The Best Lighting for your big day...

Happy Wednesday everyone! Here is another For Brides post that will be helpful for making sure that your pictures turn out the best. By the way, if any of you have questions for us and you want a photographer's perspective on something, write your questions in a comment. I will either write back or if I feel it's a good question for others, I will just write a whole blog post on it.

A common question we get has to do with 'when' the wedding should take place. If you are one of the many brides that are having their pictures outside, either ceremony or portraits, the sun is a very important factor. Often, couples plan their weddings and do not know to take different kinds of sunlight into consideration. I wouldn't expect them to do anything differently... I used to think that midday would be a great time for pictures until I started doing photography. The problem is that too much light and it is hard to avoid harsh lines. On the other hand, too little light and you lose some of those details. A good photographer will be able to shoot under any circumstances... we always let our couples know that regardless of when they have their wedding, their pictures are going to come out great! You will still have SOME difference in quality, however small it may be. I am writing this for ALL brides, though, whether or not they are hiring us. Some couples don't care about this, other couple do... it depends on what you prefer.

Here is what we recommend if you want the best pictures possible for your ceremony as well as your portraits. Plan on having your portraits time at the very best lighting, and give yourself enough time to get the pictures you need. For us, we always tell our couples we want a half hour with some leeway to go over a few minutes if we need to. Usually family pictures are right after the ceremony, and then the couple's session. That means that the lighting for the ceremony will be great and everything afterwards through the couple's session will be jaw-dropping :) I forgot to add this yesterday in the post... sorry :) The best lighting is from 1 hour before sunset to 15 minutes past it! Here are some examples...

Carrie's wedding... I posted this a couple days ago but it's a good example.

Notice how soft and even Jenny's skin tones are in this shot.

I like these ones of Alex and Micaela. They were feeling the rush to get back in to be with their guests, and I asked if we could have another couple minutes. So glad I did because we captured these ones which turned out to be some of the best shots of the day...

As a reassurance, a good photographer will do great no matter what... If you have already booked your entire day to have a wedding at noon, and if you do not care about the difference in quality (however small or big), then I wouldn't stress out about it. On the other hand, if pictures are the most important thing about your wedding and you want to guarantee that your friend's jaws are going to drop in jealousy, then I suggest keeping all this in mind when planning your wedding ;).

Andrew