I wanted to take a few minutes to write a post about what I have encountered over the past year in increasing numbers.  Don’t get me wrong, I am glad everyone is excited about capturing pictures of special moments in their lives.  It is a lot of fun to do and everyone wants to preserve special moments.  This blog is more for guests at weddings as well as information for any bride and groom.   DSLR’s are becoming very popular and are increasingly easy to use.  iPhones can take some pretty amazing images as well.  I debated whether or not to post some images of what I have encountered and how it affects the bride and grooms coverage for the day but there is no way to do it without calling attention to particular individuals and I do not feel comfortable doing this. I will have some examples for my potential clients that I will show them at initial consultations.

What has been happening is my crew and I will set up near the back of the isles during a ceremony so we do not obstruct guest’s views of the ceremony and during the procession I will usually be crouched down in front of the parents to capture everyone coming down the aisle. Guests have been stepping out or leaning out into the aisle to capture images of everyone including the bride coming down the aisle as well as ring exchanges and the first kiss.  When this happens, guess what?  That guest is in the image.  My clients have paid several thousand dollars for me to cover their wedding day and they definitely do not want a guest at the most inappropriate times to appear in their images.  Please be very aware that what you are doing is causing your good friend/family member to not have the beautiful image that they have hired me to capture.  I hate to say it, but this behavior is very selfish.   Please, unplug yourself from your phones during the ceremony.  Please turn off your cameras and set them in the floor in front of you during the ceremony.  Engage in your friends/family member’s special day.  Do not ruin it by being in all of their key photo opportunities that they have hired a professional to capture for them and paid a lot of money for.  I can’t edit you out.  There are no “do overs” with weddings.

Another problem is the formals.  We have a very limited time frame to do these.  When family members have pulled out their cameras to take images as well of the groupings, I end up with subjects looking in 5 different directions instead of towards my camera.  It is confusing and chaotic for the subjects.  The formals end up with at least one subject looking away from my camera.  All of my brides and grooms are going to have images from the wedding that will be available to everyone.  My clients receive a disc.  The guests can also order prints online.  They are available through my website under the client view tab. The password is always the grooms last name.

I felt the need to blog about this because it is happening too often now.  Please be considerate to the bride and groom, enjoy their very special day.  Stay out of the aisles during the ceremony. Don’t jump in front of the photographer during the cake cutting, toasts, first dance and garter/bouquet toss.  The hard truth is unless you are a professional, your images will not compare to what the hired photographer will capture.  If you are a professional attending a friend/family members wedding, leave your gear at home.  As a professional, you know  you do not like another professional showing up to your job and taking images that you were hired to capture.  Everyone please be respectful to the bride and groom.

Here is a great link to a post about “unplugged” weddings with some images of what I am describing.  http://offbeatbride.com/2011/06/unplugged-wedding

One of the things I like to talk to brides and grooms about is how to have better images on your wedding day.  There are several things to remember:

*While walking down the isle, hold your bouquet waist level.  You want your bouquet waist level in most of your images.   This tip is for the bride as well as the brides maids.

*When you have your first kiss, hold the kiss for 3 or 4 seconds to ensure I have several opportunities to capture that kiss.  Also, make sure you are touching each other.  If hands are straight to your side, it does not look right in the image.  You loose the warmth of that first kiss.  Hold hands or hold each other.  Groom can touch brides face, just make sure you both make a connection with your hands on each other when you kiss.

*During your images of just the two of you, the same applies, hug, snuggle, touch each others faces.  I tend to shoot a lot of candid shots so they look more natural of the two of you interacting.

*Be natural, even when I pose you, I will ask you to stand how you normally do when talking to someone then I will adjust a few things if it is a formal image.

*Be ready early so we have plenty of time to take pictures of you with your brides maids and grooms men.  Be prepared for a few images of getting ready.  Groom and grooms men, I tend to like to capture images of details, grooms shoes, cuff links, tie, before they are on.  I will enter the room once you have dressed in your tux pants and have your shirts on.  I do like to capture images of people helping the groom finish with putting on the cuff links and helping with the tie. Your dad, brother or friend’s putting on your coat, mom pinning your boutonniere.   Brides and brides maids, time with you getting ready will include capturing images of hair and makeup being done, details of your dress, shoes, bouquet, your girls helping you put on your dress, lace up, button up or zip.  Garter being put on, Mom, sister or friend’s helping put on your jewelry and shoes.  Then I take formals and informals of the bride with her parents, family, her brides maids and the grooms men.  After that, I take the groom and do formals and informals of the groom with his parents, family, his grooms men and the brides maids.  Everything else is done after the wedding.  Allowing time for this will get you to your reception much faster.  Always remember, the venue/church sanctuary typically wants us out of there 30 minutes before the ceremony so that means 90 minutes before the ceremony, I need to be starting your formal pictures.  So, if you think it will take 1 hour to get ready, then you need to be at the church 2 1/2 hours before your wedding begins.  Otherwise, we will be trying to do a lot of images between your ceremony and reception.  There will be no time to get some fun creative shots.

