlab. We have been totally digital for six years now, and the challenge and precision of the change has actually made us better photographers than we were with film, says Charles. He believes the outside of the album is every bit as important to his upscale clients as each page therein, and has been known to use covers ranging from black leather, to metal, to red iguana skin. He has even found a local bookbinder with his own working bindery for finishing their digital albums.

This beautiful panoramic image for an album was made by Charles Maring and toned and softened in Photoshop. The lighting on both the couple and the car is exquisite, and the design of the image places the couple on the left-hand page of the album and the bulk of the car on the right-hand page. The panoramic was designed as a 15x10-inch page.

Joe Buissink, a master wedding photographer, likes the look of film. Therefore, his digital arsenal includes both film and digital Nikon cameras. He is the master of the subtle momentas shown here, where he captured this young wedding attendant in the midst of a self-approving moment.

Digital has allowed photographers to reach new heights in creativity, primarily because they control the processing and post-processing of the image. In this image by Jeff and Kathleen Hawkins, various effects (controlled blurring, vignetting, dodging, and burning) were performed in Adobe Photoshop, making the final image a unique work of art.

David Beckstead works in Photoshop on every single image that leaves his studio, insisting that this kind of attention to detail is the only way to preserve the art of the wedding image. The original image was made with a Nikon D1X and zoom lens at the 35mm setting at an exposure of 1/30 second at f/2.8. The motion blur was added and enhanced in Photoshop.

Digital Imaging Software. Regardless of whether a photographer shoots weddings digitally or with film (indeed, many have not yet made the investment in digital, opting to scan their film images instead), the impact of Adobe Photoshop has permanently changed the style and scope of wedding imagery. In the comfort of his home or studio, the photographer can now routinely accomplish special effects that in years past could only be achieved by an expert darkroom technician. Photoshop has made wedding photography the most creative venue in all of photographyand brides love it. Digital albums, assembled with desktop publishing software, have become the preferred album type of brides, and the style and uniqueness that these albums bring to the wedding experience make every bride and groom a celebrity.