Photo Fusion: A Wedding Photographers Guide to Mixing Digital Photography and Video

Chapter 11. From Camera to Computer

With photos, you can easily visualize the finished product simply by looking over the images in front of you. Sure, you'll improve them in Photoshop and give them your signature look, but you know what that will look like. With video, however, the opposite is true. When you first look over your video footage, you realize how far you are from your finished product. Video editing is an art – knowing what to keep and what to throw away – and you will be surprised at how much work it can be to realize your vision.

Figure 11.1. Recording Fusion is merely the first step in creating your final piece

This chapter is designed to help minimize the amount of work you have to do to create your Fusion piece, though it might seem like more work at first. By organizing your footage, it will be easier to find the segments you want to use in your final piece, and minimize the time you actually spend putting the piece together. This process is similar to culling your still images before you work on them – if you shoot 2,000 images, you will work on maybe 400. Likewise with video. Taking the time to scrub through your footage and organize it ahead of time will make your editing process faster and more efficient.

Streamlining your Fusion workflow will help stave off the frustration of working in a new medium and facilitate an easier transition to Fusion-ography. It is ...