Wedding shots, retouch or not?

[LaFoto]

This whole thread made me take out my own wedding album again.
We had not hired a wedding photographer.
It was never the question if we would or not, it was taken for granted that my sister would be our "official" photographer.
And all the photos I now have are "captures of the moment". Only very few were taken in the manner: "Hey, stop there and smile", and even those were just about taken out of our walking (back to the car, out of the church), and were done "just there and NOW! Smile!"

All the photos are ok.
Nice to look at, nice to reminisce over how much people (myself and my husband included ) have changed over the course of time, to see people who are no longer here with us and so on.

But something inside me today says: Shouldn't we have taken a little time out to go to a special location and take some SPECIAL photos?

I almost dare not say this aloud, since in fact my sister is a member of TPF, too, but I know that she never comes here any more.

She captured a lot of "moments", but all are very "pj", and since it was film with the prints being made in a big lab, with no influence on the outcome by no one, this is what I now have.

Isn't it wonderful to now have the means to control the outcome of one's own prints a lot more? For who that does film/did film has/had access to a colour lab where they can take influence on the outcome of their photos? I don't even know anyone near here with access to a black&white lab!!!

 

[NJMAN]

Call me a purist, if you will but I simply no fan of the machine-gun digital shooter and the Photoshop mock-up artist.

Rusty Tripod

Be careful what you say there... some of us "machine-gunners" and "mock-up artists" are VERY purist at heart and take our time to do the very best that we can with our work. Just because we use a different medium (that being digital vs. analog) to do photography doesn't mean you need to throw us all into one of your generalizations, and it certainly doesn't mean we don't strive to create true works of art.

 

[Hair Bear]

Would it help you a little Rusty to let you know I also shot film on that day?

 

[AprilRamone]

I have a question for you guys...how important is it to you to keep your images in a "normal" print size (i.e. keep them all 4x6 or 5x7 or whatever...) Personally, if I see a picture I took would look better as an abnormal crop, I'll just do it and not worry about keeping it a normal size. If I have to print it in a normal size for proofs, I'll just have a white border around it.

Just curious about how strict ya'll are about keeping your prints in the standard sizes...

 

[mysteryscribe]

I try to do a 8x10 proportion but only because I did it so long before you could put white space around them. I find now that I can force myself to crop odd sizes but it is forced.

 

[Hair Bear]

I'm a bit compulsive about it and really like all the pics to be the same size

There are a few in the album that have been cropped for effect but 98% are the same