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!