Confessions Of A Wedding Photographer...

Photo of me by my lovely second shooter Lana Jones.

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Want to know what your Wedding Photographer is possibly thinking at certain points of a wedding day?

What they’ve thought probably dozens of times?

Well…..

FIRST let me just do a big disclaimer here. Consider this a huge flashing neon sign of a warning, and say that there are always exceptions to the rule and that these are just my opinions based on my years of experience. So please no one get upset or anything, this is mainly to amuse and share my over 10 years of expertise. 😇


Ready? Okay!

​When the speeches are too long.
I honestly think speeches are very difficult for most people at weddings and they can get overwhelming. People don’t do them often particularly in this kind of situation, and there’s huge pressure not to screw it up. 

But if there’s a few speeches to get through, which usually there is, try and stick to about 5 minutes. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but you really can fit a lot into that time. 

“Thoughtful, funny if you can, but still fairly short and sweet” is generally I’ve found much better, you’ll hold peoples attention more effectively, and I’ve observed guests and couples are more grateful and relieved that the speeches are well done but don’t take an age.



When you and your wedding party rush down the aisle.
Most aisles are not as long as Westminster Abbey, and truth be told you can’t always see everyone at the same time, so there’s often very small windows of opportunity to take photos of people who were considered an important enough part of the day by the wedding couple, to walk down the aisle in the first place.

See where I’m coming from?

​I kinda need to get a few pictures of the walk down the aisle, plus it’s a lovely moment anyway which really doesn’t need to be rushed, so take a bit longer than you would normally would walk. 



When you rush the kiss.
I could essentially copy and paste the same text from above to illustrate the same point 😂

I KNOW this can be awkward, and I’m not asking you to start using tongues or nothing, but you know, it means your photographer is more likely to get the shot and it is a lovely moment that doesn’t need to be rushed.



When you put a filter on our photos.
When we see it, it’s like a little knife in our heart.

The finished photos are something we have put a lot of time love and care into. We have balanced each photo, considered the hue saturation and luminance of each different colour in each photo, scanned it for things to tidy up and correct if needed. Editing photos properly takes a long time. The process of editing looks for me like this:

• I “cull” - meaning I start by going through all the wedding photos I’ve taken and pick the best ones. Trust me you want your photographer to do this, and you don’t want all the photos they took that day. If they’re worth the hype, you will still get HUNDREDS of fantastic photos even when they do this. The truth is sometimes there’s an unfortunate error, sometimes quite frankly I’ve made a mistake and the photo is just pants, you might be blinking, the sun might have peeked out from behind a cloud at just the wrong time.
  
  
• I edit – I fix any exposure issues there might be, and like I said before we adjust the colours and tones of each image.
  
  
• I “tidy up” – stray hairs, unfortunate bogies, unexpected spots that just had to pop up two days before the wedding, that sort of thing, the things you DON’T want to remember. Now don’t get me wrong this isn’t “photoshopping” in the way people use that term, I don’t do that toxic stuff.

 

• I check them, again.
  
  
• Finally I do Black and white edits, again checking them all one by one a few times to make sure there's no errors.

I'm not saying this for any other reason that to explain what we say when we say "editing" because most people don't know what it involves.

It would be like a professional cake maker delivering one of their creations to you, only for you to add a load of things on the cake yourself afterwards.



When there’s hair bands on wrists. Bridesmaids, I'm lookin' at you.
I admit it is a small detail, but once you notice it it’s so hard to not see it. I have to say as a pretty laid back person personally this makes me slightly cringe as I write this, but it is true when I see it in photos (especially my own) it makes me go “argh!”

Admittedly most photographers can edit it out, but why use up our time editing this out when it could have just been left in the room you were getting ready in or popped in a bag.



When a guest in the background KEEPS staring at you, usually with the moodiest look on their face.
Although I kind of don’t want people to stop doing this, because I have a weird fantasy about publishing a coffee table art book just full of guests at weddings, in the background of photos usually, giving me the weirdest looks you’ve ever seen in your life 😂


Seriously though, it must be pretty obvious why I’m there so it’s not that weird, no huge of amounts of staring required, and it can kinda ruin pictures a bit so, please try not to too much.



When we say that we do a "small business happy dance", we really do.
Well I physically do anyway, with Spotify turned waaay up, probably best you don't see that... 😬

This goes for any small business though. The amount of work that goes into keeping one going is sometimes more than you could explain in a blog post, and having happy clients is a joy that for me will NEVER grow old.

When you share the photos online, when you email your photographer with a message of thanks, when you leave an amazing review, and when you recommend us to someone for their wedding day, golly gosh! There's nothing else quite like it!​ ♥️