Choices in editing

I’ve been spending large chunks of time editing pictures from my last wedding at my dad’s house (which is not close by). If I haven’t already mentioned this, he’s a talented illustrator, graphic designer, painter, and author, so his computer is REAL nice! So, I prefer using it to my older powerbook when editing so many thousands of pictures.

The first step requires me to wade through a few thousand images. After that I begin narrowing them down by rating each one using my favorite tool, Adobe Lightroom. Eventually I have weeded out the bad or so-so ones so that I have the amount that I promised the couple. Then I edit!

I won’t get  into the entire process, but I will say that it takes a long time and it can be fun sometimes. Playing with Adobe Photoshop since I was about 12, I’ve pretty much had my fill of extreme editing for crazy effects or head-swapping and that sort of thing. When I turned to photography, I took the more conservative approach, which meant that I only applied a tiny amount of post-processing to give the little bit of pop that most digital photos need. Now I’m at the point where I don’t really know how much to edit. I look at the work of other photographers and I often see over-saturated, high contrast, bright subjects. I usually like the way it looks, but I somehow feel guilty because it’s not quite as real that way. Some may make the reasonable argument that it’s an art, so I can make it look however I want. So, what I’m wondering is, does that still apply when documenting a real wedding? I guess it’s really up to the clients who want to hire me, but I’ll continue to ponder this. Meanwhile, I appreciate any opinions concerning my little dilemma.