9 min read Elevate Your Wedding Photography: Essential Tips and Techniques

As a wedding photographer, you are assigned to capture the most beautiful moments of the most important day in the lives of the couple. A wedding is more than a simple photoshoot, and your photographs will be exhibited on the walls, put in albums, and shared with family for so many years to come. That's why it is very important that you invest your time and money into the equipment and techniques you use to capture those beautiful memories.

With so many photographers moving to digital equipment in the last few years, the technique has changed substantially. With the right approach, you can make sure that your photographs are going to represent your special day for so many years to come. Everything from technique to camera resolution is important to ensure top quality and results for wedding photography services. To help you get the best out of those photos, go through the following tips for taking the best wedding photographs.

4 Most Important Wedding Photography Tips and Techniques

The technical elements of photography are very important on a wedding day. Maybe you do not have control over factors such as lighting, weather, or movement; so while taking 2000 or more photographs, you need to be very flexible and use techniques that are specifically designed for weddings. And above all your approach should be focused on the couple and their wishes on their big day.

Juggling these priorities can be sometimes difficult, especially if this is one of the first weddings you are going to shoot. Here are some important steps you need to take before the special day to make sure that you are ready.

1. Know Your Equipment Inside and Out:

Before you shoot your first wedding spread out your equipment and evaluate in advance everything. Check your cameras, take stock of your lenses, and make sure that you know every setting and every mode inside and out. Know the limits of every setting, and be prepared to answer the questions the couple may have. If they ask for any specific type of shot and you do not know if your camera can do it, it can be very embarrassing.

Ensure that you have enough memory cards in hand, and test every single piece of equipment before you start giving your wedding photography services. More importantly, do practice as much as possible. Grab your friend and take a full run of shots to make sure that your equipment is calibrated and also ready for the big day of your clients. You can even stage a fake wedding in order to test your shots in advance of the day.

2. Plan Your Shots in Advance:

Prepare a list of shots that the couple wants to have in their album. Talk with them in detail about the friends, family members, and wedding guests who will be in the shots. Ensure to include the following mentioned shots in your list

• Groom Coverage: Get shots of the tie, flower, rings, cufflinks, cologne, and anything else the groom requests. Include photos of the groom getting ready, all of them together, and other goofy shots they want to get together including, sunglasses, jacket on shoulders, etc.
• Bride Coverage: The bride shots actually depend on what she wants to include. Some examples include looking at flowers, the back of the dress, considering the distance, standing with the maid of honor, and smiling into the camera, and standing.
• Bride and Groom Together: If the couple can see each other before the ceremony, these are excellent shots to take in the morning. If not, you will have to squeeze them in between the reception and the ceremony. The basics include a hug, a kiss, nose-to-nose, looking at each other, and also the goofy shots that they want to share in so many coming years.

3. Make the Couple Aware About Your Work Style:

Every wedding photographer is different, and your style is a very important factor - whether you prefer staged photographs, natural lighting, interior or exterior shots, etc. These are the factors you need to communicate with the bride and groom so that they can decide which shots they would love to be taken and to ensure you're the right fit for them. Be sure to get familiar with space too. Whether on a beach, in a church, or in a park, visit the place in advance so you can plan your shoot as much as possible.

4. Use of Flash in Wedding Photos:

As most of the photographs you'll take are actually active shots of an event that is going on, lighting cannot always be controlled. Lightening options and flash usage are very important factors to consider in advance, especially if the place is outside. Some mandatory tips include -

• Try to get as many photos as possible with no flash and accessible light
• When using flash try to use a fill-flash technique in order to avoid poor composition
• Use reflectors and flash diffusers to prevent photographs from getting ruined by flash blowout
• Use the primary and main lenses for all photos whenever possible

At the same time, do not get lost in the technical details. Be ready for unexpected surprises, events, and unique memories that will make the wedding one of the best events for the people who are attending.

Choose the Right Partner for Wedding Photo Editing

A wedding is a very important day in most people's lives and photographs are a mandatory part of that memory. Recording and capturing so many moments of a wedding, they are a perfect expression of your art and the people’s lives that you are capturing. Photographers can take beautiful and natural wedding photographs if they use the techniques that are suggested in this article, and to ensure they are very well processed, you need to work with an experienced 

partner.