Staring at the same batch of wedding photos for a week

Why I keep opening the same folder

I really thought that after the wedding snap delivery, I would just pick my favorites, slap a basic filter on them, and be done with it. That was three weeks ago. Now, I have this folder on my desktop labeled ‘Final Selection’ that has been sitting there, mostly untouched, while I get stuck in the weeds of editing things that probably don’t even matter to anyone else. It’s funny how I started with grand plans of making everything look like a professional magazine spread, but now I’m just trying to figure out why the background noise in some of the shots feels so distracting. I tried using one of those AI upscaling tools I saw mentioned on a forum, thinking it would fix the graininess of the darker photos, but it ended up making everyone look a bit like wax figures. That was a waste of about 15,000 won for a monthly subscription I forgot to cancel.

The endless battle with file sizes

Another annoying thing I didn’t anticipate was the file management. I’m used to just uploading images straight from my phone, but these high-resolution raw files are massive. My laptop fan sounds like a jet engine whenever I open Photoshop. I’ve spent more time trying to resize images so I can actually send them to my parents via messaging apps than I have actually editing the colors. It feels like a constant cycle of exporting, realizing the file is still too big to send, and then going back in to re-save. I even tried one of those free online converters that promised ‘no quality loss,’ but the compression artifacts were so obvious that I just gave up and decided to use a cloud storage link instead. It feels less personal, but at least the pictures don’t look like they were taken on a flip phone from 2005.

Falling down the rabbit hole of fonts

I don’t know why I decided to start adding text overlays to a few of the shots. It sounded like a cute idea for an anniversary post. I spent an entire Tuesday night just looking for the right font. I must have downloaded twenty different ones, and none of them quite captured the mood. I kept thinking about that one exhibit I saw at the Seoul Arts Center where the artist used digital tools to critique perception, and I wondered if I was overthinking my own wedding album. Do people even notice the typography? Probably not. My partner told me they didn’t really care as long as they looked happy in the photos, which felt both comforting and slightly insulting after I’d spent six hours debating the kerning on a single caption.

The strange disconnect of digital memories

There is something weirdly artificial about sitting in front of a monitor and scrubbing through moments that happened in real life. I remember being at the venue—it was the Apgujeong area, somewhere near those big redevelopment projects—and the air felt humid, and I remember the smell of the flowers. But when I’m zooming in at 400% to clean up a smudge on a dress or trying to remove a stray exit sign in the background, all of that sensory memory just evaporates. It turns into a data processing task. I read somewhere that even in industries like architecture or major construction projects, they use these same editing tools to mock up visuals before they even break ground. It made me feel like I’m treating my own life like a rendering project.

Still not finished with the album

I haven’t touched the folder in two days. I keep telling myself I’ll get back to it this weekend, but honestly, I’m just tired of looking at my own face. There are still about thirty photos that need color correction, and the more I look at them, the more I realize that my initial vision for the ‘perfect’ aesthetic is just completely changing every time I sit down. Maybe I should have just paid a local retouching firm to do the bulk of the work, but I was worried they wouldn’t get the specific ‘look’ I wanted. Now I’m just stuck in this loop where the project feels too unfinished to show anyone, but too exhausting to actually finish. I wonder if I’ll ever actually hit the button to print these, or if they’ll just stay on my hard drive until the next time I need to clear space.