The right photographer can make or break your wedding day! We think that the most important thing you need from your wedding photographer is someone you can TRUST! That means someone that can handle difficult lighting situations, someone that can be flexible when the timeline gets behind, and someone that you know is going to make the best decisions for you so you don’t have to worry! Let’s unpack some examples and reasons it’s important to trust your photographer on your wedding day.

It’s important to find a photographer whose style you like (we’ve given helpful tips to figure out what your desired style is in this post), and who is going to be able to direct so you’re sure to get the images you want. There’s a great post with more information on choosing a wedding photographer here!

Okay, now assuming you have chosen a photographer you trust, let’s look at the wedding day and how you can help your photographer!

A Lot of Details!

Wedding days can be fast paced and potentially stressful for those involved. There are a lot of details and everybody is operating on a pressing timeframe. This is one of the reasons it’s important to have a timeline (and to leave yourself a little breathing room in case things fall behind)! Here’s an example of a wedding day timeline. Hopefully your wedding photographer has created or helped to create the timeline for the wedding day. It’s important that they are involved with the timeline because the entire timeline is setup around pictures!

When to Trust

The greatest way you can trust your photographer is when it comes to lighting and location!

Light is THE most important element for beautiful, flattering images!! There is a lot involved in setting up for a good image (light, angles, background, etc.), and in some instances it is necessary to choose light OVER location. That mountain or beach backdrop is sensitive to time of day and whether the light is harsh. So it doesn’t always provide the best light on the subjects!

Of course the ideal situation is to capture both the beautiful background AND get awesome, flattering light on the subjects! But unfortunately this is not always possible with the time parameters of a wedding day. THIS is when it will be important to trust your photographer! Their objective is to make you look your best, and they best know how to do that.

Why Trust?

When you get your pictures back and you look stunningly amazing, you’ll be SO glad you trusted the photographer and opted for good light!

Now this isn’t to say it’s never possible to get that epic shot in front of the mountains! As long as time allows, your photographer could grab a few wider shots with the scenic view behind you. It’s just not the spot you want to take all of your images.

Wedding Day Examples

Here are some examples from a recent wedding. We faced some lighting challenges that were seamlessly overcome, because the amazing couple trusted us to find the best light and location for each scenario!

Churches can be limiting for finding good indoor light. They tend to be dark, and classroom walls are usually busy and congested. So it can take some searching to find “the spot” for bridal shots. For these shots of this beautiful bride, we settled on a classroom with doors that led outside. It was a room unnoticed at first, because there were zero windows! But when we opened those doors, it provided the light we wanted and we were able to get these gorgeous shots of the bride!

The Bride and Groom pictures are the most important image from a wedding day! So this is where the trust is best put into action. This same Bride, again, trusted us when we led them on a trek behind the church and down an old dirt path to a location where we were able to capture the perfect light and get these stunning couple shots!

Another example where trust was a big component of the day was at this gorgeous wedding at Pretty Place Chapel. It was 10am and the sun was so bright! Christi was taking these images and knew that even though people come to Pretty Place for the view, it wouldn’t be the best place for family formals. As you can see from this shot the bright sun left dark shadows on people’s faces!

So what did I do? I decided to take some portraits of the couple facing each other so the shadows wouldn’t be as prominent, and so they would still have that gorgeous view in their portraits. And for the family photos I faced the other way so that we could see all the smiling faces! After all, you’re going to hang your family portraits on your walls so you want to see their faces!!! I had to prioritize what would be better in this case!

In Conclusion

So in conclusion, do plenty of research when choosing your wedding photographer, and then on the wedding day trust them to get the best pictures possible to capture all those memorable moments!

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