It’s wedding season, and chances are you’re either attending a wedding, in a wedding or are friend’s of a bride and groom. During your wedding ventures this summer, take a step back from your usual point and click photography, and make sure you’re taking the best wedding guest photos possible!
Whether you’re using a film camera or a digital camera, be sure you pack enough supplies for the duration of the wedding festivities, including the rehearsal, preparation, the ceremony, the reception and the after-party. Be sure to bring spare batteries, extra film or media cards, a padded case for protection and a micro fiber cleaning cloth to wipe champagne from your lens, just in case!
The first hurdle that most people have to jump when taking pictures as a guest at a wedding is the nerve to actually take the pictures. I find that many people attend events, with camera in tow, but never manage to get it out of the case. With a wedding, surely you know someone there, so it’s not like you’re taking pictures of strangers. Even if the only people you know are the bride and groom, nobody will think that it’s odd that you’re photographing them; they are the center of attention.
Once your nerves or shyness have subsided, be sure to get close. If you’re photographing a toast at the head table, get up out of your seat, walk up to an area near the table, and get a clear picture of the toast. Otherwise, you’ll be disappointed when you look at you pictures later to see the backs of guests heads illuminated by your flash, and in the background, a dark head table with tiny ant-like people. Getting close holds true for all of the major wedding moments that you want to capture, including the cake cutting, bouquet toss and even first dance.
Also, be sure that your flash is working correctly. I recently attended a family function where a picture happy aunt snapped off a dozen pictures not realizing that her flash was turned off. Her outside pictures looked great, but her indoor pictures were slightly blurry and some were dark.
If you leave your camera on Auto mode, your camera will decide if and when you need a flash. If you choose the “P” or Program mode, you have the option of turning off the flash. That is what happened to the aforementioned aunt. She had no idea her flash was actually set to not go off. Take a moment and look for the lightning bolt symbol on your camera. If it’s digital, be sure it is showing on your LCD screen while in shooting mode. If the lighting bolt has a circle around it with a line slashed through it, it is turned off, and won’t expose your indoor photos properly.
One of the most common mistakes that I see on snapshots is the focusing. All cameras by nature focus on the center of the frame. If you’re photographing two people standing side by side, their faces are not in the center of the frame, so you will actually be focusing on whatever is directly behind them above their shoulders. (Does this remind anyone of a botched Christmas picture in front of the tree? Nicely focused tree, out of focus children…) Be sure to take a second and press your shutter button down half-way before pushing it all the way to take the picture. That one extra moment, on film and digital cameras, will activate your focus lock, which sets your camera to focus on the closest thing with reliable detail. You may see red dots or a green boxes light up in your view finder, indicating what they have chosen to lock focus on. If they have highlighted the correct subject matter, take the picture! If not, recompose the shot and press a few more times until it recognizes the correct subject.
