You want great wedding photographs? Follow these simple tips. (Part 3)
It’s been a while (can’t blog when busy shooting weddings), but here is the third instalment in the guide.
THINK ABOUT THE LIGHT
So you’ve just got engaged and you’re now thinking of when to get married. For me it was an open diary. There was nothing that it had to fit around, so when we did chose a date it was out of school holiday time, which saved us money on the honeymoon, but it also meant that the sun wouldn’t be as high in the sky. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to have the sun, but didn’t want it to be as high in the sky as it would be in mid June or July. Being right at the end of August meant that the we had strong possibility of sun, but that it would be that little bit lower in the sky warming up the photographs a little bit. This gave the photographer more opportunities and also allowed the light to enter the church at a nicer angle. Maybe this was a little trivial, but I got the results that I wanted.
Now you might want to get married at a certain time of year for other reasons and that’s okay, as not only is the time of year something to think about, you need to think about what time of day you are getting married too. The light changes constantly throughout the day, casting shadows in different directions which will either help or hinder the photographers task. Photographers love working with light…its what makes the good ones really tick, so if you’re getting married in winter remember that you only have a few hours of daylight and what light you do have will be muted. Having a 4pm wedding in December will mean that all of your photographs will be shot using artificial light such as flash. A church is often very dark and the windows are small. Choosing a time of day that allows as much light as possible to enter the room will help your photographer get far better photographs. There is only so much that a photographer can do without resorting to using flash (which is often frowned upon and banned during the ceremonies anyhow).
THINK ABOUT THE CEREMONY
The ceremony….technically the most important part of your day. Without it you’re just having a really big party!!
I alluded to it above that there are often restrictions on using flash during a ceremony, I’m afraid this isn’t the end of the restrictions and some (too many if you ask me) registrars, vicars, priests will not allow any photography at all or will make the photographer sit at the back missing lots of the expressions and emotions that you will have if they were at the front. You need to speak to whoever is in charge of performing the ceremony and find out what restrictions, if any, are to be placed on the photographer. There is nothing worse photographer not being allowed to do his or her job, because there are restriction. another personal bugbear is when all of the guests are holding up their cameras, smartphones and (even worse) their tablet computers to get a photograph of you walking down the aisle. Ask them politely, maybe it can be done on the order of service, that they refrain from taking photographs and leave it the professional. At the end of the day you haven’t invited them for their photographic skills!
Part 4 is available here. If you’d like to meet with Andrew to discuss your requirements you can arrange an appointment through his enquiry form here.
If you missed any of the earlier blogs in this series they can be found in the links below.
