Wedding photography tips

Weddings are special. It is a beautiful moment when two people decide to live together. Everybody comes well dressed, in normal situations the two people who decide to live together are very happy.

The usual wedding program – Wedding photography tips

The usual wedding program is different everywhere.
Here in Hungary usually goes like this:
1. Time before the celebration
2. Best mens and womens come into the scene
3. Small kids coming with flowers and the wedding ring.
4. The bride is coming usually with her father. The groom usually at his place from the beginning
5. Ceremony, cermon
6. Vows They tell each other how they feel, what they promise
7. Ring on the fingers
8. End everybody started to walk out of the scene in a reversed order.
9. Photos together
10. Photos separately just the couple, preferably at some nice place.

How the most typical wedding photography kit looks like?

The most typical wedding photography kit looks like this in Hungary:
Canon 5d mk 2 camera body, Canon 24-70 Mk I lens, external flash
also can be Canon 24-70 f4 L is lens.
If the photographer has more income can be Canon 1 Dx or Canon 5d Mk 3 with possible the Canon 24-70 f/2.8 Mk II lens.
This is most typical, doesn’t mean you cannot make wedding pictures with Nikon cameras. The Nikon kit looks like the same:
Nikon d610 or Nikon d4 or Nikon d3+Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 and perhaps the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 Vr lens.

Prime lenses

Prime lenses can give very special taste for your wedding photography. Although many wedding photographer doesn’t use prime lenses at all, prime lenses has better picture quality, better contrast and many times the pictures has a special ‘feel’ to it. The typical prime lenses used in the wedding are the popular 50mm and 85mm lenses available at more manufacturers. If we don’t want to use flash f/1.4 lenses are preferred. Some current Sigma lenses has excellent performance wide open even at f/1.4 or f/1.8.

General advices

1. Have a spare equipment with anything: cameras, lenses, flash unit, etc.
2. Get a program how the event is going, what happened next, etc.
3. Stay close to the couple. Much easier to make nice photos.
4. If you not sure about yourself better to be a second photographer, it is sometimes once in a lifetime event not a good place to learn photography.
5. Practice. Try all situations make photos to be sure in yourself if this is what you want to do.
6. Use equipments what you learn very much and sure about the results.
7. Try to capture feelings when people happy, their eyes are sparkling, etc.
8. Make enough photos that you can through away not so good ones.
9. Don’t keep photos when people presented in unfavorable situations.
10. Full frame.
11. Raw format.
12. Post processing

What kind of photos to make?

1. Photos about the couple only preferably at a nice place, during the ceremony, vows, and any situation
2. Photos about the couple with family members, friends
3. Photos about ring placement, and vows
4. Photos about the event, usually wide angle shots.
5. Photos about the party after the official ceremony.

Tips about the photos:

1. High key pictures. If the bride is in white, it is a good chance to try some high key photos. What does it mean? High key photos are usually contains light colours little perhaps overexposed.
2. Group photos with best mens or women, make pictures when the best men hold the fiancé or the bride, or ask everybody to jump. Other idea is to make pictures with unusual views from below for example when everybody looks downwards.
3. Use telephoto lenses for some of the shots. The 70-200mm lenses or 85mm portrait lenses allows you to blur the background.
4. Make some black and white pictures. Black and white pictures has a very nice taste you need to practice to make high quality ones.
5. If the wedding has a special colour for example blue, you can make pictures in photoshop where only the blue colour apperar in the picture apart from black and white.
6. Make close pictures about rings, table decoration, smiling people together, champagne glasses, people dancing on the party.
7. Go around before the supper, and makes pictures about groups of people sit together.
8. If you have time make photos of everything what is beautiful.