Comments on: Photographing Your Best Friend’s Wedding – 10 Tips

By: Hershey

Hershey — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 17:11:18 +0000

This holds true for a lot of my friends who asked me to be their photographer. We all have to tell the true story on what happened during the wedding if there’s something we failed to take a photo shoot.

By: seanmullins

seanmullins — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:53:19 +0000

Hi, Regarding deleting shots accidentally, I would advise against deleting any shots as you go, just make sure you have enough memory cards. Apart from the chance of accidentally deleting all, you might find (esp if using RAW) that a shot you thought unusable can be saved/cropped/used or merged with another, or even might end up a keeper. It does happen.

One question I have is on insurance – I don’t see it covered here. If your shooting even a friends wedding, if someone trips or falls over your equipment, I believe your liable. Not trying to scaremonger, but apparently it’s not uncommon. So for the casual photographer, is it possible to get insurance for the day to cover this?

By: sean

sean — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:39:48 +0000

Hi,
Regarding deleting shots accidentally, I would advise against deleting any shots as you go, just make sure you have enough memory cards. Apart from the chance of accidentally deleting all, you might find (esp if using RAW) that a shot you thought unusable can be saved/cropped/used or merged with another, or even might end up a keeper. It does happen.

One question I have is on insurance – I don’t see it covered here.
If your shooting even a friends wedding, if someone trips or falls over your equipment, I believe your liable.
Not trying to scaremonger, but apparently it’s not uncommon.
So for the casual photographer, is it possible to get insurance for the day to cover this?

By: john

john — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 09:51:00 +0000

just found this page,very useful.i would suggest using aperture priority and when inside,use a 50mm lens,perfect for portraits,wide aperture.use custom white balance,try using the bride’s dress for this,should also work on the cake,nothing worse than a green wedding cake. when shooting outside shift white balance from auto to cloudy,better to accenturate colours.another idea is to use auto bracketing,giving you a choice of 3 for each photo.

By: Millard

Millard — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 11:20:59 +0000

I recently shot a wedding reception in “spot meter” and I wasn’t really ready to do that. Many of these required some major work in Adobe Bridge, cause I was focusing on white table cloths and such and the participants at the table were way too dark.

By: Andy

Andy — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 15:00:19 +0000

Having been the “Official Photographer” at a couple of weddings I was nervous at doing another……along came a request from the father and stepmother of a friend of the wifes, who were having their vows taken again together with a blessing.

Would I take some photos for them????? err…give this one some thought!!!!.

Finally the answer was yes, ok you get the gig.

Next problem, ceremony is late afternoon, mid Autumn and it will be dark at the end when everyone troops out of church. This was an informal occasion so managed to catch family groups on their way into church, a few shots outdoors using off-camera flash and similarly more groups at the buffet. Nikon D80 and Sigma 18-50 f2.8 EX DG and Manfrotto 055XPROB/808 RC4 tripod and head. 3rd party (Jessops 300AFD) flash.

Shot everything in RAW and JPEG luckily as the flash did not seem to give enough power and not enough time to alter flash settings, managed to “busk-it” and got some good results!!!!

Next request, the “Happy Couple” asked me if I could do anything about their wedding photos, luckily they were on disc and I have Photoshop Elements. I was shown the shots taken by a so called “professional photographer” using a D60 and horror of horrors blurred faces which I could do nothing with, but also the bride (Italian tradition) was dressed in black, all the photos made her dress look a brown/maroon colour. I did not make any promises but experimented in “Elements” back home and found out that the “Pro” had been messing with colour settings etc and got the mix wrong big style. I persevered and found the optimum settings to correct this and worked my way through the whole album to get a “Best possible fix”. The happy couple were extremely happy with both my photos taken at the blessing and my efforts in the “lightroom” to correct the faulty wedding photos.

I suffer with a heart condition and high blood pressure and find these events VERY STRESSFUL to photograph.On balance, not really worth the effort when you are compromising your health just to mak a few pounds (dollars) in the back pocket!!!

By: Lexi

Lexi — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 03:36:59 +0000

I have a million questions!!

What’s a good price to give if you’re asked to do a wedding as an ameteur? Is $500 a good price or would that be too low?

What sort of contract should you write up?

What’s a good way to give them the images? Could I just give them discs with all of the images on it or print them out? I don’t have a professional photo printer so this makes me really nervous.

If anyone can help, I’d greatly appreciate it.
(Don’t respond after May 10, 2009, since that’s the day of her wedding!)
Thanks!!

By: Kris

Kris — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:36:58 +0000

Good article. Comments are even better :-)

By: jennifer

jennifer — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:46:50 +0000

Great advice. My good friend asked me to photograph her daughter’s wedding and I agreed. I was extrememly nervous about messing up their big day. I did go to the venue at the same time the wedding was going to take place to check out the lighting. I am glad I did as it was on the beach and the lighting was difficult. I do not own a good digital camera so I used my good film camera. I shot a few roles of film trying aperture priority and was not successful. I ended up shooting wedding in automatic. I just got the pictures back today and I was very pleased. This was a great article and I found helpful.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:53:28 +0000

I love using a digital camera for a wedding. It gives you a chance to make sure when you are photographing the entire wedding party that everyone has their eyes open and one of the kids is not doing something crazy. With film, you have to hope that you got a good one. With digital, you can check and know you have a great shoot. And I can take many more shots without having to develop the film. I sell a lot of candid shots, not just the posed ones.