Initial Wedding Photography Made Easy

Initial wedding photography

if you're interested in getting my wedding photography email templates completely for free there's a link in the description below today we are talking about tips for your first wedding taylor jackson shooting 67 weddings last year taylor jackson welcome so taylor you are well known in this community you're an amazing photographer it's your first wedding make sure you're shooting raw get rid of that kid lens it's a tragic flaw it's not as scary as you think it's just the unknown keep your kiss simple you don't need a drone check check that's not how you frame a shot good morning in less than an hour from now aircraft from here will join others all around the world to launch the largest aerial battle known to mankind mankind that word should have a kidding the speech to independence day you're gonna learn about the the first first wedding tips that i have so this was actually posted in our members only facebook group so if you're a member at the website there's a link in the description always uh join up to the the facebook group that we have because it's really awesome community of like-minded individuals specifically if you're into the hybrid coverage side of things there's there's a lot of help in there and i do my best to contribute the best i can so if you have any questions specifically for me you can always just just tag me and i'll chime in when i can a few days ago this topic was posted and it really has a lot of great advice so i hope that everybody doesn't mind me sharing their their advice as well as my thoughts on tips for your first wedding so question pretty simple hey guys having my first paid wedding tomorrow any tips or advice appreciated 67 comments which was really great that everyone's so willing to help out evan george immediately says don't eff it up but his real advice is not to stress uh that you can have fun too and talk to the couple and their family as long as you're sure you're getting all the good shots that you need to make them happy and enjoy the day i 100 agree with this that my first wedding i definitely uh coming from the introverted side of things my mindset was very much i i think that i was also maybe tainted by the the people that i was following at the time i was following a lot of very photojournalism style individuals and their style very fly on the wall in some cases for instance jeff askoff who's still a great photographer out in in the uk he kind of spoke to the fact that he does super crazy limited family sessions that at the time at least i'm not sure if things have changed but he would do like three or four combinations of families and that was kind of like it for the entire day so i read a lot into that and i was like oh that sounds really fun for me so i'm gonna kind of channel this so i might have laid back a little bit more than i should have and i should have been a little bit more involved this is also i guess dependent on as your career grows that you're going to attract your ideal clients more and more often once you have portfolio that is kind of that starts that surround sound effect of attracting them and if you don't have that go and start building that right now but when you do start shooting weddings for your ideal couples there's a good chance that they have a lot of similar interest and you're actually going to have a legitimately good time at the wedding um so know your gear keep it as simple as possible that's always also my advice that if you're stressing about gear if you have rolly cases if you have like 15 lights to set up every room you go into it's really going to take you out of the day and i think that you can do a lot just with two lenses and just being present and um i guess in in the moment at all moments but that said you can also be part of those moments as well that if you're in there and you're talking about something for instance uh i i it took me years and years and years before i got even somewhat comfortable in the the girls side of the getting ready but with the guys usually they're playing nintendo or something and and we had at least some common ground to to speak to uh very quickly and i was able to change the that that vibe i feel like maybe this is even a positive because the the guys are usually a little bit more weird about like why is this photographer just creeping around and if you're a person and you have things in common with them and you can talk about that and i feel like people open up and become a lot more comfortable to you a lot quicker and they're just like the the main goal of all wedding photography is and engagement sessions included in portrait sessions is to to bridge the gap from the awkward point when you're like hello i'm here with a camera to take photos of you to getting them to just be themselves or to be 85 of themselves maybe um to to have some sort of truth those images which means that basically that they're going to be images that convey some sort of real personality and if that's them playing nintendo wii in a hotel room like that's that's what it is and i feel like those images are are very valuable for that time so um maybe that's my kind of advice based on that and maybe i'll i'll take everything and i'll kind of put my my own little two cents in mandelo says overshoot and be okay with it not in a way that it takes away from getting focused and composition perfect uh extra batteries memory cards and water i know water came up a lot here which is kind of funny um i'll speak to that in a second and i have a shot list as well so if you're if you're a member you can go over to the the kind of the general shot list i would say it's for most of my weddings so you can modify and base whatever off of that um i would say that the the benefit of overshooting definitely is that you you're you're going to satisfy the anxiety of the fact that like hey maybe maybe i'm i'm