Tips

Here are some tips to make your wedding photos amazing and perhaps even your wedding day less stressful – hope they help!

Planning your wedding

* My #1 tip is to trust your photographer. Whoever you choose you should be able to trust to do their best and that their best will be amazing.

* Make time for photos. Most brides want to spend time relaxing and hanging out with friends and family on their wedding day – which is completely understandable! However, that can happen at the expense of the photos. It’s very important that you make enough time so that you and the photographer can move at a relaxed pace. Not only will your wedding day be more enjoyable, but your pictures will come out better and there will be more of them!

* Choose a picturesque location. Try to choose somewhere that is either surrounded by nature or has stunning architecture. Cars, roads, buildings, and the majority of mad-made things tend to be pretty hard – if not next to impossible to make beautiful. Your best bet is to have your wedding surrounded by nature or historic buildings

* Choose a time of day with good lighting. As far away from noon as you can get while there is still daylight the better. Mid day light creates dark shadows in the eye sockets and bright harsh light on the nose, chin and forehead…. in other words crappy light!!! plan your events to begin and end either before 9 or after 3 if possible. Find out when the sun rises or sets on your day and plan around it. Sunrise weddings are awesome and sunset receptions work too. There is natural light up to  an hour after the sun sets if you are on the western side of the island.

* Put effort into the details of the surroundings. Nice tents, covered chairs and tables, floral arrangements – all make your day more beautiful – and your photos! You don’t want to see beat-up tables and tents in your photos forever

* Plan to bring some props. Choose something fun, funny, meaningful or just plain crazy. Anything to give your photos that personal touch and some extra pop! Bring as many as you can handle – this works especially well for engagement shoots as well.

The day of the wedding

* Keep all areas clean. The messiest area tends to be wherever you are getting ready. If you plan on getting photos of the details and you getting ready make sure the area is neat and tidy – any mess will show up and can take attention away from what is happening in the photo.

* Have an extra itinerary and shot list printed out for your photographer. A lot of times we may need to see it to know where we are at in the day and we may not have one printed up ourselves.

* Hire a professional to do your hair and make-up. These pictures will be with you for a long time and professional make-up artists and hairdressers know how to do make-up and hair specificaly for picture taking. Pick someone with experience and if you need any recommendations let me know and I can help you find someone.

* Take your time – doing everything from walking down the isle to cutting the cake. The longer you take to do something, the more time I have to take pictures! And besides, it will help you savor the day.

* Make sure I can see what your doing. Make sure you have my attention and that my camera is in the line of sight of whatever is going on. On occasion I might be focusing on a family member for a second to get a candid or changing a lens but I will always be checking to see what is going on with you as well so if something major is about to happen make sure you wait until I can see you and that my camera is in the line of sight of whatever is going on. Placing the rings is a major one here – make sure your hands aren’t blocking the rings.

* Look at each other during the ceremony. When you see pictures of a couple curing the ceremony and they aren’t looking at each other…. well you know, it just looks disconnected. It’s not like you have to stare at each other – just show the other person that you are connecting with them and sincerity through your eye contact. The camera will pick up on that.

* Pick someone to round people up for group shots. Make sure this person is not apart of your immediate family and make sure they know who everyone is that needs to be gathered. Make sure that they are aware of their duty and that they will be ready when the time comes. You shouldn’t have to go and get them – they should be there as soon as they hear the group shots are about to happen. Also make sure that they have a printed shot list on hand as well.

After the Wedding

* Allow time for the photos to be processed and edited. Your photographer should let you know how long it will take and if they don’t make sure you ask. Pretty much most photographers completely understand you are anxious to see your photos and we definitely want to get them to you as soon as we can.

* Don’t go anywhere that even offers 1 hour photos!!!! If you want your prints done right the first time this is the best peice of advice I can give. A profesional lab will not only provide you with great color but they will also provide you with high quality paper that will keep your photos from fading or discoloring much longer than what the cheapy places will give you.

* Archive your photos. There’s a saying in the photography world that if it isn’t in three different places, it doesn’t exist. This is because digital files are extremely easy to lose. Your best bet is to have two sets of prints in two different places (as in let someone in your family that you trust keep a set) upload all your photos to a service that will keep your files online like photobucket or flickr and keep the files on more than one computer. The more places you can keep your photos the better. Another good option is to burn a gold DVD which is an archival grade disk which is supposed to last at least 100 years. Regular dvds and cds are not archival and will most likely corrupt within 10-20 years if not sooner.