Wedding photography tips & ideas

Wedding photography is not for what a lot of people think a hobbies, if you are considering to get in to this business you must before hand do your market research in the town where you are planing to exercise your new profession. Now, since this lenses is called Wedding photography tips, I won't dwell into the intrinsic of how to make the business successful in terms of managing or marketing, this will live for a later lenses.

Tip One: I will list here a number of equipment that you might need to photograph a wedding. Now I must be clear that as you grow in knowledge and become more comfortable in achieving your own technique your list of equipment will vary. I will also point out here that if you do not know the concepts that I would use here please google them and become familiar.

Camera: One primary and a backup camera or second use camera. Although I shoot with canon since many years ago by no means this means you have to buy canon. I remember well one day I was in an event where several photographers where and I ask one of them how he selected the equipment, his answer was a really good one. Pick a camera that feels right for you,not because your friend has one or some one else told you to. Although when it comes to a profession you need to make sure you buy something is right in the professional market. Example if one of my cameras go to service and I need to get a loaner I can have about a dozen specialty stores that rent the same camera and I can still use my lenses, in this am referring to either Nikon or Canon. Don't get me wrong there are many amateur cameras from other brands , put it this way my first SLR was a Ricoh(Many moons ago...).

Two: Get an external FLASH !!!!!.... This is a must. Do not even think for a minute that because you already have spend a lot of money on your camera you are going to be able to show up to your buddy wedding and get great looking wedding photographs. First, all your photos will have flat lighting this is when the subject looks glue to the photo and there is no visible define rendering of the subject. For seconds you will get a horrible shadow if your subjects are close to a wall or any item.
And if Budget permits get a flash bracket. But before you go out in a limb , I think is more important to get the practice on how to use your external flash, couple of things you need to get right on an external flash unit is 1, It needs to be 100% compatible with your camera that will aid on your learning curve.2. Make sure the flash has a rotating and swivel head.

Now lets talk about what makes or breaks a wedding photographer.... LENSES!!!!!!!...

Yap, sorry to burst your bubble mr expert in wedding photography and before you click the X on the browser read on....For the beginners stick around and you will learn something new.

The other day I was reading a blog and I was surprise to read from an supposed expert photographer that categorized the lenses from amateur or consumer to pro based on the aperture.... Well, oh oh boy did I had my field trip with this guy. Unfortunately, I would only agree on one thing is that just faster lenses are more expensive because usually to get them faster the manufacture needs to use higher quality glass and if you look in front of the lenses you will notice for no coincidence that the ring size is usually a 68 or 72, specially if they are tele or zooms.. Ok, but lets go back to the essentials and I will come back to this in a minute.

Your lenses arsenal will need the following...
1 Zoom lenses 24-105, 50-150,70-200 ( The faster the glass the more expensive it gets!).
1 All around lenses ( 17-55, 28-80,30-70,)
1 prime lenses super wide, fish eye, or super fast 1.2,1.4,1.8 ( This is to use is difficult lighting conditions )

Ok, back to the difference between a professional lenses and a consumer grade lenses besides of course price!!!!.... Well, when a manufacture calls a glass a "pro" is basically because is constructed with a more precise glass calibrated to provide you with less aberration or distortion in the images. Since they are already providing you a better glass this type of product benefits with better construction materials all around. You can tell right a way if a lenses is of better quality just by holding it. For instance all Canon Lenses denoted by an L are in fact of professional grade quality. Not only the glass but the construction, and if you compare theses ones with the lesser quality from canon you will notice that the lesser quality are from a less expensive plastic.

Wel, now that we have the equipment out of the way on our next lenses will go over the shooting techniques... I will write down here all the basic techniques that I show on my model shoot out seminars!.

Come back soon...

Luis Mata