Capturing great wedding photos doesn’t require a master’s degree, just practice and experience towards learning to take the pictures you are happy with displaying.
A family member or friend can capture excellent quality content with the right equipment and the proper guidance.
Starting out, I had the chance to take my first wedding photos for my cousin’s wedding.
Through that experience, I learned many aspects of wedding photography and found ways to capture great wedding photos even if you’re not a professional photographer yet.
Wedding photos are a mixture of many different types of photography, from portraits, family and group shots, event photography, and candid or close-up images.
Shooting Wedding Photos For the First Time.
Your focus is to capture the wedding day’s events during a wedding, including other photoshoots for engagements, wedding preparations, and boudoir photos.
My first wedding photoshoot, including everything from the wedding prep to the end, was Friday to Sunday.
This wedding consisted of two ceremonies.
A Indian marriage took place on Friday, while the American wedding followed on Saturday.
Through this experience, I understand why professionals charge the prices they do. It can be pretty stressful and demanding since you’re capturing a once–in–a–lifetime event for the couple, and I was doing it for free.
The most complex challenge is that you have to be everywhere to provide the best quality photos to capture the entire event regardless of your skill level with the camera.
Knowing Your Camera Equipment
Having the best camera equipment is very important for being a professional wedding photographer; however, understanding how to use your equipment in the “clutch” can be pretty challenging.
You can have a full-frame DSLR or mirrorless system that can handle everything the event will throw at you but adjusting based on exposure and framing alone can be difficult with wedding guests and constant motion throughout the wedding ceremony.
I was struggling with getting the proper subjects in focus while trying to adjust for the harshness of the sunlight.
Both ceremonies took place during the peak sunlight time, which led to most of my photos during that period getting overexposed.
What Camera Do I need to Shoot Wedding Photos?
I recommend any camera that can use a wide variety of interchangeable lenses, from the prime to the zoom lens.
After exploring the different types of systems from Canon, Sony, Fuji can produce quality content but vary from photographer to photographer depending on skill level.
During my first wedding ceremony, I only had access to one camera I had borrowed from my niece, a Nikon D3300.
Using that as a starter camera got me to understand the basics of adjusting shutter speed and aperture.
I came across borrowlenses.com afterward to test out which camera system I felt was the best fit for me.
Before committing thousands of dollars, try out options at borrowlenses.com that will give you access to packages specific to wedding photography.
What’s the point in the fancy camera if I can’t produce quality wedding images?
Refining your knowledge and knowing your equipment will help enhance your photos beyond any smartphone on the market.
Regardless of a smartphone shooting with proper photography composition, the quality will be subpar when directly compared to a DSLR or mirrorless camera.
Wedding Photography Composition
Photography composition is the foundation for any photo, but it can be challenging to bring composition into the quicken pace of a wedding with multiple crucial moments happening at once.
Here are Five Wedding Photography Composition Tips
- Rule of thirds – Focus on capturing elements of the wedding with either the bride/groom in the left or right third of any images, leaving more open rather than just composing in the center alone.
- Leading Lines – Lines help draw viewers into the subject, for example, posing with lines leading to the happy couple
- Bokeh – Hop into the manual mode or aperture priority and turn your aperture to the lowest F-stop possible. Set your settings down to f2.8 or f1.4 will give you shots with that creamy background blur.
4. Framing is everything – visual interest is more stimulated with frames adding context and depth to the photos. Also great for drawing the viewer’s eye into the scene to your desired focal point.
5. Change your position – Experiment with taking photos above the subject, below the focal points, and at waist level to capture various shots to show the entire flow and story of the wedding day.
When I was shooting my first wedding ceremony, it was hard to get used to all of these photography composition tips due to the quick-paced wedding ceremony.
Over time, like anything else you practice, I find myself doing these tips naturally. Now with constant practice, everything can become second nature.
Lessons From My First Wedding Photos In the Action
My cousin’s wedding consisted of an Indian ceremony that I covered, starting on a Thursday with photo coverage.
My cousin, the bride, allowed me to practice at her wedding while professional photographers covered the more significant aspects of the Indian and American ceremonies.
Indian weddings are known for the carnival of colors with multiple big moments that happen very quickly.
Watching the other photographers and myself covering the event made me realize that being a solo photographer can be challenging to capture all the moments.
I, alone, was running around trying to capture the bride’s entrance while capturing the groom’s reaction to seeing his bride.
The venue location was a vast open space, with an outside setup for each type of ceremony.
The Hindu Ceremony
Thursday night following the Hindu ceremony was the pre rituals.
My first attempt at taking event photography taught me that using the pop-up flash on the camera body pointing directly at the subject doesn’t produce vibrant images
Most pre rituals were indoors and outside at night.
Keeping in mind, I only had access to a Nikon D3300 with a standard zoom lens. I didn’t think about options for renting a camera with off-camera flashes or reflectors that could have helped bounce the light.
An Indian Celebration
Capturing all the details in an Indian wedding can be challenging when covering the event alone.
Multiple entrances occur throughout the ceremony from the bride and groom, parents, and other family members participating in the actual rituals themselves.
Being the bride’s cousin, even I stood in as her brother for one of the rituals of handing her over to her husband.
