Perfect Wedding Photography

There are one more important issue that need to be talked. Even if your friend agrees to take the pictures for you; it will not be free for him/her. Your friend will have to spend several hours both training and reading, he will also need to buy new equipment for the session. It might be you come to a cheaper option if your friend thinks it’s a potential for him/her to start a new business.

But your friend will spend a large amount of time, and most likely money for equipment. Hence it might be you have to compensate at least some of the expenses.

Another thing is that he/she is your friend. They are not a professional, hence there should be made an agreement where you both agree on terms which are acceptable for both of you. It should be understood in the agreement that your friend is an amateur; and can therefore not be responsible for not having professional pictures, it is also not a guarantee he can give you the exact pictures you discuss before taking it. But the bride and the groom should also have some expectance to the quality.

Just make sure you have an agreement, write it as complicated or simple as you want too, but make sure it’s an agreement that will not distort your friendship if something should happened. It’s better to hire a professional photographer if you are going to keep it personal and distort a great friendship over small mistakes that might happen. Of course it should be set some requirement to what your friend have to practice an exercise. It might be a requirement he does training in both light and darkness, that he get training from a professional, it might be requirement to read specific book and exercise according to them. It might be requirement to bring backup to equipment and so on. Your friend should not be lazy and irresponsible, and should preferably document training he have had by writing and showing you pictures he have made from his training.

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It the last posting I briefly gave some advice for the photographer. We are now going to continue a bit on it.

As I have mentioned during the planning stage; the photographer should prepare on the locations, and events; this also includes that the photographer should, if possible, go to the locations and familiarize them-selves with the location. To learn what is going to happened where; where is the best part to be placed to catch moments. This might also include visualize the future mentally to know where to be placed for best results.

It might also be wise to have a second shooter to catch the reaction to the guests, while the main photographer put his focus to catch the main events. The second shooter will mainly be focusing at getting those small, unseen moments. To catch those small moments that is impossible to predict, but still show more than other photos. Those small moments might be joy or tears you find in guests, parents or the couples face. By catching these moments

While the events are going on I would advise the photographer to smile and show some confident. It helps everyone else to bring out a natural smile and joy too. As photographer you could also socialize some with others like catering, DJ, wedding planners etc to get additional advice from them as well. They are experienced from weddings, and can give you the small extra hint to getting the perfect pictures.

Just another important step when you return from the wedding; make backups. Make sure you burn several copies to both DVDs, and external hard drives if possible. This is just as important as bringing several backup options during the event. You will not be able to return back in time to make new pictures, or get pictures from other sources. So please; make sure there are lots of backups of the photography’s you got from the wedding.

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This posting is partly building on the previous postings, but are mostly continuing to give some advice if you get a friend or family member to photograph for you.

As we briefly discussed previously; your friend should get some expert knowledge by asking to learn from professionals. This is particular important as your friend should have some experience and knowledge in what he/she is doing.

First of all is of course the subject of choosing a decent camera. To find two cameras with the same specification; doesn’t mean they give similar quality. A lot of more technical specification like the CCD chip, lenses, and how the microprocessor processes the data is important for the final quality. I am sure both resellers and professional photographers can give you some good advices.

Next is of course to listen to Murphy ’s Law; which in important situations seems to manifest. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Therefore you should bring extra camera, extra battery and extra camera. There is nothing to do if you get flat battery during the sessions. Hence you will need backup equipment for every situation that could go wrong. You can’t go to the couple getting married and ask “I’m sorry, I have no more battery, and can’t we reschedule the wedding?” There is no way you can reschedule or change anything happening and have to be prepared for everything. You should of course also bring memory; lots of memory for pictures.

You should make all pictures in either good JPEG or RAW format; this is of course for better after work after taking the pictures. You will save a lot of time using these formats. I personally prefer RAW format since its more lossless format than JPEG. I never really understand why we focus so strongly on the JPEG format as the compression often reduces the quality of the picture.

If you don’t believe me; make a search on JPEG vs PNG on Google, and you will quickly learn how the JPEG encryption algorithms often reduces the quality of the picture. Of course this isn’t always noticeable for the naked eye if you use a really high resolution of the pictures you take. I know those formats require a lot of memory; but its well worth when finally starting the post-processing.

Just make sure to bring lots of memory to get lots of quality pictures.

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