wedding photography | FUJI X WEEKLY

Using Fujifilm Film Simulation Recipes for Wedding Photography

Posted on October 6, 2023 by Ritchie Roesch

*Fujifilm X100V — Kodak Portra 400 v2 Recipe*

I’m not a wedding photographer, although I have photographed a few weddings in the past as a favor to family and friends. Since I’m always carrying a camera around, I’m occasionally asked to capture someone’s wedding, but it’s not my thing. While I have a lot of photography experience, I have limited experience as a wedding photographer.

I don’t envy those in this genre, because it’s a lot of work. The wedding photographer is often one of the first to arrive at the venue, and one of the last to leave, because every moment—from setup to reception’s end, and especially every instance in-between—is worth recording. There are so many memorable moments throughout the day, and the photographer’s job is to capture as many as possible, including every single of the big ones. Then there’s all the culling and editing. I would estimate that for every hour spent capturing pictures, I’d need two to three hours at the computer to edit the images. If I photographed for 12 hours, that would mean 24 to 36 hours of post-processing. Yikes!

Because Film Simulation Recipes can save you a whole bunch of time, it’s not surprising that I’ve been asked a number of times which ones might be good for wedding photography. Whether you’re a professional, or just doing it as a favor, or as a guest, Recipes are much more efficient, and cutting the culling and editing down to a reasonable time is highly appealing. I haven’t photographed a wedding since I began using Recipes, so it’s been difficult to recommend specific ones. Without personal experience, I’ve only been able to guess which ones might do well.

Last month I was invited to Marisa and Sahand Nayebaziz‘s wedding in Laguna Beach, California. Sahand is an app developer—if you’ve ever used the Fuji X Weekly App, Ricoh Recipes App, or RitchieCam App, you’ve seen his handiwork. His own app is called Details Pro, and if you are familiar with SwiftUI, you’ve probably heard of and maybe even used his app. Anyway, I’ve worked with Sahand for three years now, and he has been a significant part of the Fuji X Weekly story. He shoots with Fujifilm cameras and uses Film Simulation Recipes, so naturally we have developed a friendship. It was a real honor to be invited to Marisa and Sahand’s marriage ceremony.

The wedding was incredibly beautiful! Aside from the breathtaking location and the perfect weather, the event was decorated so well. It was literally like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was like a movie, except it was real!

My wife and I were guests. I brought my Fujifilm X100V—with a 10% CineBloom filter on the front—and did my best to stay out of the way. I wanted to photograph the wedding, but there’s nothing more annoying to the wedding photographer—and perhaps also the bride and groom—than to get in the way by being pushy with the camera. It’s much better to just blend into the crowd. I wasn’t the wedding photographer, and was quite satisfied with that arrangement; however, I still wanted to capture some images. Funny story, the wedding photographer, who was using a couple of Leica models, asked me several questions about my X100V; apparently he’s interested in buying one for his personal photography. Although I tried to blend in, my camera caught his attention, but I think in a good way.

My approach was to focus on things that I thought the wedding photographer might overlook. Of course, I had no idea what the photographer would or wouldn’t capture, but I know how easy it is to miss small things when your attention is on big things. I did my best to photograph those potentially missed pictures, while drawing as little attention to myself as practical. Also, I think the perspective of the guests can be a little different than that of the wedding crew, so I approached it as such.

The Fujifilm X100V is a great camera, but the fixed-focal-length lens is limiting. That’s not always a bad thing, but it did make it challenging in this case because I was sometimes further away than I needed to be to get the shots that I wanted. The digital teleconverter was utilized more often than usual—in a pinch it works well, but I avoid it when I can.

*Fujifilm X100V — Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled*

I had two Film Simulation Recipes in mind for the wedding, but I wasn’t sure until I got there if they would be good choices. It was a daylight outdoor wedding, and for those pictures I used my Kodak Portra 400 v2 Recipe, which is a favorite of both Sahand and myself, so it made a lot of sense to try it. That Recipe worked excellent, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. For the indoor reception pictures, I used the Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled, which is soft and versatile—perfect for the situation.

