Warren writes articles for and is also the Wedding Photographer Expert on www.women24.com
Fan-bloody-tastic! You’ve booked me as your wedding photographer! You’re happy, I’m happy and everything is just hunky dory! Well almost. You see, there is a bit of red tape. Not a lot, but a bit. And it does require some thinking on both sides of the fence. You see, I don’t just pitch and take a few shots before saying ‘cheerio’ and heading off into the distance to process them for you. Oh no, no, it’s not like that at all! For the purposes of this article, I’m not going to go into the forms you need to fill in for me (which is a bit boring really). What I’m going to do is tell you how YOU can prepare your family and friends so that come wedding day, everyone is as ready as a highly tuned athlete to give the photographs their best shot when they come under my starting gun! So here’s the lowdown:
1. TIMING IS 90% OF THE SECRET
Timing has a hell of a lot to do with the quality of your photographs. Timing gives us good lighting and it gives us, um, well, time – time to get quantity and time to get quality. Unless you’re prepared to have portraits of each other taken before the ceremony (and believe me, in South Africa 99.99% of couples recurring into infinity don’t want to see each other before the ceremony), timing is crucial. Now I could really start to get scientific here and tell you how to create time and space for yourselves, for your guests and for your photographs. But come on, you’re getting married for crying out loud – you should be able to do this with your eyes closed. And I really don’t want to bore you with a lesson in breaking your day up into segments and adding on 20 minutes here and there to create more time now do I? The long and the short of it? Plan in for more time than you think. Don’t debate this with me – just do it! You can thank me later!
2. PREPARE YOUR FAMILY AND FRIENDS TO HAVE FUN!
Okay, here’s the deal. When I shoot your wedding, the emphasis is on fun. If you want to stand in straight lines and look serious, please don’t choose me as you’re wedding photographer because we won’t be flying like a squadron of synchronized Egyptian Geese. I’m not saying for a moment that everything is one big joke because it certainly is not. We do need to take some proper formal photographs. But we also need to live on the edge a bit and ensure that every single person’s personality comes across. We don’t want the bestmen to look like pieces of granite and the bridesmaids to look like wallflowers now do we? We want a bit of action. We want them to be Bruce, Marika, Ian, Jan, Marie, Mike and Sandy – not statue, statue, statue, statue and statue. So here’s my small piece of scintillating advice: prepare your family and friends for the style of photography you have chosen. I’m at your wedding for a full 8 hours, shooting everything that moves. You chose me because you like what you’ve seen on this site and probably in my porti book as well. You want me to capture those special moments. So it’s very, very important that your family and friends understand this and are cool with it. They mustn’t think traditional ‘pose and shoot.’ Especially at the reception. They just need to be themselves – nothing more, nothing less. And it really is as simple as that.
Quite often I get guests saying: ‘Hey, don’t shoot me like this,’ or ‘don’t take a photograph of me touching-up the cake!’ Why not? It’s part of the day! You’re part of the day! You’re touching-up the cake! It’s a fantastic shot! Click. Job done. No posing, no styling, just a good, honest representation of what happened. And hopefully a fantastic photograph.
3. MAKE ME (MARGINALLY) FAMOUS BEFORE YOUR WEDDING DAY
No seriously, please do this – it has amazing benefits! Tell your guests whom you’ve chosen as your photographer. Tell them you’re excited (because you actually are!) Now here’s the important part: send them an e-mail, include my website address and ask them to go and take a look. Generally, what happens is that they actually DO go and look. When they see examples of my work they tend to ‘see themselves’ in some of the shots (seriously, they do). The moment that happens, they relax and are better prepared to enter into the fray on your wedding day. They become instantly comfortable with me, the camera is no longer the enemy and the result is that you get outstanding photographs. Oh and yes, I do get free marketing because you’ve just sent your entire bridal party my website address! So thanks. Take this tip to heart guys, it works very well.
4. TRUST ME
Ja, I bet you’ve all heard that one before! But this time you really do need to have faith. You’ve hired me because you like my work. I try desperately hard not to shoot any two weddings the same. I try desperately hard to be as creative as possible whilst still getting really memorable shots. I absolutely love with a passion what I do. So give me all the trust you’re prepared to give. I can take you to the edge of that cliff, but only you can jump. And if you jump what awesome shots we’ll have of you flying through the air just moments before you splatter 200 metres below. Okay, I won’t make you jump off a cliff. I will never ask you to do anything radical or anything that might ruin your dress or have anyone end up in tears. But I will ask you to have fun – it’s your wedding day after all. So trust me and you’ll love the results forever. I promise.
