Planning for the Wedding Day (continued from here)

The Wedding Photographer’s Handbook really opened my eyes to the amount of planning that the pros put into a wedding shoot. Hurter recommends talking to the flourist, the caterer, DJ, etc before the event. He also suggests studying the wedding gown from a fashion and design perspective to achieve an awareness of what details to shoot. And perhaps most importantly, visit the location prior to the ceremony at around the same time of day to get a feel for the lighting. This is serious stuff!

I didn’t have time for the detailed in-depth prepartions recommend in the book, but I did visit the setting about 24 hours before the actual wedding ceremony. I took pictures of locations that I thought would work for group shots, and I made mental notes of how the shadows were falling, and where to place my flashes. I also studied the lighting using Lighttrac for iPad to see where the sun would be a different times in the day. Read more about this cool app [here].

That night I reviewed my test photos, and organized my shot list. My mom had kindly provided an impossibly long list of requested group shots. My sister and I hacked away at it for a while to make it more reasonable, and I tried to organize the final list by location, hoping to decide ahead of time which shots to take where. This helped a little, but I ended up making several changes on the wedding day because of people camped out in the background of my planned shot areas.

Next: Backing up photos onsite

Group Shots (continued from here)

I’d been to enough weddings to know that there would be a need for lots of group shots. I was sure this would be a challenge. You always see the photog referring to a paper shot list, and in addition to that, there’s always someone yelling at the last minute “oh, let’s get one with uncle Bob!”

And that’s before you get to the technical issues like having enough depth of field to keep everyone in sharp focus, making sure no one’s face is in shadow, and making sure uncle Bob doesn’t have his eyes closed in the shot. Kelby’s book has a couple good tips for these issues too. For groups of people he recommends shooting at f/11 and focusing on the eyes of the person in the first row. Perfect! Practical advice I can use right away without having to trial-and-error my way to the same conclusion. Kelby also mentioned that in group shots someone always has their eyes closed. He recommends telling everyone to close their eyes at the outset, count to 3 and then tell people to open their eyes and smile. This trick works great and has the added benefit of being funny and unexpected – so the smiles are genuine.

Another book that was very helpful was the Wedding Photographer’s Handbook, by Bill Hurter. If you’re shooting your first wedding, you need to read this book. It’s full of practical advice, sample photos, ideas for album layouts, etc. The constant “watch your DoF” reminders were especially helpful. I often use shallow depth of field for creative effect, and I really did need to be reminded of the situations were I’d need to stop down to f/11 or so to get enough DoF for the group shots.

Next time: Planning for the Wedding Day