Kodak Portra 400 v2 is a Film Simulation Recipe that I’m now happy to recommend for outdoor daylight wedding photography. Some others to consider are Kodak Portra 400, Reggie’s Portra, Timeless Negative, Reala Ace, Fujicolor Reala 100, Fujicolor Superia 100, Fujicolor C200, Fujicolor Pro 400H, and Fujicolor Natura 1600. I’m sure many others could work, too. Of course, which one you should choose will depend on the exact light condition and the aesthetic you desire. Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled is a Recipe that I’m happy to recommend for indoor wedding photography. Fujicolor Super HG v2, Eterna v2, Reggie’s Portra, Reala Ace, and Timeless Negative are some others to consider. You might notice that a few Recipes are in both categories, and that’s because they’re more versatile. In fact, Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled could also be a good option for sunny daylight situations. Kodak Tri-X 400 would be my top choice for black-and-white.

I just picked two Recipes, but if I was the photographer (and not a guest), I would have seven options ready to go in my C1-C7. I would select two for sunny outdoors, two for indoor, two for versatility, and one B&W. Something like Kodak Portra 400 v2 and Fujicolor Superia 100 for outdoors, Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled and Fujicolor Super HG v2 for indoors, Reggie’s Portra and Reala Ace for versatility, and Kodak Tri-X 400 for monochrome. Then, I’d test each one at the venue, and decide at that point which ones I want to use—perhaps just three or maybe four of them—and stick with those few, unless the light changed and an adjustment was needed.

The photographs in this article are about 1/3 of the total that I gave to the bride and groom. Because I used Film Simulation Recipes and didn’t edit (aside from some cropping), the culling and post-processing took minutes, and not hours and hours. These were bonus pictures for them, hopefully complimenting the wonderful photographs that the actual wedding photographer captured. Marisa and Sahand seemed to like them. If you are considering using Film Simulation Recipes at an upcoming wedding, I hope that this article provides you with some direction. If you’ve used Recipes at a wedding, let me know in the comments which ones you used and how they worked out.

Kodak Portra 400 v2

Fujicolor NPS 160 Pulled

This post contains affiliate links, and if you make a purchase using my links I’ll be compensated a small amount for it.

Fujifilm X100V in black: Amazon B&H Moment
Fujifilm X100V in silver: Amazon B&H Moment
CineBloom Filters: Moment

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Wedding Photographers Adapt to Couples who want Instant Images — An Opportunity for You!

Posted on July 25, 2023 by Ritchie Roesch

I saw an article on PetaPixel today about a particular wedding photography trend. Entitled The Demand for Instant Images is Upending Wedding Photography, the post is based off of a lengthier Associated Press piece called Wedding photographers adapt to couples who want instant images and less tradition. I don’t want to get into the details of either, but the summary is this: customers want a quicker turnaround so they can share pictures and videos of their big event more timely.

I’m not a wedding photographer. I’ve photographed a couple of weddings in the past—many years ago—and I have no desire to jump into that genre. Good wedding photographers are sometimes the first there and last to leave. It’s not uncommon to work 12, 14, or even 16 hours on the big day. Then there are thousands of exposures to cull through, and then edit. That might be an additional 24, 28, or even 32 hours of work! That’s not my cup of tea. For others, though, this is their thing, and they love what they do. Their passion is capturing incredible memories of other people’s weddings.

The shift to a faster turnaround must be frustrating for many in the industry, but it’s actually an opportunity. The article states that some wedding photographers are trying to get some social media type content into the hands of their customers within 48 hours. But why that long? Why not much quicker? Why not as the wedding is happening? If you can do that, you have a huge leg-up on your competition.

*Captured with a Fujifilm X100V using the Kodak Tri-X 400 Film Simulation Recipe.*

I cohost a live YouTube series with official Fujifilm X-Photographer Nathalie Boucry. She does a lot of business photography. Recently she was hired to photograph a corporate event, but they wanted to have the pictures available to share on their social media platforms immediately, in real-time as the event was happening. How did she do this? First, she used Fujifilm gear combined with my Film Simulation Recipes, and shot JPEGs. The pictures looked good straight-out-of-camera, and no editing was needed. Every so many minutes she downloaded the pictures off the camera and uploaded them onto a cloud drive that the customer had access to. Within 10 or 15 minutes of the pictures being captured, the customer was able to share them across the world. This went so well that a week later she was hired to do it again for a different corporate event. I do believe this is the future of event photography, including wedding photography.

