There is truth to the saying "Leave it to the professionals", but professional wedding photographers are limited to work around your wedding day shooting schedule, locale, and weather. Even with their own assistant, wedding photographers often admit they could still use your help from time to time. You might be surprised at how much contribution you could provide to improve the final outcome of your wedding day photo quality. Throughout my professional wedding photography career, I've compiled a "Top Ten Photography Related Tips" of all the little things you could on your wedding day to assist your photographer to get that photo-perfect result.
1. Organizing Your Guests
Getting everyone into the shot takes planning. While you're thinking about groups and portrait sessions - make a list of who is in each shot. Tell all your relatives (in advance) that they should be there at a certain time. Create a wedding day shooting schedule sheet, email it to your party days in advance, and pass it out again at your reception. Leave contingency reserve for potential late comers (yes, you know who they are).
2. Choosing Outdoor Location
If you wish for an outdoor shot, do your research and scope out the area. If you can’t do it, assign a trust worthy friend or relative for this task. Choose a location with sufficient shade to cover all the members.
This is especially true if you are getting married in a location that has a variety of different locations for the photographer to move about and experiment. Dramatic backgrounds are great for this type of photo shoot, but many things will work.... a forest, field of flowers, old buildings, barns, rocky riversides, meadow, city streets, college campus, city park, etc.
3. Decorate the Bride's Dressing Room
This almost always gets overlooked in the planning and decorating phase. First start by picking a room with enough ROOM; one with lots of natural light. And use light gauzy fabrics over the windows instead of thick curtains or shutters that obstruct illumination.
Don't keep it too neat! Natural is the way to achieve the a documentary style look. Decorate appropriately. Cover up any unpresentable objects with curtains or drape cloth. Messes are ok if they are wedding messes. Empty boxes and bags should be placed somewhere outside the dressing room. It looks wonderful to have all the dresses hanging and shoes lying around on the floor, but they look awful if they are still in the boxes or if they have piles of plastic wrappers and cardboard boxes lying next to them. Flowers also look better in a vase instead of the cardboard boxes the florist packed them in.
4. General Photography Lighting Tips
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Indoor Window Lighting
If you want to have an indoor shot, warn your photography days in advance. Keeping your wedding photographer well informed will ensure he/she brings the necessary extra lighting equipment.
Avoid direct sunlight streaming into the windows. If you have direct sunlight, keep some curtains at hand that are a little thicker to diffuse it. You can assist your photographer to put light cotton cloth over the outside of the window in order to cut down the direct sun. Or better yet, pick a room location with windows facing north.
- Reception Lighting
Think romance! Get creative. Try lots of candles or little Christmas lights placed on and under things. Christmas lights, hanging bulbs, and rope lights all look good in the background especially if you hang them just above head high.
If you are having an outdoor reception, placing your dance floor under a tent will make a world of difference. Your wedding photographer can bounce the flash up into the tent roof, and provide a much more even lighting condition than direct flash. A tent also gives you a structure to hang the small lights in the roof which create a mellow warm background.
- Moving Light Concerns
If you hire a DJ who uses moving spot lights, every place the spot light hits will be much brighter than the rest of the area. Due to this rapid moving nature, light becomes near impossible for your photographer to calculate the correct exposure. Translation: this leaves no options for the photographer but to shoot a strong flash to overpower the disco lights, which results in a missing black background.
The solution? Ask the DJ in advance about their lighting setup. Inform them you wish to cut the disco lights at moments notice, or ask them if they could use constant stationary colored lights instead. Lights that throw colors or patterns on the wall or roof are great, but ideally you would not let them hit the crowd directly.
5. Photographing in the Dressing Room
This is a touchy subject, especially if your wedding photographer is male. If you are self conscious or modest, you may ask your photographer to leave the room whenever you ask. However some of the best images from the entire wedding happen in the dressing room, especially when the dress is going over the bride's head while all the bridesmaids are helping to get it on.
If you have your photographer wait outside when this is happening, you will miss out on one of the most spontaneous photo opportunities of the entire day. Remember, with photography, it’s easy to delete things later, but it’s impossible to turn back time and do it again.
Under professional photography ethics, a wedding photographer would never show inappropriate photos in his/her portfolio, or on the web. If you are concerned about this issue, be sure to review and discuss the contractual obligation and portfolio usage rights with your photographer. Also pay keen attention to your intuition, and trust your instincts.
Next: (Page 2) Putting on the Wedding Ring, Flower Throwing...
About the Author:
Glen Johnson Wedding Photographer - OR, Oregon
John's love of photography began at about 6th or 7th grade, with camera he "borrowed" from Dad. Today John works exclusively on wedding photography. His work has appeared in numerous publications. He is also the author of the book "Digital Wedding Photography: Capturing Beautiful Memories".
You may directly access Glen's Wedding Photo Portfolio, Photographer Bio, and OR, Oregon Wedding Photographers Index.
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