Being a wedding photographer, this is something near and dear to my heart.  Whether you use my studio or another for your wedding photography needs, I am hoping to provide you with some insight to help you make your decision.  The first link below breaks my heart and prompted me to address this in my blog.  I have had phone calls in the past from brides that are trying to re-create some moments to photograph because of a poor decision they made when hiring their photographer.    At the end of this, there is a link posted for a client that took their wedding photographer to court. Sorry for all the daytime drama banter on Judge Joe Browns show but this is a really good reason to understand why you want to  investigate your potential wedding photographer and make sure you are confident in their knowledge.  I know this is hard when you are not a photographer and do not know how the cameras work, their limitations, the technical data.  One thing you can do, is to look at their entire portfolio, view at least 2 or 3 entire weddings for their past clients, just not their “best of” that is on their blog and website.  Ask to see large prints.  I have 16×20’s and larger in my studio to view.  You want to see a very sharp photograph, not something that is somewhat soft in the focus.  Research what good camera gear is for wedding photographers. I will provide some links on here for you to do this.  A well educated couple is going to be a happy couple when they receive their images.  You also want to ask your photographer if they carry liability insurance, do they have a sales tax I.D. and ask to see their business license.  Keep in mind that some rural communities that are unincorporated do not require a business license nor do they offer them.  Most cities do though.

I know a lot of brides and grooms are on tight budgets in this economy.  Try not to shop based on price but rather, quality.  Obviously, you have a budget you need to conform to.  But be realistic.  If you only have $500.00 – $800.00 to spend for your wedding photographer, you will be a very lucky person if you receive high quality photography. You may need to rethink your budget or realign your expectations of quality.  Think about possibly less time coverage by your photographer, can you do without the getting ready images. Do you want just the ceremony and formals.  Do you need your photographer for the entire reception or just through the traditions like first dance, cake cutting, bouquet and garter toss. You have to be realistic with your budget and what you want.  Consider a Friday for your wedding date.  A lot of photographers will offer smaller coverage collections on Fridays.  Your images are your legacy to give to your children.  When my grandparents and great grandparents were married, wedding photography consisted of just 1 or 2 images and they were usually a formal shot of the bride and groom.  When my parents got married, they actually splurged on a wedding photographer in the early 60’s.  There are only about 20 images or so but I love looking through them.  My children love looking through my images from my wedding in 1985.  I splurged on my photographer.  My album has 12 – 8×10’s in it and I bought the proofs – all 45 of them that were taken.  The paper and ink was high quality, the photographer was very good and my images are not faded, they are as colorful as the day I received them and they are crisp.  This is back in the film day.  In this day and age, you are so lucky to be able to have a well documented wedding day with some very intimate images of your grandparents as well as parents interacting with family members and friends.  The general style of photography now has a candid, photo-journalistic feel to it.  There are some posed family portraits and some posed formal’s of the two of you but also a lot of you just in action with your family and friends enjoying your special day.  You want a photographer that blends in.  Most of my clients tell me they forget I am even there.  That is how it should be.  I am hired to document your day and watch it unfold, always looking to capture your natural moments and emotions.  Some gentle guidance sometimes happens but for the most part, it is your day and documented naturally. You have an amazing story book available to you now that can be designed personally for you full of images that flow together telling in a beautiful way, the events of your day.  Your children and grand children will flip through those pages someday and feel like they were actually there.  Educate yourself and then experience through the years what a good photographer can do for you to invoke memories that will bring you right back to your wedding day.  Your food, your decor, your guests, all the fun and the intimacy two families experience when they come together  to celebrate the beginning of a new family!

