When photographer Mike Colón shows up at a celebrity wedding, he doesn’t have to dodge security guards or stake out a spot in the bushes. As a notable celebrity wedding photographer, he is an important part of the event itself, capturing timeless nuptial images for his famous clients.
“If you’re trusted to photograph a $3 million wedding that’s already making entertainment news, everything has to be under control,” said Colón, an international wedding and lifestyle photographer based in Newport Beach, Calif. As one of the first wedding photographers to develop an all-digital workflow, Colón also travels the world teaching other photographers the latest techniques in digital photography. He is a strong believer in a new era of wedding photography in which photographers share their knowledge with each other.
Saving the Day: One of the tools he likes to talk about is the handheld
Epson P-5000 multimedia storage viewer. He uses the device onsite at wedding jobs to download, back up, store and display thousands of images without a computer. “No matter what kind of wedding, you’ve got to have a way to back up images on the spot,” he said.
While shooting a wedding, Colón and his assistants have a well-choreographed system of using two photo viewers for multiple back up purposes. After a memory card is full, each photographer quickly downloads it to one of the photo viewers, trades the viewer for the other, and repeats the process. The team is able to download, view and store thousands of JPEG and RAW images on each viewer’s 80GB hard drive. The long rechargeable battery life of the viewer is ideal for maintaining the workflow throughout the wedding and reception, and beyond the last dance.
“They say that time flies by at weddings, but so might your images and your reputation if you shortchange your backup system,” said Colón. As a result, he has all wedding images in his safekeeping, with each stored twice on two P-5000 viewers. He later transfers the images via a high-speed USB 2.0 interface from the viewer to the computer at his studio or the laptop in his hotel room. Colón also uploads the images to an online system that archives them for viewing and printing. There are no stacks of memory cards to mix up. When the job is over, his assistants take their own reformatted cards home with them.
Read more: Why Mike Colon swears by Epson