missing a moment and if you if you do become okay with overshooting um this was maybe another thing that i kind of poisoned myself with was that a lot of people that i was following when i was first getting into wedding photography they are very limited shooters which means they will wait for a moment to happen they will grab one frame and they will move on which is great in theory but in practice it's incredibly difficult to shoot that way and when you come home with a wedding of eight hour wedding and you have maybe a thousand files it's going to be very difficult to deliver 600 of those whereas if you are out there and you're you're making use of your time and you're capturing the correct moments but we do have the ability now to to photograph a lot more images than than in the past if we were shooting film so i would say um totally be okay with overshooting extra batteries extra memory cards super important they are things that will typically be forgotten what i do is i just basically verify i do the format as i'm leaving for the wedding so i verify battery levels and i also verify that my card is completely empty and then if you have two card slots make sure that you that you're running two cards um and then to come down to the to the water section of that i think it was it must have been years it must have been like five or six years before i realized that this is the reason that i was leaving weddings feeling completely like crap and uh you maybe you've heard of the wedding hangover that the next day you just are completely depleted of all energy and especially if you're an introvert going into that day and dealing with a lot of people takes a lot out of you if you can just remember to drink water and to bring a water bottle and to continue that also like candy seems to help me as well if you just stop at the gas station grab some candy that seems to at least get my mental energy back up there's um there's a fake fake fake news article about how uh sugar will i guess basically replace maybe it's it it's a 50 true article i would say that sugar or glucose or whatever will replace some of the brain power that you lose if you're constantly making decisions and problem solving that that will kind of be a temporary patch for that and i believe that and i use it as a placebo and i don't know if that's entirely scientifically accurate or not but it worked for me and it gave me something whenever i was feeling like really down that it was just that little sugar boost that i needed to get back into the day weddings are a lot more up and down than we think that when if for instance if you watch one of the full wedding days on my youtube channel we just do stuff for the entire like half hour or whatever those videos are but in reality that's eight hours of doing stuff all combined into a half hour of just showing everything that we do there's a lot of down time there's like when you're sitting down for dinner that's the time that my brain usually crashes is that we'll sit down for dinner after like doing the family photos and the photos of the couple and that's one of the reasons i guess maybe that i i prefer not to be sat with the with guests because at that point i can't sit down as somebody that's again introverted and immediately strike up conversations with like 10 other people at a table i find that very very difficult so i would rather just like sit with vendors and we don't have to talk about anything and i feel like that's usually how that how that goes uh matt says keep calm have four or five poses prepared for uh portrait so don't freeze up pre-plan all of your positions for the ceremony the dj is probably your friends in terms of scheduling and such you can usually put your stuff up by the dj so it's not completely unguarded don't forget to drink water and snacks and meal so to add to that first point uh to have a few photos of of poses that you want to do just on your phone as the last images that you that you took uh so you're able to just like if you're if you're stuck you can just pull up your phone quickly and find something or you can even show it to the couple if you so desire doing that if you're finding it's difficult communication wise to get them to do what you're asking for if you just show them usually it's a little bit easier so i would say save some images and save them on your phone so you don't have to go on data to pull them down i feel like it's the faster the easier you can do it um pre-planning for the for the ceremony i think is definitely a good thing um or if you're with a second photographer just talking through kind of where you guys will be my brief ceremony plan is that i'm usually up at the front right i would say and then typically i guess speaking specifically to a male female traditional-ish wedding that um the bride is usually coming down the aisle and the groom's usually up at the front i am usually on the opposite side of the aisle as the groom so if they're jewish they flip the flip the side so usually i'm on the left side so i can get a good shot of the of the reaction of the groom as the bride is coming down the aisle um same-sex weddings i've found that most of my couples just walk down the aisle together or maybe they will come down with their parents but usually there isn't that that dynamic doesn't really exist in the same sex weddings from from at least my experience that said if it does i would be the the person getting the reaction shot of um well you have to get both but you get the reaction shot first and you can usually see eyes light up uh you don't have to be looking or you can be shooting like this and looking over your shoulder i do that a lot when we're doing hybrid video so i can make sure that i get that initial reaction so i just let the video clip roll until the reaction happens then i grab two photos turn and then do the the video and photo coming down the aisle um so i would say that