Ten Wedding Photography Tips

Ten Wedding Photography Tips - for the bride and groom! on their wedding day.

A short list of ten tips to assist both you and your wedding photographer and help the day pass as smoothly as possible...

Choose a Photographer You Get Along With

Your wedding day is a very important day in your life. Your photographer will be around you all day long. He or she will have seen many weddings before and be a useful source of information and advice. Make sure that we get along with him or her! If you don't get along, it's going to be a very long day indeed!

Too Many Pictures

If you have done your homework and have chosen a reputable and experienced wedding photographer, then it’s very unlikely he will need a two page spread-sheet of every possible combination of friend or family member for portrait or group pictures. Give him a list of special pictures by all means but don’t overdo it!

Indian Wedding Photography | Nima + Karan

Engagement Photos Camden Town | Binita + Darpaan

Dartmouth House Wedding Photography | Rebecca + Duncan

Photography as a Wedding Present

Wedding photography makes a wonderful wedding gift but a very poor choice of surprise present

There is more than one way to give photography as a wedding gift. You could offer to take the pictures, or pay for the photographer, or (as the bride) have a set of pictures taken as a gift for your future husband. Before the event pay for an engagement shoot or after the event offer to pay for framed prints or albums.  Be careful however ñ the photography can be a highly personal choice so make sure you consult with all those involved from the outset. Photography makes a very poor choice of surprise gift.

Offering to take the pictures.

Best advice: don't! I won't say any more than that! For reasons see: Why You Need a Professional Photographer on Your Wedding Day

Pay for the photographer

It's quite possible that by the time you hear of the wedding the photographer has already been booked and deposits paid etc. This is why you must speak to the bride and groom otherwise you and or the bride and groom could end up wasting money at a time when you really don't need to!

Also the choice of photographer must be down to the bride and groom. The photographer will be with them from the start of the day until (quite possibly) the end. It's essential everybody is comfortable with each other or the day will lose some of its sparkle!

A possibility might be to pay for a second photographer at the wedding for a slightly different viewpoint. But you must speak to the main photographer about this - you will need someone he or she is comfortable to work with, he may well have some very practical suggestions.

If you do speak to the bride and groom and offer to meet some or all of the cost of their chosen photographer I'm sure they will be deliriously happy! Wedding photography (when done properly) is not cheap!

Also avoid gift vouchers from photographers unless you know the vouchers are from the photographer chosen by the bride and groom or you could be throwing your money away - nobody wants that!

Other Photographic Gifts

A possible gift is to speak to the happy couple and their chosen photographer about pre-wedding engagement photography. This is where the photographer takes the bride and groom out to the venue or into the studio or even a local beauty spot for a "practice" photographic shoot before the wedding day. This has the very real advantage of letting the photographer and couple work together before the big day and gets the bride and groom used to being photographed. It generally makes the day go more smoothly!

Another possible idea, more for the bride than groom, is to have a set of boudoir photographs taken of the bride as a present for the groom. Yet another idea is a set of "trash the dress" pictures (for the brave) where the bride and groom go out the day after the wedding or soon(ish) after, all dressed up in their wedding outfits and have pictures taken in "unusual" venues or circumstances - I'll leave the rest to your imagination!

Yet another recent idea is a picture of dawn breaking on the wedding day mounted and framed ready to hang in your home.

The most recent trend in the good old US of A is morning after wedding photography - for this you would DEFINITELY need permission of the bride and groom. I'll leave the description to the originator: "Sexy shoots featuring rumpled beds and steamy showers are a hot new trend within the wedding business... these intimate photo shoots take place in newlyweds' bedrooms or even the hotels where they've spent their first night as husband and wife."

In summary, the offer of supplying the wedding photography for the couple's big day is a wonderful gift but a very poor choice of surprise. Before doing anything speak to the bride and groom and see what they've done so far, then fit in with their plans, or think again!

Adam Szczepanski  - London Wedding Photographer

Ends

Picture taker or image maker: your wedding photographer

Is your wedding photographer a picture taker or an image maker - in an ideal world both!

