What to Consider When Organizing a Wedding Photoshoot

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Organizing a wedding photo shoot is a crucial aspect of ensuring that your special day is beautifully captured and remembered for years to come. Given the importance of these memories, there are several factors to consider to make sure everything goes smoothly and the resulting photographs are of the highest quality.

1. Is it necessary to invite a professional photographer to your wedding?

Today, when the development of digital technologies in the household appliances sector has reached truly enormous heights, almost everyone has photo and video cameras. At any wedding, there will be at least a dozen guests who will be filming everything with their little digital cameras. As a result, they will certainly succeed in something, but usually, the percentage of successful shots among amateurs does not exceed 30%. Where is the guarantee that all the important moments of the wedding day will fall into this 30%? 

Professional wedding photographer not only has equipment of a higher class, but they know how to use it, which is also important! But besides this, they know how weddings go, where to be and where to look so as not to miss anything. Experience in this matter is extremely important. 

2.  Should I agree to “two-for-one” offers - photos and videos?

It is impossible to perform two functions at the same time and cope with both tasks at the same level. Such offers captivate with their cheapness, but is it worth saving on photographing your own wedding - a unique and inimitable event? When shooting “two in one” something will definitely suffer - a photo or a video, and most likely, both. The photographer and videographer at a wedding have slightly different tasks, and only individual specialists can solve them efficiently, but not a single generalist.

3. How to choose a wedding photographer?

Oddly enough, even in the Internet era, the most popular method is still word of mouth. Good craftsmen are passed from hand to hand by grateful clients. But the Internet is also very useful when looking for a wedding photographer: all self-respecting professionals have long had their own websites with demo work. Another way is advertisements on websites advertising wedding services, in specialized wedding magazines and mass publications.

4. What to look for when viewing a portfolio?

The most important thing is, of course, the quality of the pictures - the absence of out-of-focus, dark, or overexposed frames, unclear in composition. However, “defocus” (fuzzy faces and details) is often used as an artistic technique, but, as a rule, it is still possible to distinguish artistic “blurriness” from an outright defect. 

The photographs should convey the mood and the attitude of the photographer towards their clients. It’s good if the photographer can provide different options for designing wedding photos like collages or a wedding album.

5. Is it possible to take photographs on a day other than the wedding day?

In recent years, so-called pre-wedding photography has become increasingly popular. Newlyweds often organize a photo session a few days before the wedding - they are photographed in wedding dresses in the studio or outdoors, and show the pictures to the guests at the wedding itself. 

This tradition has gradually begun to take root, but more often the so-called Love Story is filmed - the story of a couple meeting and the birth of love, without wedding dresses. This is due to a superstition that the groom should not see the bride’s dress before the wedding. To this day, many believe that this is a sign of an unhappy marriage. Pre-wedding photography in one style or another is carried out in the same parks, museums, or estates.

6. What needs to be discussed with the photographer during the meeting?

First of all, you need to look at the works and understand whether you like them. This is the main thing: you should like the photographs, because each professional has their own shooting style, vision, and artistic techniques, and they must coincide with the wishes of the newlyweds. 

If everything is okay, you can ask what equipment the photographer is working with, what additional equipment is used when shooting, how many frames are obtained at the output, how they will be processed, and on what media they will be recorded. It is better to immediately agree on the time required to complete the order. It is also worth keeping in mind that during the “hot season” - from June to October - the work on producing the entire “set” can take more time.