Maybe real-time photo sharing isn’t something you’re ready to offer, but if your pictures look great straight-out-of-camera, and further manipulation isn’t needed (or only lightly needed), you can speed up your turnaround significantly. Instead of providing the client with a small batch of photos within 48 hours for social media sharing while they wait up to six weeks for the rest, you can deliver the whole wedding the next day or maybe two. This is, of course, in theory. I’m not aware of anyone who is actually doing this right now. A few different wedding photographers have told me that they are using my Film Simulation Recipes on their Fujifilm cameras, and delivering some of the pictures either same-day or next-day to the client, while providing the rest of photographs at some point later on. I do think, if you’ve got good settings dialed into your camera, and you’re especially careful to get everything right at the time the pictures are captured, that delivering unedited JPEGs of the wedding to the couple is possible, and nobody will be the wiser that you didn’t actually spend hours post-processing RAW files.

This is something I’ve talked about before. Back in December I published Want to be a Wedding Photographer? Your Opportunity Awaits! and earlier this month I posted The Future of Photography is Unedited, where I touched on this topic. I keep bringing it up because I see this shift happening, and those who already have a simplified workflow using Film Simulation Recipes are ahead of the curve, and are primed for success in this changing environment. I want to make sure that you are aware of it, in case you want to take advantage of the opportunity.

I don’t do wedding or event photography, but there are still plenty of advantages to shooting JPEGs. Despite having way more photographs to cull through and share, I was able to publish my pictures of the Central Coast of California tour much quicker than Ken Rockwell did, because my workflow is much quicker than his. That’s a pretty meaningless example; I don’t have a lot of strict photographic deadlines. Perhaps a better case is this: on December 8th of last year, Nathalie, myself, a group of guests, and those who tuned-in, created a Film Simulation Recipe during the Let’s Get Festive holiday-special SOOC Live broadcast—this is the first and (as far as I’m aware) only time a Fujifilm Recipe has been made live on YouTube. Within minutes of its creation, I (and others) had captured a picture using the new Film Simulation Recipe and shared it with all those watching. The very next day I published the Recipe, which the live audience named Mystery Chrome, on this website (and the Fuji X Weekly App), complete with 24 example pictures. That’s my best quick-turnaround example.

Even though I don’t have the need to publish pictures immediately after they’ve been captured, I do sometimes share a photo quickly through text or social media, which is never a problem because I don’t post-process my images. What’s more meaningful to me is that I don’t spend hours and hours sitting at a computing fiddling with files, which saves me a ton of time, making me more productive, while also freeing up time for other things (such as writing blog posts and spending time with my family). It’s changed my life, no hyperbole. I think it can and will change event photography and even wedding photography. It will just take some pioneer photographers to give it a try, which could be you.

Not post-processing your pictures is called one-step photography, a term coined by Edwin Land and perpetuated by Ansel Adams in his book Polaroid Land Photography. “The effect of one-step processing on both amateur and professional creative photography,” Adams stated, “has been revolutionary.” With film, step-one is capturing the picture in-camera and step-two is developing and printing it in a darkroom; however, Polaroid cameras removed the second step, creating a one-step process, which greatly simplified the photographic workflow. With digital, step-one is capturing the picture in-camera and step-two is post-processing in software like Lightroom; however, Film Simulation Recipes remove the second step, creating a one-step process, which greatly simplifies the photographic workflow. “The process has revolutionized the art and craft of photography,” Adams concluded. It still is, for those who embrace the one-step approach.

Want to be a Wedding Photographer? Your Opportunity Awaits!

Posted on December 30, 2022 by Ritchie Roesch

Pay attention!

