How to Get the Best Photography for Your Wedding Day 3

Here comes the third and final part in my series of arti­cles on How to get the best wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy on your day! Did you read the other chap­ters already? Oth­er­wise, click here to go back to Part 1: How to find the wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher for you. Or click here to go to Part 2: How to pre­pare your­self for the pho­tog­ra­phy on your day.

Since you’ve been doing a lot of plan­ning and com­mu­ni­cated with your pho­tog­ra­pher well before­hand, your day should run really smoothly when it finally comes. You can relax, and don’t have to worry about what the pho­tog­ra­pher is doing — If you’ve been meet­ing up for chats, seen the venue together, shared your ideas and brain storm­ing and per­haps had an engage­ment shoot to get used to the cam­era as well, then you should be on the same wave­length about the pho­tog­ra­phy. Here fol­lows a few sug­ges­tions on what to think about on your day, to get those shots that you’ve been hop­ing and plan­ning for:

1: Advice on any changes
If for some rea­son there has been a last minute change to the itin­er­ary, let the pho­tog­ra­pher know early on so that there aren’t any mis­un­der­stand­ings later on dur­ing your day.

2: Take sug­ges­tions from the pho­tog­ra­pher
No one can fore­tell exactly what will hap­pen on your day. All the plan­ning that you have been doing should be treated more like a can­vas where things can take place — so do go with sud­den sug­ges­tions from the pho­tog­ra­pher. For exam­ple: On your actual day, your pho­tog­ra­pher might see the per­fect light or com­po­si­tion for a shot which obvi­ously couldn’t have been fore­told. For exam­ple, dur­ing the bridal prepa­ra­tions, your pho­tog­ra­pher might request to move your dress, shoes or any other details to make a shot more inter­est­ing, or he / she might sug­gest that you move in to a bet­ter spot for the get­ting ready shots, because the light and space is bet­ter. (Par­tic­u­larly if your pho­tog­ra­pher is of an edi­to­r­ial style — some pho­tog­ra­phers who are sin­cerely reportage in style, might not inter­fere at all)

3: How much direc­tion from your pho­tog­ra­pher?
How much influ­ence your pho­tog­ra­pher will have, is some­thing that you would have decided on in advance. If you are some­one who wants your pho­tog­ra­pher to stay in the back­ground and be totally unob­tru­sive all day, you have prob­a­bly booked a pho­tog­ra­pher who is rigidly a reportage/photojournalist pho­tog­ra­pher. This means that they will pho­to­graph things as they are with­out mov­ing any­thing or direct­ing you, but still look for com­po­si­tions and expose for the light cor­rectly. If on the other hand you want to have a per­sonal por­trait ses­sion on your day or a bridal party group shoot, you are prob­a­bly look­ing for an edi­to­r­ial pho­tog­ra­pher. Edi­to­r­ial pho­tog­ra­phy doesn’t mean posed and stiff pho­tog­ra­phy, it can still look nat­ural and relaxed like the reportage style, but some shots have been set up — so to get the best angle, best light, inter­est­ing loca­tion and com­po­si­tion. An impor­tant thing to remem­ber if you want these edi­to­r­ial shots is that it does demand a bit of time.

4: Give your pho­tog­ra­pher time for shots
If you want to have those relaxed and gor­geous cou­ple shots or per­haps a really funky and fun shoot with your brides maids and grooms men, then shoot­ing time for this is good to have planned in advance, so that it already is in the itin­er­ary. If you con­sult your pho­tog­ra­pher before your day, you will know how much time to set aside to achieve the shots you want — it can be 10 min­utes or 30 min­utes or an hour — all depend­ing on what kind of shots you are after.

5: Your pho­tog­ra­pher might require time for tech­ni­cal rea­sons
Some­times the pho­tog­ra­pher might need a bit of time for “all that tech­ni­cal stuff”. It could be that he/she might have to change to a dif­fer­ent lens, change mem­ory card or bat­tery, or set up an off cam­era flash… So it can be a a good idea to warn the pho­tog­ra­pher if any big moments are sud­denly to take place such as throw­ing the bou­quet, cake cut­ting or first dance. An idea is to have a chief brides­maid or best man who occa­sion­ally seeks out the pho­tog­ra­pher and make sure that he/she knows that these big moments are about to happen.

5: Share your sud­den inspi­ra­tion
Don’t be afraid to tell the pho­tog­ra­pher if you sud­denly have an idea on your day, or see some­thing that you really want a shot of, or if you realize that there are some rel­a­tives you haven’t seen in years that you just must have pic­tures of. It’s your day and the pho­tog­ra­pher is there to cap­ture it.

6: Chill out and relax and enjoy!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of arti­cles and that they give you some inspi­ra­tion in your hunt for fan­tas­tic wed­ding pho­tog­ra­phy for your day!

Text and pho­tog­ra­phy by: Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Louise Bjorling

Go back to Part 1: How to find the wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher for you.
Or click here to go to Part 2: How to pre­pare your­self for the pho­tog­ra­phy on your day.