How to Take Wedding Portraits

Weddings are always a happy and splendid occasion to celebrate, and a photographer is a really important part of any wedding. The portraits taken on a wedding day will be treasured keepsakes for a lifetime and beyond. Taking wedding portraits is a great way to work as a photographer, but it’s important to make sure you’re prepared when the big day comes. The wedding party won’t be calm. It's their big day. You have to be the cool, collected one!

Things You'll Need

• Good Quality Camera
• Camera Bag
• Tripod
• Lenses
• Extra Film (or Memory Card)
• Lighting Equipment (optional)
• Props (optional)

Instructions

1. Get the right equipment. You’re going to need a top of the line camera, a tripod, a camera bag for all your accessories, multiple lenses if you use them and lots of extra film or memory cards (depending on if your camera is digital or film). The best portraits come from having the best equipment and knowing how to use it.

2. Practice taking portraits before the wedding. When you get to the wedding, you don’t want to be second guessing what setting your camera needs to be on or what lighting you need. Find out where the wedding is going to be held and start planning whether you’ll take outside or inside pictures. Recreate the setting before the wedding so you’ll be ready when it’s portrait time.

3. Find places to set up your equipment early. Do a lap around the venue. Focus on finding the best places to take your wedding portraits. This will save you time when things start to get crazy. If you need extra lights or other props, set those up as early as you can too.

4. Be prepared for anything goes! You may have to work as a wrangler and bring everybody together. Weddings are insanity at its finest. The bride is going to be in one area, and the groom will be in another until the wedding commences. Capture all that you can.

5. Be creative with your portraits. So many wedding portraits are boring and lacking emotion. Unless your bridal party has insisted that you take only traditional portraits, feel free to get creative. Pose everyone in a fun way. Make the bride and groom laugh. Take more natural looking photos of everyone enjoying themselves. The best wedding pictures are going to be those that have a little something extra.

6. Take lots of shots in rapid succession to get everyone looking their best. When you’re shooting lots of people in the same photo, you’ll want to take many shots so you can get a portrait where the whole group looks good. Use the burst mode on your camera to get rapid shots of the same moment. You’ll be glad at the end of the day that you have so many portraits to choose from!

7. Pay special attention to the important milestone moments of a wedding. Capture details of the ceremony, lighting of candles, the cutting of the cake, the bride's first dance with her father, the first dance shared between the couple as husband and wife, and throwing of the bouquet.

Tips & Warnings

• Take as many pictures as you can. The more you have to choose from, the better you will seem as a photographer. You will have a ton of winning shots.

• Don't show that you're upset if something goes wrong. The bride and groom need to enjoy their day fully. While you do have to inform them if something goes disastrously wrong with capturing the photos, but leave them out of problems otherwise.