Wedding photography mixes several of the challenges of portrait photography, street photography, news photography, and event photography, all in a fast moving, anything can happen, “no second chances to get it right” environment. It is one of the most challenging kinds of photography I know of.

On a regular basis, someone will say to me “My friends are getting married and want me to be the photographer. Do you have any advice?”  My usual answer is “Yes, tell your friends to hire a professional wedding photographer, and you will be there to enjoy the wedding and take pictures for fun.” But there are some occasions when your friends simply can’t hire a professional and you are a much better choice than the bride’s Uncle Fred who takes very nice landscape photos but doesn’t have the equipment, much less the necessary skills, to pull off a quality set of wedding photos. In fact, my first wedding years ago was for a young couple who absolutely could not hire a professional. So here’s my advice for all of you who don’t do wedding photography for a living, but end up shooting a wedding.

First, Read this article: Q&A Wedding Photography, follow the advice, and be sure to read the two books I recommend in that article. You can find them at the links below.

Second, Have the right gear. To do a wedding right, and allow for potential equipment failure, you need to have at least two of everything. I once heard a professional photographer tell the awful story of how he had two Hasselblad camera bodies go belly up during one wedding and he had to finish the wedding with his high end point and shoot camera. Hasselblads have such an excellent reliability reputation that the odds of losing two well maintained cameras in one wedding are exceedingly small, but it can happen. So have at least two of everything at a minimum, and preferably more. If you don’t have enough gear of your own, rent what you need for the wedding (see the link below). And rent gear that works the same way as your gear (same brand and the same or similar model). You don’t want to be wondering which button changes the white balance in the hectic pace of a wedding.

Use a camera that has minimal noise at high ISO settings. Weddings mean a number of ambient light photos, often in low light conditions.  That means high ISO settings. If the bride wants a 16×20 inch print of an ambient light photo, you want to deliver a relatively clean image, not one that has digital noise that looks like a mosaic of painted golf balls. This doesn’t mean you need the most expensive cameras out there. It does me you need one of the more recent, low noise cameras. At my last wedding I took a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon 7D as the primary bodies, and a Canon 5D as backup.

Have enough lenses. Bare minimum is to have two lenses in the middle focal length range. You might have two zoom lenses, or one zoom lens (around 28-80 mm at f/4) and a fast 50mm lens (about f/2). Better yet would be to also have two longer lenses for tight ceremony shots, a total of four lenses in all. A wide angle lens is helpful too. Fast maximum apertures are good.  f/2.8 or f/4 are much better than f/5.6 and f/8 is virtually unusable in low light.  f/2 is even better yet.

At my last wedding I took the following lenses.

15 mm fisheye for super wide angle sanctuary photos and creative shots.

17-40 mm f/4 wide angle zoom for wide angle and creative shots.

24-104 mm f/4 lens. My “do it all” workhorse lens. I do 70-80% of my wedding photography with this lens.

28-135 mm lens. Backup for the 24-105.

50 mm f/2 lens. Backup for the 24-105. It is also a fast lens for ambient light photos during evening weddings in really low light.

70-200 f/4 lens. For tight ceremony shots and editorial photos during day time weddings. If the wedding is at night I bring a bigger (and much heavier) 70-200 f/2.8 lens instead.

70-300 mm f/4 lens. Backup to the 70-200 mm lens.

Have two matching flash units. Keep one on your primary camera and the other on your secondary camera. Have both cameras ready with a lens mounted, turned on, and ready to go at all times. If anything quits (camera, lens, or flash) you are still ready to go with the back up and you won’t miss an important shot.

Third, Master metering for both flash and ambient light. Weddings involve some ambient light photos, some flash only photos, and photos that mix flash with ambient light. It takes excellent metering skills to get this right. Accurate metering is the key to the best quality color and minimal digital noise. If you miss by much with the exposure, you can correct the exposure after the fact with software, but the colors will still be off. Read the exposure and flash chapters in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies, a five star rated book at Amazon.com. You also need to know how to use ACR to deal with mixed lightning.