that is usually my ceremony plan and then once everyone's at the front it's very easy you just kind of roam around the back and then when they are coming back down the aisle after the wedding uh together holding hands dancing jumping whatever they're going to be doing uh usually at that point i will communicate with my second and one of us will be i'll usually be on the 7200 or an 85 and my second will usually be on something a little bit wider so you can get kind of everybody i find that specifically with that shot the reason that i i shoot it a little bit tighter and i think that this kind of goes for everything that i actually do at a wedding that i shoot very very tight and i very much utilize depth of field being as small as possible because there's always somebody in the background that ruins the shot so if you're shooting a wide shot the couple's having a great time in the center of it and there's like a dude just like struggling on his phone um and he'll pull you like that's that now is like the the center point of the image that you don't you notice a couple but then the next thing you notice is uh what this dude's doing and that always happens and there's always happens during first dances as well so that's one of the reasons why i shoot primes a lot or 7200 2.8 usually around the 100 to maybe 150 mark most of the time so i can make some of that disappear but i want that wide shot in case it does work out but i'm not banking on that wide shot working out 100 of the time the dj definitely is your friend we have good relationships with pretty much all the djs in town now it's been kind of cool to see i don't know if this is maybe a thing maybe chime in the comments below if this is the thing that's also happening where where you're at but it seemed like when i started 15 years ago all the djs most of the djs actually i'm going to say like 80 percent of the djs that i met it might have also been that i was shooting different different weddings um we're pretty sketchy individuals for the most part but as things have progressed i feel like djs have become i'm seeing a lot of just friends now that are that are djs that um i get to get to work with which is awesome so if you have a good relationship with them by all means like you can hide your gear back there again don't over pack watch my minimalist gear video i feel like that's the minimum kit that i would be using or that is the kit that i use on every wedding day so don't bring too much stuff but usually the dj's cool with you either hiding a bag behind the table or whatever it might be or underneath the table as well if there's a cloth of some sort over top of it dave brown says take a breath make sure all your gear is clean and charged and ready to roll and you'll be fine don't overthink it um that's another a great point is that to make sure everything is actually charged maybe before the the actual the morning of so make sure you're charging we actually had a funny incident yesterday so lindsay was leaving for a wedding and i noticed that the charger that usually nikon charges there's a little light and if it's a fully charged battery the light will be solid otherwise it's blinking and it wasn't doing anything and i pulled it out of the wall plugged it back in still still non-functional flipped a little the nub that plugs into the wall and it started working again but um just like know that there are an unlimited number of permutations of weird things that can happen so just verify everything with as much notice as you possibly can so if you do need to go out the morning of or the night of to or the night before the wedding to grab a new battery or whatever it might be that you can do that hopefully you still have camera shops wherever wherever you live next point to just enjoy and be yourself if you're having fun the couple will too and be relaxed in their photos i think this is also important and i think that this comes back to the just don't bring too much gear that when you show up don't have the 7200 on like have something small and slowly kind of come into the scene rather than just taking over the scene this is definitely a thing that will improve over time i feel like the once you i would say maybe five or six weddings into wedding photography you've kind of solved most of the problems that you're going to experience on a wedding day and at that point it became a lot easier for me to actually communicate rather than just thinking about kind of everything that was happening or asking questions about what was happening i think that that was kind of a big a big turning point for me so that takes a couple of weddings and essentially just to get over the initial anxiety of it but i think that it definitely is a thing it's a turning point that you can definitely feel within a couple of weddings um once you begin and you realize that it's not really that big of a deal that as long as you come in you're prepared you know that you have backups that you're going to do a great job on the day you can start to relax and once you've actually seen those images at the end of when you've delivered the gallery and people have been happy at that point i feel like i i relaxed a lot more jimmy says have fun and overshoot plus one for overshooting canyon says triple check your gear and just go with a laid-back attitude things will not go as planned but don't get alarmed breathe move forward that always happens at every single wedding the schedule that you're given will be an 80 schedule usually on any given wedding day and to know that it's always my my stance to never add any stress to the day so if i notice things are running off schedule or i notice that something is just not lining up and that there's going to be a problem i never talk to the couple maybe sometimes the the groom if it's a bridegroom wedding sometimes maybe the groom but most of the time it's typically a bridesmaid or maybe a