I have to smile when photographers tell me that their images are straight out of the camera and they do no photoshop or lightroom work on them. Maybe, but unless they stay in the camera and in RAW format then some post production is being done on them. We’ve always done post production on photographs and most of those that advocate film and no post production usually have a master printer, printing their images for them. Every single image that comes out of our studio goes through our Lightroom workflow, we do some light sculpting on it, sharpen it for the appropriate output size and make sure that it’s in the correct color space. There’s been a lot of talk of, that’s just ‘photoshop’, maybe, but in a society where we are master consumers of imagery, I think most people except their wedding pics to have some of that ‘photoshop’.

photo credit: Richard Avedon’s instructions to his printer. If you’re confused about the instructions they’re for dodging and burning, so a circle with a +2 on it means add two seconds of exposure to the the area.

We’re launching our new publishing imprint and to celebrate we’re giving away FREE copies of 10 Photos You MUST Take At A Wedding ( and how to take them ). For those starting out in wedding photography, or looking to strengthen their fundamentals, the book outlines and explains which photos are actually important and includes step by step instruction on how to go about taking them. The kind of stuff that I wish I had been told when I started in the business, the fundamentals which go a long way towards setting up a studio that actually makes money from shooting weddings. Download it from here. The promo ends on May 15th.

The resources tab, top right of this page, has the resources for 10 Photos You MUST Take.

Don’t have a Kindle? Amazon has free readers for pretty much most platforms, including the ipad, iphone, blackberry, android, mac, pc, etc etc all free for download from here.

Want to get on the early review list and get pre-release copies of all our info products to test drive? Leave a review on the Amazon.com page.

I often get stopped at weddings and asked what lens I’m using and why I haven’t changed it the whole day. If you see one of my images, it’s a very good bet that it was taken with a 50mm. It’s pretty much on my camera 99% of the time, occasionally I mint switch to an 18mm lens if I’m doing a big group photo and I don’t have enough space to walk back and accommodate everyone.

There are many reasons for using the 50mm. It’s cheap, sharp, gives excellent bokeh and can shoot in super low light situations. There are a couple of reasons why I shoot the 50mm though which have nothing to do with the above.

I’ve always been a huge admirer of Richard Avedon, the way that he forced meaning out of his portraits by reinforcing negatives. No fancy lenses, no fancy backgrounds, no special tricks, just a white background, him and his subject. I’ve been trying to force that kind of relationship between myself and my images by restricting my lenses to the 50mm.

Secondly, I think that too much choice kills creativity. Constraints are what fosters creativity, too much choice will leave spending more time thinking about which lens to use and less time out how to make an amazing image with the lens you have e.g. if you need a quick wide image and you only have the 50mm, you’re going to want to shoot a panoramic and stitch it in photoshop.

I’ve had the same 50mm lens for over 20 years now, I feel I pretty much know most of it’s faults and how it behaves in certain light situations. We have an understanding. I don’t need to think how will the final image come out. I know.

Lastly, it’s an unobtrusive lens. If I’m at a wedding, people don’t notice it as much. I can move about without people giving me their cheesy camera smile. The 50mm has the same coverage as the human eye, so I can frame images in my head and when I pick up the camera, the perspective is the same, I don’t need to recompose. It’s already there. This helps me react to situations faster than if I had a 100mm or a 28mm lens and had to raise the camera to my eye and then compose.

I think that we’ve gone overboard with the digital feel, making our images look like they’ve been overcooked to a crisp in a factory. Oversharpened, overflashed, overcooked. I prefer mine to look like they were created by a person, like they’re once off, like something made by hand, not spat out by a machine. When photos were still shot on film, the process of printing them made each one an individual art work, I’d love to get back to that kind of look.

So I shoot my weddings without flash. Over the years I’ve developed a bunch of techniques based on stuff we used to do in the film days when we couldn’t just change the ISO whenever we wanted to. The most important of these techniques was called ‘pulling’ the film, it allowed you to shoot in low light with huge ISOs, ISOs that weren’t available at the time and still get a decent amount of clarity. I’ve written a little book on this technique called Low Light High ISO – how to shoot receptions without flash, you can download a FREE copy of it on the right.

The new Crushing It In Lightroom DVD is out with serious step-by-step instructions on how to get the ‘dror eyal’ look in lightroom. Including a before and after of our infamous underwater trash the dress image.

I also look at some client images where the client requested a lighter, softer and warmer look and how we achieved this in Lightroom. Recorded in 1280 × 720, 40 fps, this is how we edit real weddings when time isn’t on our side and we still need to produce 700+ incredible images.

Our DVDs are developed for use on a computer and are NOT suitable for use in a DVD player or Home Entertainment System.

Check it Out Here

Over the last couple of years we’ve released several sets of Lightroom presets as well as Photoshop actions, that we use on a daily basis here at the studio to make things a bit quicker and easier. Most of these were released via the Dror Eyal Experiment, and we’ve had over 120,000 downloads in total. These include vintage actions, workflow presets, black and white actions, just stuff to make things easier. Anyway, I’ve decided to shut down the experiment, I think it’s outlived it’s usefulness, we’ve raised a whole lot of money for the Smile Train and there are a bunch of kids out there who are incredibly grateful for the surgeries we’ve donated. Anyway, before I start on a tangent about how great The Smile Train is and why your studio should donate, the presets, actions and workflow tools are now all free for download from our Facebook page.

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As an extra bonus I’ve added a chapter on how we integrate photoshop actions into our Lightroom workflow, running them from inside Lightroom. You know those actions that you can’t live without and have kind of been the reason why you haven’t yet switched from Photoshop to Lightroom. For when you just need to add an effect that you have perfected in PS and haven’t managed to duplicate in Lightroom.

Our DVDs are developed for use on a computer and are NOT suitable for use in a DVD player or Home Entertainment System.

Check it out here.