Wedding Photography page 2

3 Camera Settings
You’ll need to vary your settings to suit the conditions. During the ceremony you’ll probably need to raise the ISO to 400 or higher to shoot without flash. In high-contrast light you’ll need to be careful with white wedding dresses and dark suits, one of which can easily lose detail if your exposure isn’t spot on. The best insurance is to shoot in RAW format, with its greater latitude. Take a mid-tone light reading and check your LCD regularly. The flashing overexposure warning of many cameras may be helpful but it’s only a guide.

4 Be a poser
A good wedding shoot should be a mix of both posed and candid shots. The posed shots present the best opportunities to make sure everyone looks good in the shots and, for example, the bride’s dress is shown in its full glory.  Don’t keep guests waiting too long while you do them – they’ll soon become irritable. Shoot a few key groups too, as a record of everyone who was there (it’s easy to miss people using the reportage approach). Be clear and decisive in your instructions so guests know what’s required. Pose them quickly and don’t faff with the camera.

5 Candidly speaking
While a few posed shots are important, it’s best to keep them to a minimum and spend more time on semi-posed and unposed candid shots, which are less disruptive to the day and better convey the atmosphere and emotion of the event. Make sure you record the key events, such as the bride arriving; guests throwing confetti; tossing the bouquet. Use the wider end of your zoom and get close to create a sense of intimacy. But also try zooming in to telephoto and using a wide aperture to isolate small groups and individuals from the background.   

6 Photoshop tweaks
If you’ve done a good job of shooting you shouldn’t need to spend much time on the PC. Obviously if you shot them in RAW there will be the standard processing to do: adjusting contrast, colour and so forth.  A few shots may benefit from a tighter crop, or the removal of the odd distracting background element. In some high-contrast shots you may find that a small adjustment of the Highlight/Shadow control (under Image>Adjustments in Photoshop) will increase detail in highlights (eg the bride’s dress) and shadows (dark suits) . This is the time to edit your shoot. You will have probably taken many dozens of pictures, and there’s no point handing over photos of people blinking and so forth.

5 proudly presents
In days of yore a newly married couple would receive their precious photos mounted in a thick leather album, but nowadays there are many alternatives. The album is still a great way to present pictures but you can also have them made into a hardback book. If you can display the images on a website or online gallery the guests will probably order some prints too. Depending on whether this is a commercially motivated venture, you could put them on a site such as Photobox, where guests can order and pay for their own shots, or a simple gallery, where they must order through you.  Another option is a DVD slideshow, with music – but only in addition to printed output, not instead of it.