Wedding Photography: 7 Tips for Photographing your First Wedding
– So let's go over some
tips for your first wedding. What's up, this is John from
John Branch Photography. And if you're new to the channel, I'm a Fujifilm creator
and wedding photographer and have been for seven years now. One thing I'm always
getting questions about is how to handle your first wedding day. And obviously I have full wedding day behind the scenes videos, which will help you out
and give you some tips and y'all can check
those out right up above, but let's go ahead and just
straight up get into seven tips to help you all out
with your first wedding. Now, keep in mind before
you do your first wedding, there's definitely some things that I believe you
should understand first.
So let's talk about the pre-reqs before you start getting
into wedding photography. First and foremost, you definitely need to
understand the exposure triangle or how to get a good exposure. Obviously, you don't have
to be a master of this, but if you're still struggling
on how to get a good exposure in nearly any situation, you probably want to slow down on weddings and either second shoot or
practice doing portraits or street photography or
something of that sort. Again, people are paying you
money to capture a special day. You can't be sitting there
messing around like oh, I don't know how to get exposure. You need to at least understand it. Next up is you have to be very
comfortable with your camera. Again, you don't need to know
all the secret in and outs of your camera, but if you don't know how
to get to places quickly and change your settings fast, you also need to practice on your camera a little bit more before
you start doing weddings.
Again, wedding days can be fast-paced. And when there's no time and someone's asking you for something and you're trying to make changes and you're back there
chimping on your camera because you don't know what to do, no. You cannot do that at weddings, so you need to understand your camera. Also, make sure you're shooting in raw. This one is a given and I'm sure everyone
has heard this before, but the main reason that
you're shooting in raw is so that you have more
flexibility in your edits. Now I will argue shooting
in JPEG is possible, but if you're not able
to shoot JPEG and raw and have the raw as backups,
you need to just shoot raw. Never, never go into a
wedding shooting only JPEG.
And last but not least,
use a dual camera setup or at least have a backup body. So you all have seen in
my full wedding day videos that I use a dual camera strap system. So I have two cameras on me exact same bodies throughout the day. Now the main reason I do this
is because I use prime lenses, but honestly you should
have a backup regardless. Basically, if one of my
cameras gives up on me for whatever reason, I have
another camera ready to go.
So even if you are shooting with zooms and you're using one camera, have another of that same
body in a bag somewhere that you can go grab in
case something happens. So those are the pre-reqs. If you don't have all of that down first, don't get into weddings seriously. Take some time to practice. Do portraits with friends, do engagement sessions,
do street photography. Because honestly, in my opinion, street photography is probably one of the closest things to weddings. And if y'all want me to
make a video about that, let me know in the comments below. So once you've hit these pre-reqs, now let's get into the seven tips I have for you for shooting
your first wedding, starting out with the
hands down most important, which is pre-wedding communication.
Now you may be thinking, John, this has nothing to do
with using my camera and all of that type of stuff. But again, you should
already know how to do the majority of that. Your pre-wedding
communication is the absolute, most important parts of
being a wedding photographer. If you're not meeting with
your couple multiple times, if you're not setting
expectations with them, if you're not making sure
they know what you're about and how you like to approach photography, you're setting yourself up for disaster. I meet with my couple
at least three times: Pre-booking, in the middle while we're waiting for the wedding, and then right before the
wedding, maybe like a week or so. This way, we can set expectations and also just talk over the day and make sure that everything is in stone and they know what I want from them and I know what they want from me. Seriously, if you've
seen my behind the scene wedding day videos, and you're like, wow, how are his wedding so smooth? It's because of pre-wedding communication.
Generally for communication, I use HoneyBook because it keeps everything
in one nice thread. You can see it here, we
talk through everything and if something comes up, I can just scroll back through the thread and see it right there. I got away from it just
using email or Gmail or something of that sort because there'd be all these threads that everyone would start and I have to go through
and search through things, so seriously, definitely
check out HoneyBook. I have a 50% off code
in the description below for you all on your first year. All your communication should
definitely go through there. You can also ask them questions
through questionnaires and line up everything so that
your communication is smooth and you have a smooth wedding day. And speaking of using HoneyBook
for sending questionnaires, you also need to be
writing your own timelines. So this may be one that you
didn't think about at all because usually most photographers will just let the planner
handle all that stuff. But in my opinion, you really, really need to write your own timelines so that everyone knows where you are and what you're gonna be doing.
If you have a planner
for your wedding day, make sure you don't step
on their toes at all. Write your timeline so
that it fits within theirs and if there's anything that conflicts with how you would handle
the wedding days for photos, talk with your planner about it. Again, don't fight with them,
talk with them about it, see what they want, see
what you can do and say hey, I like doing my wedding days like this. It works out for most of my couples. Can we adjust here and there? But always, always write
your own timelines.
Again, when you do do this, you become the authority
of the wedding day. You don't want your
wedding day to run you, you want to run the wedding day, so that now when you have a timeline and the planner is on the
same page with your timeline, everybody knows, okay, we're
doing these portraits here, we have this much time for that, now it's time for family
portraits, so on and so forth. Never just show up to your wedding days and be like, okay guys,
I'm gonna take photos.
