Lighting Tips For Your Wedding Day Photographs
One of the most important tricks to helping your photographer capture a full gallery of beautiful wedding photographs is to take a minute to think about the light with them. Available light is the most important tool a photographer has to work with. Truly, no matter what kind of cameras we work with, the lighting is what will make or break the photograph. Most of the time your photographer will be constantly searching out the best light to work with throughout the day, but there are a few considerations you can take into account ahead of time to help make sure we always can find beautiful, natural light to work with in situations where they don’t always have as much control over the light.
Lighting for your getting ready photographs
For my style of photography, choosing a getting ready location that is clean, light, and full of natural light is what creates the beautiful, simple, airy portraits you’re dreaming of. While of course I don’t expect everyone to get ready in museum gallery-eqsue spaces, there are a few things I always do to take advantage of the light in a space. First, I will turn out the lights in any location I walk into if possible. Rather than working to add more light, lamps and potlights create harsh shadows and a weird yellow/green colour cast to an image that I avoid at all costs. Even if it feels a bit dark in the space with the lights turned out, as long as I have access to window light, your photographs will turn out beautifully. Ask your hair and makeup team to set up as close to a window as possible, or I can ask them to help me take some ‘finishing touches’ photographs closer to a window if there isn’t enough space. The same goes for putting on your dress, don’t hide in the back bedroom if you want some privacy, instead let’s take over the living room with the big bay windows, and send everyone else out for a moment. It will be well worth it to start your gallery strong with a series of beautiful morning photographs.
Lighting for your ceremony
If your ceremony is outdoors, try to choose a location where you won’t be in the direct sunlight. Choose a location where you will be in the shadow of trees, cliffs, building etc, OR set your ceremony up in a direction where the sun will be behind you and your officiant. Essentially, we try to avoid having bright direct sunlight shining straight onto one or both of your faces as this will likely make you look shiny, squinty, and create really bright colours and hard shadows.
If you’re getting married indoors, again, if possible, make sure we can turn out all the overhead lights! Lighting from chandeliers, string lights, or Edison bulbs isn’t always bad, but potlights or spotlights can really create bad colours and harsh lighting in your ceremony photographs. Choose the most naturally bright location you can, and if you’re backlit by a window, try to set up far enough away from the window that your photographer has the option of getting behind you to capture a few photographs of your faces with nice soft light on them. If you’re at all unsure about creating the best lighting for your ceremony, feel free to reach out and consult with me to make a plan!
Lighting for your reception
As always, make sure we can turn out any overhead potlights or spotlights that may be shining down on you or your guests. Also, if your dj has a passion for brightly coloured lights or spotlights that swirl around, please ask them to refrain until the dance floor opens. These artificial light sources create colour tones that can’t be edited out (ie: everyone will look hot pink if there is a hot pink light shining on them), and are so bright that as people move through them from light to dark, the contrast is too much for the cameras to keep up with, meaning we will capture a succession of vastly overexposed or underexposed photographs. Don’t worry though, you can have an evening reception and still capture beautiful photographs, we just need to add other light sources in that look better on camera. First, tables that are decorated with plenty of candles create a beautiful romantic glow around the room that flatters the location, and your guests faces seated around the table for candid shots. Adding overhead lighting that is soft and diffused such as plenty of string lights, Edison bulbs, or whimsical hanging chandeliers also adds more light to the room that will look flattering in photographs. If you’re debating about adding more candles or string lights, my advice is always to do it. The more light the better! Your reception will photograph beautifully, and your guests will love it, if I don’t have to always pop my camera flash.