mother of the bride or if you're working with a venue coordinator the venue coordinator i do everything that i can to kind of guard the couple from that if there's any problems we'd solve them on the day and then maybe tell them later if if they ever need to know otherwise those problems just shouldn't exist on their wedding day and in regards to scheduling usually that means that hair makeup is running late and that's pushing into other times so make sure you have a little bit of a buffer i know that i talk a lot about having kind of that one hour session total with wedding party couple and family photos that i only need about an hour to do that maybe in the beginning it would be nice to have two hours for that if it does look like hair makeup could eat into some of that time otherwise just always be doing the best you can and have a solution for everything so if the couple notices their their photo sessions slowly starting to not exist be like hey we'll do 10 minutes photos with you guys and then we'll do the rest of the session over sunset later tonight um not a problem at all like don't worry about it we'll get the family photos done and we'll do some wedding party shots i also personally feel like it's a pretty good thing to have a more limited time frame i feel like it manages expectations a little bit more that if we if we have three hours to do photos with the wedding party they're going to expect a lot of photos of the wedding party but if you say hey i only need an hour and they're okay with that that means that they're not going to want like such a crazy advanced bridal party session which is what most of my couples they're not really looking for anymore that they want some nice photos of the two of them they want some family photos they want a few photos with their friends that are in the wedding party and then they want to get back to the day so maybe gauge where your couples kind of are on that scale but mine for the most part seem to be really pulling hard towards that they just want to get back to the day and that they don't need a super involved bridal party session andre says uh one thing to add don't be scared of higher isos much a little grain yeah so um this is maybe one of the the most important things i think that that i saw in here um a lot of people are very hesitant to go above a certain iso if you're shooting any camera really that's come out most cameras that have come out since like 2015 you have high iso capabilities really beyond anything that you could ever really need i would say that by shooting primes and not being too worried about going high iso which for me would mean anything maybe 4000 and above so if you're shooting at 6 400 i feel like that would be considered a high iso don't be afraid of going that high if you need to that as photographers i feel like we're all very cognizant of the quality and it's like oh no there's there's grain in this image there's there's noise you can one you can clean that up and post usually pretty good two lightroom is actually just getting really good at processing as it loads files in that it just seems to to know camera profiles better this also goes back why you should save the raw files to all your weddings and to save the portfolio images as well that 10 years from now when you load that raw file from that you shot today into lightroom it's going to do a better job of handling it significantly better job handling it so keep those raw files around for for your key shots and probably also back them up for your couples as well but selfishly keep those in a folder so that you're able to reprocess them in the future if ever required or you can do that for for large prints or whatever it might be we as photographers and i i don't know like i don't know why film grain i love the look of and i was still very hesitant to to push iso and i've never had any real pushback from couples being like why are the images so grainy and if they are you can run them through a de-noise filter and and make it a little bit better for them uh but otherwise if maybe if something is totally unrecoverable and you had to shoot it at or you accidentally shot it at 128 000 iso something like that that maybe that means it's just a black and white image i usually do my best to deliver both in black and white and in color but in a case like that if there's just all kinds of crazy color noise it'll still look nice and black and white it just might not be a color version of the images that they get um one more point for charge the batteries it's it's funny because it's just such a common thing that you just so my i guess maybe to to go into my process when i get home from any shoot i immediately put the batteries in the charger i have um for for this fuji here when i get home today i have a dual battery charger and i have one fully charged battery sitting in that i'll take that out put this in and then put the battery from here into the other side of it and at that point i would then take the cards out and load the cards in so that's kind of my process i don't know if there's a right or wrong way maybe that's a little too too much but i've found that that's how i keep all my batteries charged that i very rarely if ever if i pick up a random battery off my desk for any of my cameras there's a pretty good chance that if it's not 100 it's at like 95 so maybe keep your batteries charged as best as possible next point to bring an extra camera body if the camera breaks down basically just a one person wedding definitely bring backups backups of backups of backups i would say that you can find a lot of really good cameras depending on your brand on ebay you can find older versions of them or as i mentioned ones that have come out maybe 2013 2014 and they will do a really really fantastic job if you're just doing photography only those are totally fine if you're doing video as well you might want something a little bit