shooting life by Jake Chua: 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Shooting for wedding! Continue!

Next will be the Ceremony, this portion among the whole wedding event is considered to be the shortest of all three sections. Majority of the ceremony should be between 20-30 minutes long, which means you have a very tight time frame to capture the whole process! Here are the few things to take note and capture,

1) March in - Communicate with the bride and groom before hand, let them know that they need to walk slower than their normal walking speed and to be smiling at all times. This is important because very likely you will be walking backwards and taking pictures of the bride and groom, so tell the couple to walk slowly if you don't want to trip and fall like the photographer in this video.

2) The table - One of the most challenging moments of the whole event since your subjects are seated, you need to be creative and go for the interesting angles to ensure you shots looks nice. You got to sharpen your senses too and be sure not to miss emotions, so watch out for facial expressions not only from the bride and groom but also from the guests. The next problem you could be facing would be guests walking up and snapping pictures too, you do not want them to be a source of distraction in your picture. What you can do is to fill up your frame, since by tightening your shot you reduce the chances of taking a picture with someone in the background.

3) Details - Yeap details, we are not over with that yet. Like I said before details helps to bring back memories, so this time you got to be looking out for body languages from the couple. Watch out for hand especially, it tells a lot about a person's feeling and thoughts! Don't let your mind tell you that it is foolish and silly to be taking detail shots when you got so little time to work with, feel free to be creative after you got the important shots done!

So if you planned ahead on how to do your shots, a time frame of 20-30 minutes should not be a problem at all. Next week we will conclude with the last portion of the whole wedding event which is the Reception!

Monday, December 20, 2010

Shooting for wedding!

Yo... what's up! This week's photo tips we will talk about a few things to look out for when shooting for a wedding reception. Mainly there are 3 portions to a wedding reception, the pre-ceremony, ceremony and reception. This week we shall look at the pre-ceremony portion and cover the ceremony portion next week.

What I am about to share here is my approach and experience on taking pictures for a wedding, I am sure that you can build on the things that I am going to share and develop a better set of ideas and work flow for yourself!

First of all the pre-ceremony is the time where the bride, the groom and the helpers are preparing for the actual event, pretty much they will be setting up the place and dressing up for the rest of the day. Here are the main things to look out for...

1) Details - This is the best time to capture details of the whole event, things like the reception area, solemnization table, guest books, flowers and many other stuff. Such details are important because it helps to bring back memories of the event when they look at the wedding album 20 or 30 years later! So capture whatever details you can!

2) Make up and dress up time - Most of the time the bride will be the first one to be putting on make up and dressing up for the event, usually it takes up more than an hour. It is time to get artistic since your subject is sitting still and pretty much cannot be moving around, set up some of your shots like placing the gown behind her and taking a picture of the reflection through the mirror or even taking close up shot of the bride with the make up artist working on her face. It is time to get creative! Once the bride is done, do the same thing for the groom!

3) Helpers - While your bride and groom are dressing up, most likely their helpers will be busy setting up the place. Most of the time you will not be staying with the bride and groom through out the dressing up time, you will have to run around getting pictures of the helpers. This is a great time to get shots of the helpers in action since they will not be engage in a lot of activities when the ceremony or reception is on going.

Those are the 3 main things to look out for when you are shooting for the pre-ceremony phase, in the midst of capturing those things do look out for special moments or people engaging in activity and showing happiness!

Friday, December 17, 2010

New Directions! 2011

Yo... what's up! Going through a lot of things in my mind, mainly concerning how to go about getting more fans for me Facebook for the new year LOL (NOT!). Just kidding. Some changes like the phototips section on my website, probably going to shift it to my blog instead since its faster and easier to make changes and increase the content of it. Probably going to include some behind the scenes video or picture in the blog too, instead of posting the same stuff that is already on my website and Facebook.

Probably a good way to let people get to know more about me!

Change for the better 2011!