Wedding photography can be rather difficult, stressful and tough for the uninitiated or someone thinking of taking on their first wedding job. These are simple wedding photography tips for beginners can be used to garden weddings, beach wedding events, and practically any other wedding day shoot modern brides and grooms can think of today. Once you become more proficient, there are more photo tips and pointers essential task for the professional photographers.
Tip and Tricks For Wedding Photography Beginners
1. Be honest with the couple and inform them you are a amateur or just a beginner at photographing weddings. This sets the rules of expectations! You may be a compete novice or professional photographer in another niche of photography but shooting weddings is a completely different ball game to say landscape, fashion or studio photography.
2. Check out the location and wedding venue
If a true professional photographer is not familiar with the wedding venue he will go to event area prior to the actual day or arrive early on the day to get a feel for the surrounding where the wedding is talking place. For a beginner I would suggest that you check out the place at the very same time of day as the wedding ceremony is talking place. This will give you an understanding of the place, lighting conditions you are likely to encounter and will assist with prior preparation you need to make.
3. Make a list of shots.
Get the bride and groom to give you a list of their must have photos, limit them to 15-20 as you may not have time to all if they request hundreds. Yes, there are standard photos you need to capture from the wedding. You can search the internet for such a list. Also don’t be afraid to make suggestions or tell the couple which of their ideas might not work, use your photography knowledge here. You do not want to make a promise you cannot keep.
Produce a list of creative photos you would like to try, why else would you take on a wedding assignment as a beginner if you were not confident in your photographic ability.
4. Preparation preparation preparation – is necessary and key for your success , the top wedding photography tips for beginners
Great preparation is critical to an effective wedding event shoot. Make sure you have a schedule/itinerary from the couple of how they have planned the format of the wedding day. Make you one notes to help you on the day. Even pro wedding photographers will do this, so they know what to photograph and best angles to shoot from. For a complete novice I suggest you ask if you can participate in the practice session and take some shots to get a feel on what is going to happen at the actual wedding ceremony. You’ll know where to be to capture any particular photo. Knowledge and practice will help you enormously.
5. Think about using an assistant if possible
This person can be a back up photographer or just someone who knows about the camera equipment and photography in general. You will find an assistant’s help invaluable on the wedding day especially when the pressure and demands on you increases.
6. Use a second camera
Buy, hire or borrow a second body, you must have another camera with you. This is going to be your back up camera if things go wrong with your main digital camera. and you can mount a longer lens (70-200mm) for more close-up photos, assuming you have a wide-angle (16-35mm) or standard zoom (24-70mm) on your main camera body. The lens needs to give you good quality sharp images. So, again you may need to Buy, hire or borrow the second lens. .
7. Shoot in RAW
The main advantage with shooting in RAW format is it gives you the chance to make adjustments to images to compensate for poor lighting, exposure, adjust white balance / colour temperature, sharpness whilst post processing on the computer using software like Lightroom, Capture One Pro, DXO Optics Pro, Adobe Bridge or Canon’s free raw convertor – Digital Photo Professional aka DPP. All this is done in a none destructive way so if you’re unhappy with the adjustments, you can go back to the RAW file and change the settings again. All in all when using RAW you get a much higher quality image.
Learn About Wedding Photography Basics First
These are only seven wedding photography tips for beginners, but don’t stop here you must try to learn as much as you can about wedding photography before agreeing to take on this assignment. Wedding photography is a niche market and you never stop learning, as you encounter different venues, beach weddings, and whatever situation a destination wedding brings. Also even today I keep learning by going on courses to keep improving myself. The key is to practise wedding photography till it you become a natural and you enjoy photographing weddings fully.
Bipin Dattani Photography
28 Hillview Rd
Pinner
HA5 4PA
07930 324833
