Posing
Wedding photoshoot poses
Wedding portraits work best when they are barely posed. The couple is emotional and tired; give them each other rather than instructions.
Posing
Wedding portraits work best when they are barely posed. The couple is emotional and tired; give them each other rather than instructions.
In short: Wedding portraits work best when they are barely posed. The couple is emotional and tired; give them each other rather than instructions.
Hand in hand, moving, saying something real. It produces more usable frames than any static arrangement.
Quiet and intimate, and it removes the question of what to do with faces.
A turn, a step, wind. Fabric that is moving photographs completely differently from fabric that is hanging.
Works especially well at a view or a window, and it gives a break from face-to-camera frames.
Relaxed, and it saves feet that have been standing for eight hours.
On a lapel, on a bouquet, joined. Not isolated on a windowsill.
Start with walk away and talk — the first two minutes are warm-up and the first pose should be the one that asks least of anyone. Move to forehead to forehead, eyes closed and the dress in motion once the shoulders have dropped, and keep hands and rings, in context for the end, when self-consciousness has gone. Shoot each one in bursts through the movement rather than holding it: the usable frames sit between the instructions, not on them.
Two metres back with the lens zoomed rather than close and wide — distance is what keeps facial proportions natural. Camera at or slightly above eye level for portraits, at chest height for full length. Below eye level enlarges whatever is nearest the lens, which is rarely what you want in frame.
The lift, the dip kiss and anything requiring balance in formal shoes. Also the full group photograph left until after dinner, when half the guests have disappeared and the light has gone.
Leaving portraits until after dinner. Booking a schedule with no margin, so the first delay eats the photography. Not eating. And giving a photographer a list of forty group combinations, which takes ninety minutes and produces forty near-identical photographs nobody looks at.