So here is the link for the Judge Joe episode and once again, I apologize for some of the daytime drama – but the judge makes some very good points.  He happened to be a photographer back in his day so it is really great to see him question the photographer who obviously has no knowledge of how their gear even works!  

http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/avoiding-wedding-photography-lawsuits-and-upset-clients/

The link at the bottom of the page is a  great read to educate yourself about the proper equipment your photographer should be using when photographing your wedding.  It only covers Cannon and Nikon but there are also other great manufacturers, some of which is covered by responses at the end of the article I provided below.  I have linked my gear I use as well so you can look at it or if you are an aspiring photographer, you can purchase them.  I  use Nikon gear and hav a Nikon D700 for my primary body.  It came out after this article was written.  It is what they call a full frame body.  I do have a Nikon D300S as my backup body.  I also have these lenses 17-35mm f/2.8, 24-70mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8 (the first three are my main lenses and I have back up lenses made by Tamron of the equivalent 3 main lenses. I carry back up gear for in case of a gear failure, it can happen, I don’t want to be dead in the water at a wedding and ruin someones special day. The photographer you hire really needs to have backup equipment.  I also carry  85mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8 and a 105mm f/2.8 macro lens.  I own all of these.  I have lots of speed lights, I own Alien Bee studio lighting that I sometimes bring to weddings depending on the conditions, otherwise, I use my speed lights (flash) but off camera set up with one speed light on camera as the master light that I bounce off of walls. For triggering my lights I have a CyberCync system as well as a Radio Poppers System.  Obviously, you can have all of this gear and not know how to use it.  I am  an instructor with Portrait Photography Group Find out how your potential wedding photographer learned their craft.  You don’t necessarily need a degree in photography to learn photography and be a great photographer.  In fact, if you are wanting to be a wedding photographer, a degree in business is much more suitable since most photographers are also the ones that run their business. I provide my clients with high quality prints and albums from a lab that only works with professional photographers.  I do not use anywhere else to print.  I would never provide prints from Wal-Mart or a local drug store.  The ink and paper can be inferior and even more important, their lab techs do not always know what they are really doing resulting in colors that are not natural or the wrong hue. You don’t have good consistency. You as a client are paying good money and should receive high quality prints.   Obviously, editing has a lot to do with color correction but your lab also plays a large role in correct color hues.

Does your photographer scout out your wedding venue/church? I always  scout out the location if it is local before the wedding.  If it is not local, I am there the night before for your ceremony rehearsal.  I always speak with the pastor that is performing your ceremony about 1 month out from your date to go over what I am allowed to do.  I am always respectful of their rules.  I do have fast enough lenses and a camera body that is good in low light so that I can shoot without flash if that is a rule.   These are all things you want to know of your wedding photographer.  Please educate yourself! Here is the link for helping you research. Read through the whole thing.  As I said above, this article only covers Cannon and Nikon.  There are other great manufacturers as well.  Some of the responders have talked about the other manufacturers.  Cannon and Nikon seem to be the most used but that does not mean they are the only ones that are adequate.

Here is your link to start researching.  You can go from there and find all kinds of information on the web.  This is a great place to start though:

http://photo.net/learn/wedding/equipment

One of the best things you can do for yourself to free up your time planning your wedding as well as relieve a lot of stress is to hire a wedding planner.  There are many levels offered now from day of planning – which I highly recommend as a bare minimum.  It will make your wedding day run smoothly.  You will not have to worry about anything because they are in charge of making sure all of the vendors are scheduled to come in at the appropriate time, they will keep your entire day on track. This will give you the peace of mind to enjoy every aspect of your special day and not have to worry about anything.  Wedding planners also offer entire planning, month before, and week before.  On my website, you can find a tab that says “info” that will have  a drop down menu.  Located in the drop down menu is a link that says “vendor links” you can find some links to wedding planners on that page.  Click here to be redirected to my website: Ann’s Photography There are other professional vendors located there as well.

The best advice I can give a potential Bride and Groom is to be ready early the day of your wedding in order to have time to get those very special pictures you are looking for. The earlier you are ready, the more time we have to get formals done before the ceremony as well as some individual pictures of the bride and groom, pictures of the bride and her party as well as the groom and his party before the wedding ceremony so that after the ceremony, all we need is the formal pictures with the bride and groom together. Then we can set some special time aside for the Bride and Groom with me to capture those photo’s you want that take your breath away. This will also ensure we get you to your reception as quickly as possible. At the reception, we need another 15 minutes or so after you are done mingling with your guests to get a few more special photographs outside at the reception area. This can be done after the first dance, cutting of the cake and toasts. While your guests are dancing, we will sneak away for a few minutes. This would hold true for any photographer to capture the exceptional images you are looking for so please keep this in mind while planning your special day.