Don't, don't, you will run
into headaches, really. Handle your wedding days and
write your own timelines. This next tip is hugely important as well, which is having a list
for your family portraits. So in my opinion, one of the most stressful
parts of a wedding day is the family portrait time. Mainly because you have
all these family members and you want to get them together, you don't know who anybody is and then there's usually a mom or an aunt or a dad or somebody asking
for 50 billion photos and 60,000 different combinations
and it's just too much. So, ask your couples for a
list for the family photos. Basically the way I do
this is through HoneyBook, I send them a questionnaire
with a shot list. Now for me, shot lists are not specifically what photos they want because I want to still
be able to be creative. It's more so for special
and important things that I may not know about. Again, I tell my couples, I've been doing weddings for seven years. I know to take pictures of the bouquet and the shoes and the
dress and the first kiss, I know that stuff.
So what I want to know from my couples is more so we have a
special family heirloom or my grandma's very important to me or make sure we get a
shot with these cool shoes that we're gonna change
into at reception time. That's what's on my shot list
and also the family list. And when I ask for a family list, I mean, it's totally, totally detailed. It's not just me and mom
and dad, I need their names and I need every
combination that you want. So, couple and parents,
couple and both parents, couples and aunts and godmothers
and so on and so forth and make it a long list. This way when you get
to family portrait time, there's a list. No one can tell you all
these extra combinations cause the couple's already on your team. They're like this is the list we want, we don't want family
photos to take forever, this is what we're gonna do.
You can give the list to
your second photographer. They can call out the names and because you have the
names on your list as well, you're not gonna run into any weird divorce parent type
situations because trust me, you don't want to be there
doing family portrait and be like okay mom, okay
dad, and they're divorced and yeah, it gets weird. Don't do that. So again, your family portrait
lists would be very specific. And I mean, I'm serious like
bride and groom and mom, bride and mom, groom and dad. Like the whole list should
just be totally listed out like that and should have their names. If y'all want to see this in action, definitely head over to my Patreon. I have a whole video showing me doing behind the scenes family portraits.
So definitely check that out, there'll be a link in
the description below. And since we're talking
about group portraits and family portraits, the next tip is to make
sure that you stop down when you're shooting groups. So if you're new to
photography stopping now, we're talking about your f-stop or your aperture. Basically when you stop
down your aperture, things get sharper all the way through, your depth of field is not as shallow, so you're gonna get sharper photos when people aren't on the
exact same plane of field. Now again, the reason you want
to do this in group photos is when you have people standing and they're not standing
exactly next to each other, if you're shooting at F1, some people are gonna be out of focus.
So make sure you're
stopping down to 2.8 or 3.2, somewhere in that range just
to keep things nice and sharp. Now, since I shoot Fujifilm
and it's crop sensor and I shoot with the F2 lenses, a lot of times I don't really
have to stop down too much. You can see in my photos here, most of these I'm
shooting wide open at F2, but F2 on a crop sensor
lens is more like 3.2 on a full frame. So everything is nice and
sharp and it looks good, but sometimes if I do
have the available light, I'll definitely stop down to 2.8 or 3.2.
So, make sure every time
you're doing group portraits to stop down a bit. Now, couple portraits is fine. They're normally gonna
be close to each other, their heads are gonna be closed, they're gonna be kissing
and loving and stuff, so you don't need to stop
down as much for that. But definitely, definitely
for group photos. So this next tip is one
that I'm pretty huge on. And honestly, a lot of people
don't think about it too much, but don't shoot in continuous auto-focus. Now the reason I say this is because I feel like
nowadays with our cameras being so amazing, that we depend
on them a little too much, and then we'll complain when the focus won't be
where you want it to be. If we have this whole mentality of you need to shoot everything in manual and don't shoot in auto, I think you should also apply
that to your focusing as well. Now, obviously I'm not talking
about shooting full manual, but you should move
around your focus point. In my opinion, especially
on a wedding day, do not depend on your
continuous auto-focus, face auto-focus, eye auto-focus
because what will happen, especially if you're
doing it during ceremony, there's a lot of people,
there's a lot of faces, your camera has no idea
what it's focusing on.
So generally what I do is set
it to single point auto-focus and I will move my focus square and or do focus and recompose. And I know everyone's probably
like focus and recompose? That's like old school… It works, y'all, just do it. It works, it's fast, and
it's never let me down. Whereas continuous auto-focus sometimes just has no
idea what it's doing. On that same note however, if you do have your
couple walking towards you or away for you, that's a
great place to use auto-focus. So generally during a wedding day, those are the only times that I'm gonna use continuous auto-focus. I don't use face auto-focus because again, when people are walking
away or towards you and there's a lot faces around, auto-focus is gonna have
no idea what it's doing, but if you set your focus
point to zone focus, so it's a larger square in the center and then continuously
auto-focus from there, you know it's gonna be focusing
exactly where you want it and it's gonna catch your
couple coming towards you or away from you.
