Another Photo Tip for Wedding Guests

We received a ton of responses to our last entry about photography tips for wedding guests, so here's one more: Tell a story.

The best photos have capture a moment and a feeling. (There's an element of luck, of course, since you're by definition capturing fleeting moments.) But if you can capture the mood of the wedding in your photo, you'll continue to appreciate the photo in years to come.


Sometimes it's okay to be a little out of focus, or to have less than optimal lighting - any photo that tells a story, either about the day or about the emotions of the day - is a great photo. So take a step back and think about how you can tell a story with your photos.
Sometimes it's just a matter of moving a little so you incorporate other people or objects in the photo. Other times it's simply a matter of worrying less about your technique and more about what you're seeing. Technique is important, but having a great eye is critical.

Tips for Point-and-Shoot Photographers

Wedding guests often ask us for photography advice, so here goes. Keep in mind this is aimed at point-and-shoot users, not people with professional-grade cameras.

Here's our best tip: Take lots of memory cards with you. If you have lots of memory capacity available, you can stop "chimping" (constantly looking at your camera's LCD to see how the photo you just took turned out) and concentrate on what’s going around you. While you're checking your photos and deleting the poor ones you're likely to miss the best moments. Sort your photos later.


Use your optical zoom (not your digital zoom) to get in close whenever you can. Forget about including legs and background objects when you photograph people. Pants and church steeples aren't particularly interesting - emotions and expressions are.


If you're using the long end of your lens to magnify the image, remember this will magnify your own body movements as well, increasing the blurring caused by camera shake. Learn to hold your camera steady and your percentage of "keepers" will go up.

Go where the light is: outdoors, near entrances, by windows. Even if you're using flash, adding natural light always improves a photo.


Try taking some shots where your target isn’t in the center of the frame. Focus on the eyes of your subject and then recompose to put them exactly where you want them. Keep background clutter out of the shot, put more space on the side of the frame a person is looking towards, and take advantage of dramatic diagonals and other “ambient” framing.


Take lots of photos. Experiment. Be ready. Watch for and try to anticipate moments of meaning or emotion.

And don't worry about taking photos of the cake or the flower arrangements, unless you're particularly interested in those types of photos. (Because some can be spectacular.)


Instead, focus on people - and on candid moments. When you get home and look through your photos, the ones that will make you smile are the ones you took that captured the personalities of your family and friends.

Flower Girls

Sometimes it looks like fun to be young and wear a flower girl's dress...



And at other times, perhaps not so much.

Wedding Ceremony Lighting

Some denominations and individual churches - and sometimes even individual celebrants - ban the use of flash or artificial lighting during the wedding ceremony. That's not a problem; even if we can use flash, we often take a number of photos using natural light. Sometimes, if the time of day is right, the results can be spectacular.


Other churches are equally beautiful, but catching natural sunlight through windows is impossible. For example, the Augusta Stone Church has large windows, but it's surrounded by trees, blocking any dramatic sunbeams. Depending on the time of day the UVA Chapel has very dramatic lighting - but conditions can vary greatly hour to hour.

But rest assured - if the light is right at the time of your ceremony, we'll catch it.