You've landed the commission! Now all you need to do is make sure everything runs smoothly, which means going with the flow and just snapping away, right? Wrong! This is probably your bride's first stab at organising a wedding so don't just expect her to know everything and go along with what she says. The quality of the photos you get depends greatly on what advise you give her.
Make sure you meet with her when she approaches you to shoot her wedding. Show her examples of your work and talk through her plans for the day, hopefully she's in the early stages of planning and will be able to take your suggestions on board. Ideally you want to meet at the venue/s and walk through what will be happening and how this will affect the photography.
Where is she getting ready?
You will meet her either where she is getting ready or at the salon where she will be getting her hair done. This will give you the opportunity to take pictures as the bridal party are getting ready. Advise her to allow for about an hour extra for the hair and make up than what she has planned, it always runs over! When you are at her home or hotel this is the opportunity for you to take the detail shots of the dresses, jewelry, flowers, etc. I use a black backdrop and a mirror as this gives a lovely studio effect and shows the items off well, allow about an hour for these shots.
Then get some posed and natural shots of the bridal party getting ready.
Advise the bride that she should be ready to go at least an hour and a half before she needs to be at the church or registry office to allow you time to get there ahead of her and take some pictures of the groom, guests arriving and of course, the bride arriving in her special car.
Before you set off take pictures of the bridal party, this will save time later and also allows you to get some with a proper back drop to give more of a studio effect.
ALWAYS shoot in RAW! This allows you the freedom to do the editing you need to to get your shots looking just the way you want them to. The black background shots are time consuming in terms of editing but, I think, well worth it. To get this effect shoot on a black backdrop and edit in Lightroom (I will be doing a Lightroom tutorial in a later post) You increase the exposure of the photo to over exposed, which allows you to see the background more clearly. You then select the adjustment brush (the wand with little dots around it) and, under effect select darken. Move the exposure on the drop down menu right down to darkest. You can adjust the size of the brush further down the menu. You will have to zoom in and very carefully go around the edges and if it's not quite dark enough click done and then go over the same area again. This technique is also useful for eliminating an unwanted background, although it is always preferable to have planned things well in advance to avoid unwanted backgrounds in the first place! But sometimes the bride's planning just doesn't allow for you to have the creative control you would like.
That's phase one done!
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