How to get the best out of your wedding photographs.

Want to get the best out of your wedding photographs?

Do you want to get the best out of your wedding photographs? Sometimes it is easy to see why you ain’t quite as happy with your wedding photos as you thought you’d be!

Contrary to popular belief, photographing a wedding is not an easy job. It’s way more than turning up at a wedding, taking photos and getting paid lots of money. There is so much that goes on behind your wedding photos that most clients will never know about.

I’ll keep this short and sweet. In this short post, I’m going to tell you how to get the absolute best out of your wedding photographer.

Lets begin.

JUST RELAX!!

Chances are you’ve hired your wedding photographer because you like their style. Chances are if they have a website, with images you love, they have a long track record with wedding photography. They know what they’re doing and theres no need to micromanage to make sure they’re doing their jobs.

KEEP THE GROUP SHOTS SIMPLE!

This is the part of the wedding everybody hates. Especially if you decide to get married in the spring, autumn or winter seasons. It can be long drawn out process trying to round everyone up and can be bloody cold! Keep the groupshot list to about 10 really important images. Handing the photographer a 4 sided list of photos will instantly put a downer on the process.

UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER IS HUMAN AND NEED TO REST TOO

Just think about working at your day job? Would you be just as productive at the end of the day if you had worked all day without any form of break? Now, I’m not going into the debate of if you should feed your photographer or not (theres a LOT of these debates online if you want to do a quick google search) but allowing them time to get their shit together, have a bite to eat, a drink and a little rest will help you get the best images you possibly could!

LIGHT, LIGHT AND MORE LIGHT!!!

The secret recipe to good photography is good light. Candles may look romantic but they are an absolute nightmare to photograph. Even by todays standards with todays camera capabilities, you can tell which images are shot in poor light due to the colour tones and the grain in the images. If you have a large window at your reception venue, consider having the top table to the side or FACING the window. If the window is behind your top table, all the guests will be in shadow, causing more grain and unwanted lens flares in the photographs.

PROVIDE A TIMELINE TO YOUR PHOTOGRAPHER 

There is a little bit of leway when it comes to the timing aspect of some parts of the wedding. If the groupshot list takes longer than expected due to the best man running to the bar for a quick pint, this time usually overlaps things such as the artistic portrait session. If that runs a little late, it usually cuts into the time you get to mingle with your guests before you go in for your meal. However, the Ceremony cannot run late (registrars sometimes perform 2-3 weddings a day) and the food cannot run late. The chef is given a ttime to have the food prepared by. If we’re late, it’s burnt beef and dry yorkshire pud’s for your wedding breakfast! Give your photographer the timeline of the day well in advance so they can come up with a plan of action for the day.

ENJOY YOURSELF

You would be surprised how many people don’t quite grasp this concept. If you’re constantly stressing and micromanaging everything on the day, you wont enjoy yourself. And this clearly shows in your photographs. Amazing photographs start with people who are genuinely living in the moment.

DON’T STRESS

Look, something might go wrong on the day. The florist may have delivered the wrong colour flower, the venue may have some building work going on that they didn’t tell you about and IT MAY RAIN! But do you know what you can do about it on the day? Nothing. If you worry about it, once your wedding is over, do you know what people are going to be talking about? How stressed you were about these tiny things that they wouldn’t have even noticed until you brought it to their attention. Don’t stress, enjoy your day and sort it out if you have to after the wedding. And, to be 100% honest, by the time you wake up the next day, even you will realise how silly it was stressing over it.

THEY WILL GET YOUR PHOTOS READY

The wedding day has been and gone. The only thing is now to receive your wedding photos. A quick email after the wedding to thank your photographer will always be appreciated. Hassling them a week after your wedding, especially during peak wedding season, asking of your photos are ready will only make them not want to look at your wedding photos or even worse, rush to get them ready.

So yes. Thats it.

To get the best out of your wedding photographs, theres not much to it really and when you read it out loud you’ll realise it all makes perfect sense. If you just relax a tiny bit, have trust in the people you’ve hired and really be present in your day. Your photos will turn out amazing and I’m 100% confident in that!

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Speak soon!

Andrew.

To check out my most recent wedding. Pop over to here