So your friend has asked you to take the pictures at his wedding because after all the other expenses, they cannot afford a wedding photography professional but want some good pictures. After feeling flattered that they think you good enough to record their most important day, the worries start to happen.
First thing to do is to talk over with the couple about the shots that they think are the most important for them. These will be the ones that you have to get right. Find out the address of the wedding venue and reception and the times. Armed with this, go and visit the sites so that you will have advanced knowledge of all the suitable places to stage the shots, bearing in mind the time of day and where the sun will be at that time, take some reference shots so you will know where to go on the day. Remember if the wedding is some time away, the sun may well be higher or lower in the sky.
On the day, play it like a boy scout and ‘Be Prepared’. Your batteries must be fully charged and you have to have a couple of spare sets handy for all of your equipment. Work out how many rolls of film you need and then add six more rolls. Remember that you need at least two different speeds of film. Those shooting with digital camera should allow for a minimum of two 2 gig memory cards and then add another because you will be shooting at maximum resolution for top print quality. If you know the difference, try to shoot RAW rather than JPEG as you will have a greater flexibility after the event.
Wedding photography is much more than the happy couple, many family and friends come together for the occasion so you must speak to the couple to ascertain who are the most important people to be included in the pictures. The group shot contains everybody and there are two ways to do it. First is to start with the couple and then add to them, the second and the preferable one is to get everybody together do the shots and then start discarding people until you end up with the couple who may not be able to smile at the end of it. Remember to shoot the children as soon as possible, whilst their clothes are still in pristine condition and they are not bored.
Just because you have checked out the scene, don’t forget to look through the viewfinder and make sure there is nothing untoward, like trees or posts that will detract from the picture before taking the first shot. You may have chosen a particularly pleasing background but it is worth doing a couple of extra shots with a wiser aperture that will blur the back drop and make the people stand out.
When using fill-in flash you will probably encounter a problem with people who wear spectacles which will give you a quite nasty flare. The easiest solution would be to get them to remove the offending articles but then they may not be recognised in the final shots. Get the person or people to just move their head/s towards the couple, any other direction may give the appearance of disinterest.
The reception photographs will inevitably be shot inside so you have to use the flash, which can lead to difficult shadowing. There are several strategies to avoid this. Either bounce the flash off the walls or ceiling, taking care that there are no strong colours that might alter the tone or an over high ceiling that will weaken the effect. You may be able to buy a plastic diffuser that fits over the flash or failing that, some thin tracing paper or a piece of plain net curtain over the lamp but always do some test shots before the wedding day.
Finally get your films processed as soon as possible or make sure you down load all the pictures to your hard drive as soon as possible. You may wish to do a quick run through and delete the really bad ones and put to one side those that might be saved with a little photo shop action and burn a selection of the best onto a cd to present to the happy couple. Now you have the taste, maybe you could think of turning a wedding photography pro !