So that would be my tip
for using auto-focus on a wedding day. For tip number six, this
is very important to me, but make sure you're paying
attention to your backgrounds. Now, I love capturing moments. I love being more photojournalistic and just kind of capturing
what's happening on the day, but y'all, if you can move some stuff, go ahead and just move it. I've seen too many people who
just show up to wedding days and take photos as things are rather than moving things
to make them look nice. So for instance, when you're dealing with the getting ready section of the day, if your bride is in a spot and there's all kinds
of like water bottles and people's clothes and
dresses and bags and stuff, either move her somewhere else or have them clean up the background. You should always always take your shots based on the best light and also the best of background. Again, if you've watched
my full wedding day videos, you'll see that I take the time
to try and clean up the area around where I'm gonna be taking photos.
Because again, people are
paying you lots of money for their weddings. They don't want to see that stuff. And yeah, it may take
away from the moment, but it really doesn't. Don't be afraid to control your
wedding day and make choices and decisions and move things
and tell your couples hey, this is gonna make
things look much better, let's clean up this room just a little bit before we take photos. No one's gonna say no to you. So again, don't forget
to do stuff like that because it's easy to just
jump in and be like oh, something's happening and taking photos. And it's fine when you do have
a couple of photos like that with stuff in the background.
But again, just make sure
you're cleaning up stuff when you can. And last but not least, do not let anyone else
run your wedding day. Now, what I mean by this is while you're at a wedding and you're the wedding photographer, everybody, and I mean everybody, is going to be making suggestions to you about what you should do for your photos, where you should take your
pictures, so on and so forth. And you don't have to be mean to anybody, but just let them know
I know what I'm doing, I have this handled, it's gonna be great.
The best way to get this to work is again with the
pre-wedding communication with your couple. When you get the couple on your team and they understand what you're
doing and they trust you, it's much easier to
have them be your guard for anything during the day. So for instance, there's a lot of old
school classic type shots that I just don't take.
And my couples are also like, yeah, no, we don't like that stuff. So when mom or their planners
like oh, it'd be so cool if you took this picture, the couple is like nah, we're good. And I'm like they said it, don't tell me to do that anymore. So really get the couple on your team, make sure you all are on the same page. And that way, if anyone
does try to be pushy about what needs to
happen on the wedding day, your couple's gonna back you up and then no one's gonna
argue with the couple. I mean really, it's their day. A great story I have of this exact thing was I had a couple and
we were at a wedding. It was coming up on reception time, but I needed to take their
photos before it got dark. So the food planner or
the venue coordinator, he was so, so adamant, like they have to get some
of these hor d'oeuvres. They have to get them right now. They have to get them, they have it…
And I'm like, we need to take photos. And he's like do you need your
d'oeuvres when they're hot? And it has… And I'm like, we really
have to take these photos. And we're kind of arguing. I don't like to argue at weddings because I don't want my couple or any of their guests to see me like in a yelling match with someone. So I'm kind of like bro,
we're not gonna do this. And he's like we're gonna do it. So, I just caved and say
you know what, whatever, it's not gonna totally destroy my day and I should be able to get what I need. We come up, he comes up to the couple, oh, we got to get you this
food and dah, dah, dah. And literally the couple was like, no, we want to take these photos with John. We will get your food later and this dude's heart was broken. His face was like… (laughing) But again, that's a great example of someone not running my day and also the couple backing me up.
So again, if you have your
pre-wedding communication, you have your timelines written out, you have shot lists for family stuff, you know what's happening during the day, the couple trusts you for light. So when you're like
let's go take this photo at this location that most
people are like this looks dumb, you're gonna be like well, I know what I'm doing in
your couple's gonna say, I trust you because I've seen your photos and they look good. So again, don't just
cave to whoever's around and do whatever they ask you to. That's how a wedding day
gets out of your hands and turns into a whole
cluster and falls apart and then stuff gets left out and then you will be more
stressed than you need to be.
So those were my seven tips
for your first wedding. And I know you may be thinking, none of it talked about photography, but honestly, in my opinion, wedding photography is
80% customer service. And if you don't think that's the case, you need to reevaluate and
look at wedding photography because it might not be for you. Yes, that is true, wedding photography is
80% customer service, first and foremost. The other 20% is taking photos, but no one cares about what you're doing. Your couple doesn't, the planner doesn't, the venue doesn't, they just
expect you to make magic, which is why, again, those pre-reqs that I talked
about at the beginning of the video, you have
to have that stuff down.
You should already know
how to take pictures because no one else will care. They will take you to a dark room with no windows and
expect you to make magic. So again, you need to
know all of your stuff first and foremost, and then work on your
customer service mainly. Let me know if you all have any other tips down below for any new
photographers as well. If you've been doing weddings for a while, leave it down below, let's share as much
information as possible so that we can all be great
wedding photographers. Make sure to hit that like if you like this information and subscribe for more wedding photography
tips, behind the scenes, and just more stuff on creative
entrepreneurship in general. Thank you all for hanging out again and I'll catch you all next time. Alright, peace. (upbeat music).
