How to Photograph a Wedding

How to Photograph a Wedding

Yes, this was the question I asked myself repeatedly for around 6 months following a request to photograph someone's wedding.

Some images of landscapes and portraits posted on Facebook and the knowledge I had recently started undertaking a degree in Photography identified me as potential candidate. Everybody has a first time I thought and they understood my very limited skill set.

Initial research commenced on the Talk Photography forums where I participate in both receiving and giving where possible any advice or experience. I posted a request for advice and experience. The feedback was very varied and positive aside from a comment that "I shouldn't expect any help from Wedding Professionals whose business I was stealing.." I will address this point another day.

The advice I received was very influential and helpful, some key comments were:

 - ensure you know your camera pretty much inside out
 - use a flash even if outside
 - suggestions of likely lenses that would best fit the bill
 - understand you will have little time to work
 - its someone's big day so you need to ensure you get key shots
 - you will make mistakes

For a while I was apprehensive and had been looking at some professional wedding photographer websites to get some ideas.

I did quite a bit of research to find a good and recommended book on wedding photography from which I could get a key understanding of basics from start to finish.

I eventually chose a book called "Wedding Photography" by Mark Cleghorn. I was familiar with Mark and had in the past watched numerous youtube videos regarding taking images using lighting, soft boxes and was comfortable with his easy way of explaining things. The choice of book was inspired, everything was well laid out, lots of ideas and suggestions and it was all explained in a nice easy way, almost like a friend explaining things to you with no techno bable. This was enough information here in my opinion to help the seasoned professional as well as the novice. This book become my best friend for a while.

Another good book I already had was "Light Science and Magic" by Hunter, Biver and Fuqua. This was helpful in understanding flash lighting though with group shots it was obvious that I could light correctly for everyone, however my key was to ensure I lit the prime individual or couple as best I could in the circumstances I thought I would be working in.

About 2 months before the wedding any jitters I had vanished when I realised the following:

 - I understand well the basics of my camera
 - I have gathered some information from good sources
 - The start of my DPP course ensured I had a good understanding of work flow
 - That I would make mistakes....these I did make

The wedding was scheduled for February so I knew that there would be a strong chance of poor weather, how true this was as the start of 2014 has been nothing but rain and wind. This would mean that most if not all the images would likely be taken indoors. This would be a shame both for the couple and their images and presented me with an even bigger challenger of having to work indoors with flash, poor backgrounds, shadows etc.

I'll detail my workflow below but I'll also talk about some key things I felt important.

Meet the couple before the wedding day - I had an informal discussion with them in a very relaxed way that allowed me to get to know them and they to know me. This would prove very helpful on the day.

Use a pre wedding questionnaire to identify the key elements of the wedding they wanted to capture, names, addresses, group shots etc.
One of the most important questions I had on my questionnaire was the following:

What 3 words would best describe the style of photography you are looking for?

Their answer was: informal, fun and natural

These 3 words were key for me in understanding how to take my images.

Having looked through Cleghorn's wedding book and studied some wedding images I felt that for my first wedding shoot that I should focus on capturing the basics, look for opportunities but to not get carried away experimenting and attempting to create images beyond what I was comfortable and understood. Going forwards once I had mastered the basics would perhaps open these opportunities but for this shoot the key was to capture the basics and adhere to my brief.

I used my workflow as descibed here:

http://warrenjonesphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/dpp-assignment-1-workflow.html

I found it reassuring that I had the check list especially the pre-shoot preparation.

I used the following:

D700 with 24-70 f/2.8 lens
D300  with 80-200 f/2.8 lens
SB900 with 12 batteries. I was so glad I had all these batteries

Rereading my pre-shoot workflow meant I had double even triple checked everything including blowing the camera mirrors to remove any dust spots, ensuring lenses were clean of any dust, charging camera batteries, flash batteries and of course checking the cameras and flash were reset and working, also that lenses would zoom correctly on the bodies.

It was nice to get a mention on the order of service:

I managed to capture images ranging from the the groom, best man and ushers, bride arriving in the car, some during the ceremony, a very brief set of images outside as the weather allowed, the majority of set images in a side room, images of people at tables with their meals, speeches, and some bride with family friends joining the early evening celebrations, plus a few candid shots and friends together type of shots

My "mid shoot workflow"  - I was pleased that this had become almost second nature where I was checking flash exposure, image exposure via the histogram, using blinkies, checking for people with closed eyes, zoom cropping to check focus. This I was checking after almost every single shot. It was challenging doing this and trying to organise people in a calm way. I was fortunate that I agreed in advance for one of the bridesmaids, a student photographer herself (3rd year at uni)to help me organise family and friends as clearly I was disadvantaged not knowing people. Amy, the chief bridesmaid was going to take the photographs of the evening celebrations

During the shoot I used combinations of higher ISO spot focusing, spot metering (glad I had already performed the exercise on this as part of DPP as my understanding had greatly improved. There is in image I took where the couple sitting had their backs to a bright window, spot metering the couples faces ensure they didn't end up under exposed and the net curtain helped ensure the windows weren't over exposed too much.

