Trust Your Photographer!
This point more hits on resting your trust in your photographer for their creativity. They are going to do everything they can/know how to do to give you exactly the work that you’ve seen from them in the past and always have your best interests in mind! For example, it truly helps when you trust your photographers vision when it comes to locations. Luckily for all couples, wedding photographers have an innate ability to take something seemingly ordinary and create something not only extraordinary but unique! Of course, you should definitely get the photos at your venue’s hotspots or have that one right of passage wedding photo everyone has if that’s what you truly want! But it also never hurts to let your photographer create something unique for you!
They also want to make you look and feel like your most authentic selves. Because of that, they have a flow of posing and directing that is also going to be unique to their style and that is going to serve you best! After all, they take that approach at nearly every session and that’s more than likely why you loved their work!
Lighting!
Ah, lighting. The one thing that photographers are constantly looking at and the the thing that most normal people could in no way understand our obsession with it. But let’s be honest, good lighting = good photos. But bad lighting can still make good photos. Good photos are the photos that you print and hang in your home because they make you feel something. That being said, some lighting decisions aren’t possible to make whether it be a venue constraint, budget constraint, or even if you just simply forget because planning a wedding is one of the most largest feats known to man. Well, maybe no entirely but it’s extremely time consuming.
We went ahead and showed the different types of scenarios we need certain types of lighting in to show you what photographers tend to thrive in!
Getting Ready Space Lighting
Getting ready is always a wonderful time to capture some of the most intimate moments of the day. You’re with your closest people and getting ready to celebrate one of most exciting days in your life…there are going to be some great moments during that time. Because of that, we find ourselves spending a lot of time in the getting ready spaces. We always recommend the getting ready space be a place where you feel comfortable, yourself and for the sake of photos, a space that has lots of windows and natural light flooding in! This also works great for your hair and makeup artists as they LOVE natural light as well!
Pro Tips: Airbnbs and VRBOs often work great for this if you venue doesn’t provide much of that space! Those also work great because you can easily hide the clutter from getting ready in those bigger spaces – and that clutter won’t show up a photo of you putting your dress on 😉
Ceremony and Reception Lighting
So it’s pretty obvious that not everyone can get married outside. If it’s mid August in Louisiana or January in NYC, then it may not make sense to do that. However, photographers seem to thrive in soft (or shady) natural light for ceremonies. It’s not that most can’t handle artificial lighting but it really does help when we don’t have to pop on that obnoxious flash or make your ceremony photos super duper grainy.
Now before your panic, there are are ways to work around getting married outside and still get beautiful ceremony photos! We’ve actually shot in some beautiful indoor locations that had some great lighting! One of the biggest tips we’ve given people is to look for places that have bright and consistent orange light. For example, you know those places with the string lights that hang everywhere from the ceiling and they create that big soft orange glow in a room? Bingo. That type of light also work incredibly well for receptions!
Another thing that helps is to simple ask your photographer in the event you have different ceremony spot options. A pretty location can easily be not as pretty with bad lighting.
As for the rest of the parts of the day, every photographer is different in what they like! But it usually comes to no surprise that a photographer will want to shoot in soft dreamy light or golden hour! So letting your photographer find the best light for other parts of the day will more than likely give you better photos on the back end!
Have an Unplugged Wedding
This one has always been a big debate among many people and it’s easy to see why. After all, many family members think that taking photos at your wedding is a right of passage. We get it, they’re super excited for you both! However, when most photographers are shooting a wedding, we also want to shoot your guests that are part of the day! They’re part of your story and it’s always much more pleasing for you to look back and see your Uncle Bob looking at you with a gleam in his eye rather than a cell phone in his face. Or worse…his camera that he bought on craigslist to photograph birds.
Some ways we’ve seen an unplugged wedding “enforced” (we use that word lightly, because it’s really coming from good intentions) is to simply have your officiant make a polite reminder to your guests about being present in your wedding, refraining from cell phone/camera use and that they’ll all have access to the photos the professional photographer takes afterwards.
People …let me tell you. This works nearly every time. People can pretend to not see your “unplugged wedding” sign. They can’t pretend to not hear the announcement. 😉
The Last and Most Important One…BE YOURSELVES.
Let’s just pretend there isn’t a photographer following you around all day. Let’s pretend it’s the ONE day that you should 100% unapologetically be yourselves and not hold one ounce of emotion back. We get it, it’s hard when there’s a camera around to fully be at ease. That’s why we, along with other photographers, really do try to create a space for our couples to be vulnerable. Now, vulnerability doesn’t mean you have to share your deepest darkest secrets with us. But it’s being willing to completely be yourself in front of the camera. We’re simply here to capture you both in your entirety and there’s never a front or different version of you that we need to see.
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