Fourth, Practice flash and ambient light portraits every chance you get. Read the portrait chapter in Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. Read the suggestions for posing in Steve Sint’s Wedding Photography, Art Business and Style in either the original version of the book or the digital version. Throw a white sheet around a friend and take some flash portraits to see what all of that white does to your flash exposures. If you get a chance to go to some weddings and shoot just for fun, do it. Don’t get in the “official” photographer’s way. Make it a challenge to yourself to create the best wedding images you can.

Fifth, Make a List of Must Have Wedding Photos. Go over the list with the bride and groom. Add any they want that aren’t already on the list. This will usually involve family that will or won’t be there. Check with the bride and groom’s mothers too. Have someone assist you at the wedding that will cross off photos on the list as they are taken and make sure you don ‘t forger the photo of the bride with Great Aunt Harriet. Or the four generation photo.

Sixth, If it is ok with the couple, schedule some shooting time before the ceremony to do as many photos as you can before the guests arrive. Bride. Bride and her attendants. Flower girl. Ring bearer. Bride and mother. Bride and parents. Groom. Groom and best men. Groom and parents. . . .

Seventh, Photograph the bride and groom first. Most people get a little tired during a big event that is part of a long busy day. As the day wears on the face gets more strained and the smiles get less natural. It shows in the photos. If the bride and groom are ok with seeing each other before the wedding (more and more are), the bride, the groom, and the bride and groom should be the first photos you take after they are dressed and before the guests arrive. If they don’t want to see each other until the ceremony, shoot them first after the wedding. Then add attendants and family. Go from smaller groups to bigger groups. As the bride and groom get more tired, their faces will be smaller and smaller in the photos as the groups get bigger so any tiredness doesn’t show. Everyone is different and some people tire more quickly than others. I’ve worked with a number of professional models and some of them can keep a “fresh face” and turn on natural smile for hours, and some other excellent models tire much more quickly. That’s just the way it is. To be on the safe side, shoot the bride and groom as early as possible.

Eighth, Don’t shoot the whole wedding on one memory card, or on one camera. Memory cards can fail, and cameras can mess up. If your memory card fails you don’t want to lose the whole wedding. My cards are small enough that it takes about three memory cards to shoot the whole wedding on one camera. Shoot all of the most important stuff twice, a set of photos on each camera, so you have two sets of wedding photos. Think of it as a double backup.  If the memory card with the photos of the bride from Camera A goes belly up during the download to the computer, no problem. You have still have all the photos on the other cards from Camera A, and you still have the photos of the bride from the memory card in Camera B.

Have a very clear memory card system so you don’t mix up which cards have been used and which haven’t, and which cards go with which camera. Never use the same memory card in two different cameras. Each camera should have its own set of memory cards.

Ninth, Have fun!

Photo Info: In the photo at the top of this page, an aperture, shutter speed, and ISO were carefully chosen to combine an accurate flash exposure of the couple with an accurate ambient light exposure for the background so the background wouldn’t go dark. Canon 5D Mark III. Canon EF24-105mm f/4L IS lens at 55 mm. 1/60 sec,  f/7.1,  ISO 800. Canon 550EX flash in ETTL mode with careful attention to flash exposure compensation.

Links

My favorite people/portrait photography books, including the two “must read” wedding photography books by Steve Sint and Bambi Cantrell. These books are in my photography store which is powered by Amazon.com so you get Amazon’s great prices, service, and guarantee (and you help support this web site).

To master metering, flash photography, and learn how to combine ambient light with flash, read Digital Photography Exposure for Dummies. It is a five star rated book with excellent reviews at Amazon.com. I has received high praise from beginners and pros alike. It has comprehensive coverage of exposure and metering, more than almost any other book on the market. It has all the basics for beginners, plus the advanced techniques for those who want to learn more. Why buy two books on exposure (a beginner’s book and advanced book) when you can get it all in one book?

You can rent cameras, lenses, flash units, and other photo gear at LensRentals.com.  Some local camera stores have a fully stocked rental center, but the odds of you finding one are slim. They tend to be in NYC, Chicago, L.A. and other large cities that are hubs of the professional photography industry.