Having an assistant photographer with you will always come in handy to capture any shots that you’re missing.
It’s Time To Get Married Again
Friday quickly wrapped up, and it was already time for the second ceremony on Saturday.
The American wedding was set not too far off from the Indian wedding. Weddings guests surrounded the bride and the groom in a vast circle when the bride and groom could circle every guest in the loop during the entrance.
As one of the photographers, it was great to get multiple angles of the bride walking in with her father.
Watching the videographer sparked me to learn videography as well since when the bride was walking, he captured that loop with her walk-in song “Can’t help falling in love” By Elvis Presley.
Wedding Party Assemble
Of course, after the ceremony during cocktail hour, the professional photographers, the bride and the groom, and I hopped into a truck and went to shoot wedding photos in the back area of the venue.
The wedding party assembled in chairs pulled by a tractor as we headed to shoot the photos in golden hour sunlight.
We shot photos in the back as the reception took place in a massive tent on the other side of the ceremony. Wedding guests were currently at cocktail hour transitioning to their seats for the reception.
Having a variety of lenses would have come in handy since shots were taken inside the truck, on the drive, in the fields, in the golden hour sunlight, and multiple types of environments.
It’s time to Celebrate the Happy Couple.
Finishing up from the wedding photo shoot, I drove the bride and groom back to their positions to get ready for their walk-in for the reception.
The wedding planners lined up everyone in the bridal party to walk out to their song to lead into the bride and groom walkout.
With the lighting fading from the golden hour, I was back onto the on-camera flash, which at the time I began to realize that this was reducing all the quality when I looked back at it in Adobe Lightroom.
Once inside the wedding reception tent, I relied solely on the ambient light within the wedding tent.
However, since I was relying on other light sources, pictures of the first bride and groom’s first dance, father/daughter dance, and mother/son dance came out poorly with the available lighting.
I increased the ISO and shot wide open to let in as much light as possible, but it led to more noise in the image, with the focus unable to track in the dark and didn’t have the power of a Speedlight to compensate.
Post-Process Wedding Photography
Through having multiple ceremonies gave me multiple experiences towards my post-processing photography workflow.
Afterward, I was able to go through hundreds of wedding photos.
Weddings will take up an enormous amount of space on your SD card and computer hard drive, especially when shooting in RAW. It can sometimes take hours to download photos onto the computer after the wedding.
Instead of downloading all the photos straight from the SD card to my computer, I begin by filtering the images for the bests ones straight on the camera before wasting time uploading pictures I’m going to delete anyway.
I read somewhere that for every 100 photos you take, only one of them will have that awe factor image.
Editing My Wedding Photos
Adjusting the framing and applying the rule of thirds is my first process in editing my wedding photos in Adobe Lightroom, alongside changing the exposure and making color adjustments that appeal to the eye.
Through post-editing, skin correction is possible through Adobe Photoshop to help clear up any blemishes or discolorations in the skin.
Highlighting the light in some regions of the image can give that extra dimension to the photos.
Learning From My First Wedding
Through this experience, I was able to fast-track my photography learning curve.
It’s possible to begin wedding photography for less than $500 for a full wedding photography gear set up since you can now rent the equipment through options like borrowlens.com.
You can plan according to the location and venue, know what gear you’ll need, rent for that specific date, and return it right after.
I wish I had known that earlier, or I would have used a much better camera with various lenses to capture my first wedding events.
Skip the hassle
Overall, it’s possible to get excellent quality wedding photos instead of paying thousands of dollars for a wedding photographer.
Having a family member or friend capture a small park wedding is possible with renting a camera and any other equipment you’d need to capture the type of shots you’re looking to get.
However, hiring a wedding photographer with experience can help you skip the hassle of having to rely on someone working solo or have to struggle to learn anything about photography yourself.
Teamwork Makes the Dream Work with Marvelous Captures
After working multiple wedding events on my own, I realized it can still be hard to get the perfect shots with group shots posing, angles, or even finding enough time to switch lenses.
Building a team in coordination with wedding planning services helps ensure the clients who take advantage of both wedding planning and wedding photography have more coordinated and planned out photos.
Working with a wedding planner helps put the photography team in suitable placements to ensure nothing is blocking their view.
Marvelous Captures will always consist of two photographers in the wedding photography packages to ensure clients get the best moments captured from multiple angles.
Through experience, I have learned to have assistants or a second photographer to help create the ideal images since multiple factors, even outside the camera, come into place for the perfect wedding shots.
We are building out a photography team that focuses not only on capturing photos and videos but also on creating a marvelous moments experience to show the joy and emotion in those wedding images.
Experience Marvelous Moments with Marvelous Captures today!
Conclusion
Learning to take great wedding photos isn’t rocket science but can require patience and a solid eye for detail.
Anyone can get started with all the resources available to learn and save thousands of dollars from hiring a professional photographer.
Couples can save thousands of dollars by hiring any beginner photographer looking to build their portfolio due to the ability to fast-track any learning curve.
The resources available today, alongside the ability to get access to thousands of dollars worth of photography equipment for a fraction of the price, help anyone become a better photographer.
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Every moment counts,
Marvelous Moments.