The Most Important Wedding Photography Tips
You’re planning your dream wedding, putting extensive thought and effort into every minor detail. After-all, it’s going to be a day to remember for the rest of your life. But years from the wedding, all that remains are the moments, emotions and memories captured by your photo and video team.
Aside from hiring a quality photographer, there are numerous steps you can take as a bride to guarantee incredible photos. Steve, from Valen Studios has owned his studio since 2003 and has learned a lot from the imperfections over the years. The following tips are very important to understand, so let’s get to it.
PERSONALITY MATCH
You will deal with the photographer many times before the wedding, certainly for many hours at the wedding, and for many more hours after the wedding. It is vital that you have a great personality match, because if you don't it will make the experience very difficult to deal with. Some photography companies will only allow you to meet your photographer on the day of the wedding, and by then, in my opinion, it's too late to make any changes obviously. meet your photographer before your wedding to make sure you will get along well with a day that is filled with anxiety :-) you want a team player!
TIMING OF THE DAY
Everything takes time on the wedding day. When it starts off with hair and makeup, please allow enough time. Most delays happen at the beginning of the day, and then affect the rest of the day as it goes along. If you lose an hour worth of photography at the beginning of the day it is very difficult, if not impossible to makeup before it starts to get dark out. I highly encourage all of our clients to do a first look. This way you can front load your wedding day with a bunch of images of the couple, the bridal party, and individual pictures way before the ceremony starts. This will then allow less stress when you do the family portraits after the ceremony and still should give you some time to enjoy your cocktail hour. Timing is everything. If you don't have a planner please invest in one as they can help you out with the timing of the day and keep every one of your vendors on task.
GREAT COMMUNICATION
Is your photographer difficult to get a hold of? Do they not reply to emails quickly? These are all problems that will rear its ugly head the closer you get to the wedding day. Professional and high service quality photographers will answer the phone and emails very quickly to reduce stress for the couple. This is so important! Is your photographer on your side? if you are getting red flags or have an uneasy feeling with the communication between you and your photographer, it might be time to move on.
STYLE MATCH
There are several different styles of photography, you like what you like! if you hire a photographer that's a little more edgy and captures vivid colors, but you want the light and airy images that will not be a good match. I have a very specific style, and if I'm asked to shoot a different style I usually turn down the wedding because it will cause nothing but problems the day of and certainly after the wedding when the images that you've received are not what you were looking for. You cannot re-shoot a wedding. Make sure your styles match! Look deep into their portfolios not just the best of images. Take the time now so you don't regret it later.
IMPORTANT IMAGE LIST
I tell my couples all the time that I take my business incredibly serious, even though my sense of humor is my most powerful attribute. If I let anyone down for any reason I do not sleep well at night. (And I sleep very well at night!) This is because we have conversations and open communication and most importantly we talked about expectations and how we are going to meet those expectations. The wedding shot list is important to go over so we don't miss anything that is important to the couple. I remember one wedding in particular, the bride and groom loved everything that we did, love the images, love the experience, got tons of compliments and everything that makes for a great experience. But, she mentioned to me that there was one problem, and it was that we did not take a picture of her aunt who flew in special from Las Vegas to attend her wedding. She forgot on the wedding day and I did not know that this was an important picture. This allows me to tell you the story so that way you can learn that if there are some unusual combinations make sure they are written down before the wedding so that on the wedding day you can just go to that list and make sure you get all those unusual but very important pictures. Another side note would be the potential combinations of family pictures is really unlimited, but due to time restraints we do have to narrow them down to what is really the most important. Really think about this list as well.
Red flags are important to recognize and address. Follow your gut and fix problems before the wedding that you can't fix after.
These tips were provided by:
Valen Studios (Steve Nielsen)
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