How many good shots?

[Stina3246]

Just a few questions about wedding photography. How many shots do you normally take? I just shot a wedding and took 580 of my own and my second photographer took about 200. Is that excessive or about right?
And out of those, how many would you expect to be good, and how many GREAT?

[oldwolf]

I take at least 5,000 images and all of them are good.

Just kidding.

If I know they have a sense of humor, I'll tell them some times I suck and other times I suck less.

How long was the wedding and how long did you shoot for?

On a typical 5 hour wedding, I could shoot anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 pictures. I'd only show about 200-400 though. I could show more but that tends to overwhelm the couple. I have shot less than 1,000 pictures though.

Good and great are relative terms so I can't help you there. All your shots you show the client should be great hehe.

[SuperDan]

I havent shot a complete wedding yet, but I have done a portrait session.
I presented approx 50 some images to the client for that alone.

[snowfalldesigns]

The last wedding I did, I was there for 10 hours (they were friends so I stayed for the entire reception) and I took about 2600 photos. I tend to show about a fourth of what I shoot - no matter how many I take. It just turns out that way, it's not a formula or anything. I think with this last wedding, I will probably overwhelm the couple with the number of images but I really don't show duplicates of poses and I only show images that I would print and frame. There are probably going to be around 800 photos for this wedding - about 1/3 of them are just b&w versions though.

ETA: I shoot a lot of candid as well so I think that makes a difference with the number. If you do mostly posed/formal shots, you won't have nearly that many.

[Niresangwa]

Between me and my assistant for a full day (approx 8+ hours) I'll end up with about 1200 (a couple of hundred of those are just dancefloor shots). Some are just individual candids, others are 2-3 frames of the same shot to make sure it's not blown by a blink or other uncontrolled bodily movement, some are just accent and environmental shots.

They never get more than 200, usually around 150. in the web versions they get diptych/triptych, but in print resolution those composite images are given as individual images, which is why it varies. i'd much rather have a hard time excluding images to reach my number than adding superfluous shots just for the sake of padding my numbers.

[Jim Bryant]

Originally Posted by oldwolf

I take at least 5,000 images and all of them are good.

Just kidding.

If I know they have a sense of humor, I'll tell them some times I suck and other times I suck less.

How long was the wedding and how long did you shoot for?

On a typical 5 hour wedding, I could shoot anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 pictures. I'd only show about 200-400 though. I could show more but that tends to overwhelm the couple. I have shot less than 1,000 pictures though.

Good and great are relative terms so I can't help you there. All your shots you show the client should be great hehe.

Hahahaha, that's something I'd say. I normally shoot between 1,500 and 2,000. and show the same number depending on what package and coverage they purchased.

[scootermcq]

10 hour wedding about 1000-1500 depending on how much flash is needed. When doing portraits, I will burst mode about 5 of each pose to make sure you get one where everyone has their eyes open etc. Walking down the isle, burst mode... putting the rings on the fingers, burst mode.... you get the idea. You get a ton of duplicates to weed out, but I don't want to miss a shot or a moment either.

I remove OOF or blown exposures etc and give them the rest to select from. I only edit the photos they select except for basic tweaks like straightening or slight exposure adjustment etc

Depends on the wedding. On average, I'll take about 1000 photos (includes getting ready, portraits, ceremony, reception), and the second photog I shoot with usually takes about the same. We end up giving the couple about 20% of the photos. There are lots of duplicates, so it's a matter of tossing the extras and otherwise blurry/boring/dumb/ugly/bad shots.

However, I did one wedding where I only shot about 500...about half as much as I normally shoot. The other two photographers that were shooting with me that day also got about half as many as they normally shoot. I won't go into the details of why this happened, but some weddings aren't planned all that well.

[Stina3246]

Thanks for all the responses. It was a tiny wedding, about 15-20 people including the wedding party and lasted about 6.5 hours including getting them getting ready and the reception. I think I'll probably show a bit less then a 1/4 of the shots so I think i'm on track. As soon as i'm done with the edits I'll have to post one or two here.

[funcrunch]

I've shot two full wedding-and-reception gigs so far. For both I stayed about six hours and shot over 1000 photos. I edited and posted over 400 photos for the first one, but about 300 for the second. I am being more and more selective about how many shots I post from my gigs; even if more than that are "good", I try to winnow out very similar poses, etc.