Post shoot workflow....well the first job was to upload 3 cards of images via my card reader and into my PC. I then kicked off a back-up of these images both to my external hard-drive and to cloud storage. I was key I ensured the images were safe in several ways and storage on the cloud ensures I was protected against any freak mishap

I have a specific blog entry regarding cloud storage:
http://warrenjonesphotography.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/cloud-storage-my-normal-workflow-is-to.html

My post shoot workflow again is based around that which had evolved and was written up as part of DPP Assignment 1 and I was glad that I had been getting into a rhythm or processing my work in this way. I finished my shoot with around 600 pairs of RAW and jpeg images, my target is to get down to around 100 and then to initially process a key 20-30 images for the bride and groom to review in addition to review of the other images within the target 100 that may be selected by the couple which I would then apply post processing to.

All images for viewing I've processed as out of the camera composition and then subject to target print I will crop accordingly.

However to ensure both friends and family attending as well as unable to attend not invited etc I posted a small selection of images on to Facebook the following day after the wedding to enable all to see early preview of some images so that they could congratulate the newly married couple,

For this blog I have detailed the workflow behind these specific images:

Image 1 

A small break in the weather although still cold and windy and thanks to the Grooms Father for carrying the bride across muddy ground to position the bride on the bridge allowed the set-up of this image, a full length shot

Aperture Priority at f/4 (1/1000) spot metered and spot focused

Opened the Image in RAW and applied the following changes:
 - Used Adobe profile for lens
 - Small S curve applied
 - Minor changes to exposure using "highlights" indicator
 - small adjustment to saturation
- small adjustment to shadows

Opened for layer adjustments of:
 -  Sharpening
 - Portraiture filter (imagenomic plug-in) slight smoothing)

Image Saved; Crop adjustment for composition purposes, image resized and saved as 100k file for web upload with minor watermark applied

I think I may want to come back to the full image and crop the two small white poles either side of the couple as these do appear a bit distracting

Image 2 

Aperture Priority at f/4 (1/1250) spot metered and spot focused. I've asked the Bride and Groom to kiss

Opened the Image in RAW and applied the following changes:
 - Used Adobe profile for lens
 - Small S curve applied
 - Minor changes to exposure using "highlights" indicator
 - small adjustment to saturation
- small adjustment to shadows

Opened for layer adjustments of:
 -  Sharpening

I've now, with time to do it, attempted to create a slightly more stylish image in black and white

I've opened the image using the Silver Effex plug-in, selected a preset conversion of High Structure (Harsh) and made minor adjustments to:
 - Contrast
 - Structure
 - Mid tones
 - Shadows
 - Dynamic Brightness

These changes helped bright out some drama in the sky and the wonderful range of tones. Having used the an aperture in f/4 with the background out of focus in black and white I feel the couple are really well separated from the background.

At this stage of noticed a dust spec in the image which I've cloned out

I've then sharpened the image and saved the file. This will allow me to use this file for a variety of potential print sizes later

I've now cropped the image to recompose and give better balance, resized for web and applied my watermark.

Image 3

Aperture Priority at f/4 (1/1600) spot metered and spot focused. You'll notice how much the light was changing with shutter speed heading toward double what it was a few images ago. This image is a more candid and natural image with a hint of fun, hopefully adhering to my brief.

Opened the Image in RAW and applied the following changes:
 - Used Adobe profile for lens
 - Small S curve applied
 - Minor changes to exposure using "highlights" indicator
 - small adjustment to saturation
- small adjustment to shadows

As above I've opened the image using the Silver Effex plug-in, selected a preset conversion of High Structure (Harsh) and made minor adjustments to:
 - Contrast
 - Structure
 - Highlights
 - Mid tones
 - Shadows
 - Dynamic Brightness

I've then sharpened the image and saved the file. This will allow me to use this file for a variety of potential print sizes later

I've now cropped the image to recompose and give better balance, sharpened, resized for web and applied my watermark.

I could possibly write a short story about the day. I have a lot more to do in terms of following my post processing for many other images, schedule a viewing and prepare images selected for printing.

There are a few more of the images I took on my website which can be found here:
http://www.warrenjonesphotography.com/photo_13071495.html

Can you spot the candid image and see how I could have framed it better :D

Lessons Learnt

a) You need to know your camera very well so that you are able to make changes very quickly without thinking

b) ISO is a god send, learn how and when to use ISO and at what max ISO you can really use and maintain quality images

c) Plan in advance - plans often need replanning on the fly but you need one to start with

d) Pre-shoot and Mid-shoot workflow are essential. Weddings don't allow many 2nd chances

e) Check the histogram all the time

f) Check the images on the screen all the time, many poses may need re-takes because someone has closed / semi-closed eyes

g) Don't be passive, people expect the photographer to help tell them what to do. At the same time of course be polite

h) look for candid opportunities, many fun and amusing incidents happen, try to capture some

i) Take lots of images, adjust angles and height of camera

j) remember your framing of images and likely print size. This was a big learning for me

k) At first you may feel awkward but you quickly blend in as part the wedding as whole

l) Smile at people, they often smile back and it will help relax people and allow them to look more comfortable in the image

m) Do not under estimate the amount of post processing, its key to have a workflow

n) Enjoy it, accept you will make some mistakes. I made many such as poor framing, poor use of flash at times, controlling backgrounds etc. However everyone has a first time and the learning will make the next time better