“You don't make a photograph with just a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard and people you have loved.” - Ansel Adams

There are those who say that they make a photograph and you probably thought nothing of it. But making a photograph is a hugely different approach to photography than merely taking pictures. Taking pictures would indicate stumbling upon or discovering something or waiting to grab or trap an image. When you take photos, you enter the world and find scenes to capture. Making however, would suggest the construction of a scene from parts. Creating an image from nothing, choosing the elements to include and exclude.

There are of course a wide number of intermediate steps between a taker and a maker. At one end you have takers who go everywhere shooting anything and everything around them on the grounds they will get something to show for it (and they will) however these people will have little no regard for composition, lighting, timing and no expectation. They simply shoot whatever takes their fancy or what happens to be in front of them. At the other end of the scale you have makers who won’t press the shutter release on a scene unless every single element has been precisely arranged to a preconceived plan, even the lighting. Still life photographers fit in this category of extreme makers.

Most photographers and all wedding photographers should fall somewhere in the middle. There must be a large element of making the pictures but you also need to be ready for the grab shot of the unexpected. The difference between taking and making a photograph can be as subtle as waiting a few seconds for the right moment or just moving a couple of steps to the right to improve composition. This is thinking ahead you are pre-visualizing what you want the resulting photograph to be. When you begin to do this you are no longer just taking photographs, you’re making them.

A huge difference between takers and makers is intention. A maker will be trying to get a message across to the viewer. Possibly a very simple message such as, “the bride is beautiful” to something much more complex, attempting to tell a story in a single picture. But whatever it is, a picture maker is trying to get viewers to see in a particular way - the way the photographer wants the world or event to be seen. Another difference is consistency; both takers and makers create beautiful, profound and moving photographs (some of the most famous war photographs are obviously by takers). However it is only fair to say only a maker is able to produce consistently memorable pictures.

So when looking for a wedding photographer which sort should you seek out? Someone with some element of both skillsets, but tending toward a picture maker. Coming upon an unexpected, beautiful or strange occurrence at a wedding is a great treat but you cannot rely on it. You don’t need to plan every photograph, but before you pressing the shutter - slow down. Your photographer should check the composition, angle, and lighting? Is this the right moment? Not just take what is given. A photographer can bend what he sees before you into a shape you wish for, altering how it is perceived, and making it your own.

This way you will end up with a unique and beautiful memory built from images made especially for the purpose...

Adam Szczepanski - Wedding Photographer London

Bush Hill Park Wedding Photography | Emma and Zoe

Bush Hill Park Wedding Photography | Emma and Zoe

Osterley Park House Wedding Photographer | Sindu + Pav

Osterley Park House Wedding Photographer

Defining Your Photographic Style or Signature

Defining Your Photographic Style

Things to consider when developing a signature photographic style and defining and long lasting portfolio.

Photographers spend a great deal of time on the web viewing the work of professional or amateur photographers for ideas and inspiration. What you will discover is that there are a lot of very mediocre images out there and a great deal of this is due to a “lack of style.”

This should get you thinking, how can I improve on my photos? A potential solution is to develop your own image style or signature look!

So what is this style thing then? Think of it as a signature. There are many photographers out there who possess easily recognizable signatures to their photos. Ansel Adams, Jeff Ascough, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Jerry Ghionis are a few easily identifiable by looking at their photos simply because they have a look uniquely their own – their signature or style.

Why is this important? Many photographers labour long and hard to figure out who, and what is their focus in photography. You hear photographers speak about their specialisation or genre in terms such as “Wedding Photographer”, “Wildlife Photographer”, “Portrait Photographer”, etc. and it is important to specialise and focus on a particular field of photography. However, most photographers take a wide variety of photographs outside their specialty for fun or necessity. In the end though, if you specialise then at most of your photography time should be focused on that area.

Specialisation is important but is it enough? Many photographers stop at this point when defining their work and leave out that most important aspect – generating a distinctive image style of their own. Images may well be cleaned up, colour adjusted, and ‘Photoshopped’ and in the end each photo is completely different from the others leaving the viewer with no sense of a present or emerging style from the photographer.

Cliveden House Hotel Wedding Photographer | Caroline + Daniel

Cliveden House Hotel Wedding Photographer