I was inspired by a piece on Your Perfect Wedding Photographer about wedding photographers' office desk spaces. What they say is absolutely true: "Wedding photographers may take photos, but they actually spend most of their time at their desk!"

So I thought I would share my workspace with you and walk you around my current work space and desk set-up for a behind the scenes insight into the hardware and software I use when in my office.

Photo taken with ultra wide lens on Apple iPhone 12 Pro.

Hardware

For my 10th year anniversary in business, I upgraded my Apple MacBook Pro to a state-of-the-art Apple Mac Mini M1, which you can just about see hidden under the monitor on the left. It's a very powerful machine and makes photo editing a very smooth process.

My monitors were also an upgrade from Dell 2K Ultrasharp monitors to LG 27UL600-W 4K LED monitors - the super high resolution means I can edit photos are near full magnification, which means I can see and work on every detail. The monitors are also very colour accurate, and they are further regularly calibrated by a Spyder 5 Elite device (not pictured) - this means your wedding photos will be true to the colours that you remember from your wedding day.

I also use an Apple iPad Pro 12.9" which allows me to go through the thousands of images from a wedding quickly and easily wherever I am, creating a shortlist of images that are then processed on the desktop Mac Mini. It's also used for video conferencing with my couples. The extra large screen compared to regular iPads is a real benefit.

I use a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet for photo editing - using pen is just easier and more accurate than a mouse. Under the desk-riser on the left are a series of backup Seagate hard drives (not pictured), which stores my archive of RAW and final images. As storage space allows, I typically keep an archive of 5 years worth of RAW images; and all final images are kept on my drives and also online. Between my monitors is a tiny Samsung T5 SSD drive which is lightning fast and allows me to work on multiple weddings during busy summers when my computer hard drive is near capacity.

Off-camera, I use a large-format Canon Pro-10S printer to produce professional quality prints - it creates stunning detailed photos with its 10x pigment inks, but with that, it does take-up most of the space along my left-hand wall! I also use a Canon MG-6250 printer for every office day jobs.

Software

My main photo editing tool is the Adobe suite - Lightroom Classic and Photoshop CC. I photograph only in RAW, so each of your final images will have been through some level of post-processing. To be honest, Lightroom is so advanced these days, I rarely need to dip into Photoshop save for exceptional circumstances. That Lightroom runs on my iPad Pro as well, just makes my whole workflow a breeze.

For admin, I use Light Blue, which is an essential tool to manage my weddings and photoshoots, so you will get an occasional email from Light Blue (contracts, forms, invoices, etc). I wouldn't be able to run my business without this essential software. I mainly use Apple Pages and Apple Numbers for most of my admin, documents and brochures these days, but I also use Microsoft Word for very specific tasks.

My website and client galleries are handled by the Zenfolio platform, which I have used and trusted for many years.

Other bits

You'll also notice I'm a bit of a Harry Potter fan, and if you look closely you might spot a few toys that I stole from my newborn son! The mini clock between my monitors reminds me to balance my work and family life, especially important when you are self-employed and it's not an every day 9-to-5 and you have a baby to entertain!