Here are some quick tips on how to get the most out of your talents as a videographer and wedding photographer, as well as some tips on how to get the most out of your lighting.
The team is not everything, but it is very important
First of all, we cannot stress enough how important it is to have a good team when we talk so much about building wedding photos if we mean pictures wedding videos. Although a professional always advocates that a good camera is of little use in inexperienced hands, the truth is that a wedding is a very demanding job, where everything happens very quickly and the conditions are not always optimal. Photographers are very demanding, and not having the right camera will greatly limit a professional’s ability to reach their full potential.
When choosing a team, it is important to:
- For photos, there is Burst-capable camera: Being able to take a few quick shots can be the difference between capturing a beautiful photo of a beautiful moment or your photo being worthless. Imagine the following situation: the bride and groom are in the middle of the ceremony and are putting on their rings. You are careful and take a picture, but your camera can only take one picture. When it comes time to edit them, you realize that the moment you pulled the trigger coincided with the moment his hands put the ring on hers and covered the ring. As a photographer, attention and experience are very important, but on your wedding day there will always be many things beyond your control: you don’t know when the subject of your photo will blink, you won’t be able to ask the couple to repeat an important action, and you don’t will be able to anticipate that someone will make an unintentional gesture that will ruin a great moment. Burst shooting capability allows you to take three, four, seven shots at split-second intervals, saving you a lot of hassle.
- Fast autofocus: This is important for the same reason. If your camera takes a second and a half to focus on a face, you may miss the moment you wanted to capture.
- Take raw photos: Shooting raw photos is very important to achieve the highest quality photos, because this way all the information received by the sensor is stored in the file, and it gives a lot more margin when processing the image after lifting shadows, increasing saturation, etc. Of course, taking photos in RAW is no substitute for proper composition and exposure, but it does give you more room to maneuver. The only catch is that RAW photos take up a lot more space (about 7 times more than a photo taken in JPG) and if you add to that that you’ll want to shoot bursts, you’ll need good cards , to be able to manage all those megabytes of images. Fortunately, today’s cards are cheaper and more reliable than they used to be, so it does not require such an important financial effort.
- Good response at high ISOS :UOne of the features you should look for most when thinking about a wedding camera is the response it offers at high ISOS. We remember that at a wedding we will rarely have control over the lighting and in many cases we will have to deal with rooms without too much light. By increasing the ISO, we can make a relatively dark scene, but if it creates a lot of noise (grain), the image will give the impression of being completely amateurish. This is one of the reasons why Sony has been eating up the market in recent years with its A7s line for video.
- Large Aperture Lenses: These are also important for the same reason as the previous point: having one more aperture stop allows you to shoot photos or videos at half their ISO value, with the potential to significantly reduce noise. Alternatively, when you’re taking photos, stabilized lenses can allow you to slow down your shutter speed a bit to let more light into your photo. And the last detail! Night estates often have a lot of practical lighting that, with a good lens, can help you create magical bokeh.
Familiarize yourself with the housekeeping, the bride and groom’s rooms, and the lighting they will have.
As we’ve said, the room for maneuver you’ll have in your work as a videographer or photographer is very tight, and the last thing you want is to be standing at the bride and groom’s dance with your camera and realizing that the light that they have put on the reasons for the flickering on your image and that you do not know how to manage it in such a short time.
If you can, do your homework: visit the rooms where the bride and groom are going to get dressed beforehand, preferably at a time similar to when they are going to get dressed on the wedding day, so you have a good idea of what kind of lighting conditions you will like. you will find. Often you will find yourself in the position of doing classes with the lights on, where you will have more light, but in a color that will not match the light coming through the window; or do it only in natural light.
Also invest time in getting to know the estate, the lighting that will be used at the banquet and cocktails, what angles provide the best vanishing points and framing… It’s about giving you the tools so that on your wedding day you can be at your best and give the best result of the pair.
In short, you have to keep in mind that light is your main tool, and the lighting of the wedding venue will not be under your control. Based on tables and experience, you will be able to anticipate many of these situations, but if you can afford it, you should not stop doing this preliminary work.
Look for it perfect moments.
All afternoon weddings have two key points that, if you use them, will make your photos and videos stand out: golden hour and blue hour.
The golden hour is when the sun is very low above the horizon. It projects a very strong orange light and you can use it at your leisure to take beautiful pictures and backlit pictures, or use this golden light as a backlight for the bride and groom and guests. Farm weddings are usually arranged so that at the end of the ceremony the sun is low enough for you to take advantage of it. At the end of the ceremony, you need to hurry to do a small session and part of the cocktail with this special light.
The blue hour comes a little later: when the sun has already set, but there is still light in the sky. This is a unique moment because the lights on the farm will be burning and their light will not be very different in intensity from the light that is still in the sky, so in one photo or plan you will be able to collect the intensity of the color of the lights and the sky. This is the best time for shared farm photos, cocktails or even dinner if it’s outside and the time is right.
Dance: the best time to have fun.
Often the dance (after the bride and groom have opened it) is the moment that we videographers and photographers give less importance to: the couple is already married, the most beautiful shots have already been released, and all we have to do is leave. There is evidence in the material that the guests and the bride and groom had a great time listening to the little pachangueo. Also, after a long day at work, sometimes your back will hurt and you will know the time to leave the most. However, dancing is also a great time to be creative and have fun with our stuff: take the opportunity to remove that fish eye you’ve been keeping gathering dust, take fun flash photos, dutch shots that reinforce the idea of how Well, the guests are having fun…
Consider it a much less ceremonial moment (pun intended) and you can afford to be less academic and more fun. It may even be worth being patient and waiting a little longer than you planned for the alcohol to start disinhibiting the most inhibited.
Did you like these tips? Do you have your own tips to share? You can leave it in the comments section.
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