newer as a backup you can also rent or you can also hire a second photographer that comes with their gear and if they shoot the same brand as you you can like absolutely worst case unlikely to ever happen but you can ask them to use either like one of their cameras their backup camera or their main camera or whatever it might be and i think that maybe also speaks to an another reason to be to be friends and to seek out relationships with other photographers and creatives in your town one because it's cool to have friends in the same business and two because you'll actually be super helpful for each other or if for instance if one of my friends are shooting a wedding and they need to borrow a lens because they're they're 85 went down or whatever that like they're able to do that pretty easily rather than trying to email lens rentals or whatever and pull something in like a one-day ship uh it's much easier to just know people in the community that hopefully shoot the same brand as you uh eric says take time breathe shoot everything you can relaxing again overshoot and relax and just enjoy i like that there's a number of just relax take your time that it's really not as big a deal as we're all making out to because it's such an unknown going into your first wedding um another point for hydrate today introvert introvert i always designate the loudest member of the wedding party you'll know who this person is when you start doing group photos they can call groups and then you can come in and set them up and um get them comfortable pose and done um there always is somebody like that i even mentioned this in the first meeting that if they have somebody to that at least knows who everyone is my the difficult thing for me if i'm a solo shooter is that i'm setting up these group photos and if people are running away to cocktail hour or just like leaving to go do whatever i i don't know if i see those people walking away if they're in the next photo or not and if i start calling names and they're not there and they're like oh yeah we thought that we were done if somebody's there and they know who everyone is they have a list of family photos which i also think is important to have um so get that list of family photos from the couple before to be like hey what are kind of the key family photos you'd like or anything that i should know about as far as social dynamics with the families if there's any separated families or partners or ex-partners that no longer speak to each other and will not be in the same photo together it's nice to be aware of that so you don't make any embarrassing mistakes or something that like you could have never had any idea of but if you have somebody that's that's right there willing to help you out to yell out couples to be like hey like this family on deck next for your photo it speed speeds things up it helps not deplete my mental tank at all which is which is nice and overall it just gets you better work faster and gets again the couple back to the day all right steve says another important one to make sure that you get that shot of the bride and groom smiling facing the camera do that at full length so you get full dress full feet and then do one at kind of like three quarter half length as well that's the most important shot i think of all weddings which is silly but it's it's the one that's gonna end up everywhere for the rest of time pretty much uh so make sure you get that shot for sure and for the last point tim says be calm make them look like rock stars trust your gut instincts find the right light smile laugh as much as you can if you come across as relaxer couples will be relaxed and you'll be able to find solutions easier again going back to add no stress of the day if anything absorb that stress i like that lastly you'll notice the things that went really well and the things that could have gone better make notes about what you loved and what you want to work on when backing up photos when the wedding is over that's that's good advice tim thanks tim tim's sitting tim's display photo is sitting at the desks that i'm sitting on right now but he has a cup of coffee and the the photos facing this way and that's everything for today i think that everything that i would have brought up was brought up within those points and to just really relax drink water make sure everything's charged all the cards are ready to go and having backups of everything releases all the anxiety or most of the anxiety hopefully there's still definitely a sense of the unknown that when you're going into your first wedding day my first wedding day that i went into it had been i went to a wedding as a ring bearer when i was like five and then i had not been to another wedding until until i had a camera so i really just didn't know how the weddings went and also uh there were there was information online about wedding photography but there were no behind-the-scenes wedding days so hopefully they give you a little bit more of an idea of kind of what to expect but again know that those full wedding days that's an eight-hour day condensed into like a half an hour or whatever it might be so not as much happens as you think and you do have time to think and to to relax and to set up for the next thing and to make sure that you're on schedule so uh have fun first wedding day uh hopefully these tips were helpful for you and if you have any other tips like put them in the comments below or if you went out you shot a wedding and you think something else might be helpful for people to know feel free to put in the comments below i'm taylor jackson and i will see you next time well those are the entire time ah now they're just at a frame great don't forget about the free email templates that you can you can have access to link in the description below head over there grab those and use them modify them to to be to be your voice but they're a good starting point