How can you get perfect pictures? Your wedding day is one of the most emotionally charged days of your whole life. The joy you feel at confirming a bond with your partner combined with the nervousness and excitement of declaring your love for each other has no match.
There is no doubt that this is a day you will want to remember for the rest of your life, hence why the perfect pictures are so important. But while you are in the thick of things, making sure that you get plenty of pictures isn’t going to be your top priority. This is why planning your wedding photos in advance, and coming up with a few options to create those pictures, is a really good idea.
Whether you are planning on a budget and looking to save as much as possible or you are splashing the cash on your big day, you will definitely want some photos to remember it by. You don’t have to do all of these ideas but, choosing from a few will give you the diversity of images you are looking for.
Hire a Professional
The first thing you should think about is hiring a professional photographer. While everyone has a smartphone these days, a professional will use their artistic capabilities to create some gorgeous photos. Professional photographers also have a technological advantage that is well worth paying for.
Some, like Vittore Buzzi Photographer, focus on the story of the wedding day, not just the snapshots. The quality of this type of picture is significantly higher as they generally capture the emotion of the day a lot better. Often, it’s the picture you didn’t know was being taken that really tells the story of the day.
Many wedding photographers are highly experienced and will even work with you in the run up to the wedding to ensure that they can map the ceremony and get the most important pictures. This practice helps you to figure out which moments are most important for you to capture and should make the day much smoother. For example, if you are going from the altar to sign in the registry straight away, your photographer should know where to position themselves to capture the transition.
Organize Group Photos
At every wedding, there is an hour or so when various pictures of various groups are taken. This point can be a bit tedious at some weddings but if you have a clear schedule of who’s going when, it might make things a bit easier. Giving your guests a list of the pictures you want to take might sound a bit like overkill, but as a minimum, you should know which pictures you want. As a plus, if you can work from big pictures with everyone in down to smaller photos, your guests can gradually wander off to the bar once they aren’t needed.
Taking group photos can be a bit of a nightmare but this doesn’t have to be the case at your wedding. The main thing in any photo is that everyone is looking at the camera and can be seen for the fraction of a second it takes for the shutter to click. However, you might want to make the session more fun by encouraging people to take a funny photo after a serious one and to loosen up between shots.
The group photos you take on your wedding day are often quite prescriptive but they are also truly capturing a moment in time. It might feel a bit trying at the time, but these are the pictures you will look back on fondly when you are old.
Take Photos in Different Locations
While it is always easiest to take large group photos in a single location, there is no reason that your smaller groups can’t go for other locations. Moving around will give you perspective shifts throughout the day but it will also provide breaks between photo sessions where guests can top up drinks and pop to the loos. You might also be able to make the most of gaps in the weather if you happened to choose a changeable day.
We can’t all choose exotic locations for our weddings but, you shouldn’t feel confined to the venue you have chosen for your pictures. If the bride and groom want to take a short trip to a particularly scenic spot nearby, that is a nice way to break up the day and have a bit of private time too. Disused train arches and tumbledown walls make beautiful backdrops but don’t shy away from taking edgier photos in town too.
Build Your Own Photo Booth
Photo booths are a lot of fun and if you want to get some great snaps of your guests messing about, this is by far the best way. Creating a photo booth is a reasonably easy task given enough time. All you need is a camera, a tripod with a remote shutter and a nice backdrop to get started.
Many wedding venues come with beautiful surroundings and finding a natural backdrop is a great start to your photo booth. But if you have something more creative in mind, you will be pleased to hear that creating your own backdrop is surprisingly easy. Indeed, just a few streamers or ribbons in bright colours can do just the trick.
But we all know that the real fun in a photo booth is playing with various props and items of fancy dress. We all have a silly side and even your grumpiest relatives might crack a smile at the idea of donning a cowboy hat and a feather boa (a drink at the bar first will help!). Take your time to build up a prop box and keep an eye out for items wherever you go. Remember, it’s the look of the thing, not the quality, so don’t shy away from charity shops or bargain buckets!
Create a Shared Folder
It used to be the case that you would put out a load of disposable cameras and get everyone to take snaps themselves. But now, since everyone has a camera in their pocket, this is a bit outmoded. While you could splash the cash on a bunch of disposables, the quality of picture you get won’t be anything like the quality a phone can produce.
Since everyone is likely to take digital photos, it makes sense to create a digital space to collect these pictures. Instagram is a good option and you can create a hashtag and use instructions from IFTTT to automatically download your perfect pictures with this hashtag to a Dropbox account. This makes your life really easy because you don’t need to go searching for pictures and your guests won’t have to do much more either.
When you have all the photos in one place, it’s a nice idea to order a photo book online to collect some of the best photos in one place. Having a coffee table book of your perfect pictures is a lovely thing to have and you know it will survive no matter what sort of digital revolution happens next. Plus, if you have a message book, you can intersperse the pictures with messages from your friends and family.
The more photos you have, the more likely you are to find a real gem, through these perfect pictures. The combination of more formal, staged group photos and the casual pics that are taken by friends and family is a rare joy. You are giving yourself a time capsule you can look back on in years to come. While you might scrimp and save on other aspects of your day, the photographs you take should be of the highest quality possible.
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