I want to talk about three simple instructions we give our clients on their special day. Every couple can use them and these are easy things that make a really big difference. We give you these instructions when you book us, when we shoot your engagement session and as we are shooting your getting ready pictures so by the time the show starts you've had time to practice and you've heard it a few times so it's easy.

The Rings The Thing

Ok I promise at some point I'm going to get over these corny subheaders. Probably in another 100 years. In any event let's talk about the moment that ring goes on your finger. Even though there are no faces in the picture below it feels really intimate, personal and meaningful to me. It just goes back to that age old idea of taking someone's hand forever you know? So I walk my couples through exactly how to get the photograph below. I'd explain how to do it here but part of the reason this blog is late is because I wrote 5 paragraphs and it was still super confusing. It's simpler and easier to show you.

I guess you have to hire us lol.

The First Kiss

This one is pretty easy. On your wedding day there are going to be roughly 165,997,708,1697,123 pictures taken of you, and that’s just by your parents! However during a first kiss I typically take about 50 pictures because it's a moment you can't miss. So I frame that first shot really carefully and take the others just to be sure. And I give my couples the same instruction everytime: "Count one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four for a minimum of time. You know you've held the kiss long enough when the cheering and applause subsides. Or alternately if you feel your parents getting uncomfortable." 

Turn It Up!

Some of our couples have done extensive dance routines with dipping and throwing each other in the air. Well typically not each other, though I have had one wedding where both participants went aerial lol. You take my point here. And some of our couples want something less elaborate and I can appreciate it. But what we tell every couple is to make sure that you turn because if you stand still you only get a couple of first dance pictures. That is mostly because you are in the same place, under the same light and there just isn't a lot of variation to be had. Also it causes the photographers to have to move around you a great deal more. While I can use the exercise it can be a little distracting for your guests. However, even if you just stand in one spot and turn as you dance you will get lots of variations both in yourselves and in your background.

It sounds like it should be the same no matter which way it is right? But there is more magic in moving the subjects than moving the camera believe it or not. I could show you 30 pictures of a first dance where they are turning with so much animation and feeling that it would have been difficult to get moving the light and myself but were easy to get because they turned, the light was stationary and I moved.

So turn it up a bit on that first dance OK?

P.S. The last piece of advice I give everyone is a freebie. When the big day comes just breathe and relax. No matter what happens at the end of the day two I's will have formally become an US. And that is all that really matters.