The day after Christmas I saw an article by Charissa Cheong on Insider.com, Professional TikTok creators are charging couples to film their weddings in a bid to help them go viral on their special day. Despite the long title, I read the article, but I didn’t pay much attention. The next day someone shared it with me and told me that I should, in fact, pay careful attention to it.

Why should I? I’m not a wedding photographer. Sure, like many who carry a camera, I have been asked a few times to capture the big day for family and friends. But that’s not something I’m interested in doing as a career. It’s too much work. Oftentimes, the wedding photographer is the first to arrive and one of the last to leave. Twelve hours of photography might equal 24 hours of culling and editing. Besides that, people sometimes don’t like pictures of themselves, because they see their own perceived flaws as flaws in the pictures, which is an unfortunate predicament for the photographer who photographs people. I’m also not a TikTok influencer. Yeah, I have social media accounts, and my Instagram has nearly 35,000 followers; while I never thought it would ever grow anywhere near that big, it’s still small-potatoes to be considered within “influencer” territory.

The article—what I missed the first time I read it—is about the power of swiftness. People are turning to TikTok creators to capture their wedding day because they can get ready-to-share pictures and videos quickly. People nowadays are less interested in a photo-book or DVD of their big day; instead, they want something that they can post to their social media accounts. Yeah, those polished products with a one or two week turnaround are great, but by the time the married couple receives them, the wedding is old news. Instant can be better than perfection. The younger generation in particularly would rather sacrifice “quality” for quickness.

Something else the article brings up is that people are interested in intimate and genuine content. “[Taylor Richardson] focuses on taking ‘raw footage’ and ‘candid’ images,” the article states, “which have a more ‘personal’ and ‘organic’ feel.” Richardson is then quoted, “The results end up looking like I was attending the wedding myself, like an amazing friend who never put her phone down the entire day.” It’s like the whole blurry picture trend—imperfections make it seem more true, more real, less staged. That’s what the younger crowd wants—authenticity. Or, at least, perceived authenticity.

What does any of this have to do with Fujifilm? Well, you all have a huge advantage! You can shoot straight-out-of-camera pictures using Film Simulation Recipes, and deliver amazing edited-looking pictures very quickly. Because you don’t need to edit, aside from perhaps some cropping, straightening, and maybe occasional very minor touchups, your biggest challenge is culling and delivery, not post-processing. That’s huge! Remember, it’s not perfection the client wants, but authentic pictures, quickly.

It’s not just photographs that the newlyweds want, but also ready-to-share videos. Video editing is even more slow and cumbersome than photo editing, but it doesn’t have to be. You can use Film Simulation Recipes for video, too (note that Grain, Clarity, and Color Chrome Effects are unavailable in video mode), so no need to color grade. You will have to splice clips to make under-a-minute short videos that are oriented tall and not wide. Consider having one camera dedicated to video and another for stills. If you don’t have much experience filming and editing short-form videos, that’s something you’ll want to get comfortable with well before the wedding day, and I suppose that’s why TikTokers have a leg up on everyone else. Storytelling is much more important than perfection, so consider ahead of time which clips you want to get to tell the story that you want to create.

Some people will look at the Insider article with disappointment. Those darn social media influencers with their iPhones and TikToks are ruining wedding photography! Some people will look at it with indifference. Why should I care? I’m not a social media influencer or wedding photographer. For some, though, who pay close attention, there’s a great opportunity for you, and the time is now to jump on it. You are already ahead of the curve because you own a Fujifilm camera and shoot with Film Simulation Recipes. Worry less about perfection and more about authentic in-the-moment images that are perhaps more raw and candid. The quicker that you can get these pictures into the hands of the client, the better.

The real advantage that you have over “TikTok Wedding Content Creators” is quality. While the iPhone is a good photographic and videographic tool—and don’t forget the RitchieCam App (a shameless plug)—it pales in comparison to what your Fujifilm camera is capable of. Your image and video quality can be so much superior while equally quick. The fruit is ripe for you, all you have to do is harvest it. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but if this is something you’ve been thinking about, it’s time to be decisive with your decision. If you want to be a wedding photographer, your opportunity awaits.