- Equipment failure isn’t and “if”, it’s a “when”.
Everything you bring to a wedding, you need a backup for. Everything. Cameras, lights, lenses, cards, every single thing. Because it WILL ALL break eventually. Over the years, I’ve had a camera fail during the bouquet toss (Lesson learned: Always have two cameras ON ME, not just in the bag). I’ve had a memory card fail (Lesson learned: Always shoot weddings with two cards in the camera). I’ve had a lens get dropped and break (Lesson: make sure I have both a prime lens and a zoom that covers the same range). And back at home, I’ve had hard drives fail, which means that now I run backups daily so I can only lose one day’s work at a time, and I have 3 copies of every single image I deliver, including one saved off-site. - Don’t trust the timeline. A/K/A Don’t ever be away from the action.
I never like to leave the room where the bride and groom are, or at least be far enough away that I can’t hear what’s going on. Even for dinner, I like to be in a place where I can see or hear what’s going on in the reception room, so that if something should happen I can run in to capture it. Over the years, I’ve had that feeling of terror where I’m in another room eating dinner or finding the restroom, when someone grabs the microphone to make an unexpected toast, or the band starts a special dance, or a sorority group photo breaks out. No matter how well a wedding is planned, there will be photo-worthy moments that happen without warning, and I don’t want to miss them. - Communicate, communicate, communicate.
If I leave the room for the bathroom, I make sure to communicate to the wedding planner and the rest of my team so they can know where I am and so they won’t start anything important in the few minutes I’m gone. I also make sure to communicate with the videographer throughout the day so we can stay out of each other’s way and each other’s shots as much as possible. And I communicate with the bride and groom, so they know where I am in case they need anything and so they know what to expect. - Plan for the unexpected.
I walk into every wedding with a plan. I’ve got a schedule, a shot list, an idea of where I want to do portraits, how I want to shoot the ceremony, and where me and my assistant will be standing during important moments. But most of the time, those plans don’t happen as I expect, so I am always prepared to shift the plan due to to weather, delays, and just random chance. In the early days it would really stress me out when things didn’t go as planned, and then I realized that at almost every wedding, something won’t go as planned, so it’s not the exception, it’s the rule. If you plan to be surprised, nothing can take you by surprise! - Always use a shot list for portraits.
I learned very early on that there is too much happening on a wedding day for people to be able to think clearly. Having a list of important people is critical. I don’t want to leave it to chance for a bride & groom to remember something when there’s so much going on around them. It only took once when a family member didn’t get her shot with the bride for me to make sure that would never happen again.
