Wedding photography is a complicated task. You’re supposed to capture the moments from someone’s most important day in the perfect possible manner. Wedding photographers usually have a lot of responsibilities on their shoulders, and couples expect a lot from them. Unlike night sky or landscape photography, wedding photography requires one to capture both the subjects as well as their emotions very comprehensively.
Also, the time for wedding shoots is quite limited, and once you miss out on a moment or action, it’s gone forever. All these factors multiply a wedding photographer’s stress and responsibilities many times. This is why anyone wishing to take up professional wedding photography must undergo some training before jumping into the field.
There’s no doubt that a powerful camera is one of the essentials for acing wedding shoots. However, a good camera all alone can’t do the trick. You must know several useful hacks and tricks to make your wedding shots more than magical and utterly perfect.
Lucky for you if you’ve got the Canon 5d since this camera comes with some of the most amazing features for wedding photography. Having 12.8 MP effective pixels, an efficient RGB color filter, good ISO range, perfect exposure, AF detection, and many other easy to use features, the Canon 5d is a great catch for all photographers.
Here are some easy tips and tricks to follow when using this particular camera when shooting someone’s special day.
Use Good Lighting
Good lighting is all that every good photo shoots needs. As a photographer, you must put a lot of emphasis on having the best lighting irrespective of the place, the time, the nature of the shoot you’re doing. Good lighting is what makes the basic divide between a good picture and a bad picture, and this is why caring for it is important.
Wedding shoots need the photographer to put even more emphasis on the lighting so that the subjects’ faces are perfectly focused on. Good wedding photographers usually request the clients to make good lighting arrangements at the wedding venue in advance. Working with the available light experimentally, you can easily create unique and memorable shots of your clients on their wedding day too.
If you’re hired to shoot someone’s wedding, it’s better to decide such venues for a shoot with the best lighting. As a precaution, take along some portable light sources with you to the venue and use a combination of various light sources wherever you can. Experts suggest going to the venue a little earlier than the designated time, thus observing the spots there with the best lighting beforehand.
With a camera as easy to use as the Canon 5d, you can also make good use of exposure and ISO features to capture the best light. Make sure you know all your camera’s setting well enough to use them for an enhanced lighting effect in your shoots.
Maintain A Low Presence
As a wedding photographer, you’d be meeting new people every day. Most of them would be couples with both the people having different professions and belonging to different classes of people. Most of your clients won’t be fashion models of anyone who faces the camera regularly. Chances are that a professional shoot would be a little uncomfortable for them.
Some of your clients could be introverts and socially awkward individuals. This would make them even more camera-shy and will disrupt the natural flow of the shoot. Various expert photographers have reported their experiences with couples, with at least one of them being a very shy and awkward person. This usually makes the other person disinterested in the shoot, too, ruining almost all the pictures. Later, such couples sometimes blame their photographer for not taking the perfect pictures instead of realizing their uncooperative behavior.
If you don’t want such a bad experience happening to you, the best idea is to make your couple feel as comfortable as you can. You have to make the couple feel like you aren’t even present around them, thus relaxing them a bit. This can be done by shooting the couple from a little extra distance. Ideally, staying at a distance where you cannot hear the couple talking to each other could be the best. This would help the two enjoy each other’s company, leading to a natural flow of cute poses and pictures.
Thankfully, with Canon 5d as your shooting tool, you don’t have to compromise on the shot’s quality when capturing from a distance. This camera comes with a powerful lens and an exceptional magnification feature, allowing an easy focus on the details even without getting too close to your subject.
Show Your Style
Almost all the professional photographers have at least one unique element that sets all their shots apart from those done by others. This uniqueness later turns into a photographer’s signature style, which is why people hire that particular photographer. This is something that many novice wedding photographers don’t realize. They keep on copying their seniors and others in the field but don’t bring in a new touch to their shoots.
If you’re planning to take up wedding photography professionally, you must look for your photography style. It can be a specific shooting angle, a unique way to capture shadows, a little touch of lighting and filters, or anything else that you think others don’t add in their pictures.
Once you discover your best style, make sure to add it to every shoot you do. Keep on bringing a little alteration to your specific style now and then, making sure that it goes well with the time and its needs. Your style will surely give a touch of creativity and elitism to all your shoots. Sooner or later, it will become a reason for more and more couples choosing you for their big day.
With the Canon 5d, looking for your style and adding it to every picture you take is very easy. This camera comes with the easiest setup and flexible working modes, allowing you to use what exactly suits you the best.
Keep A File Back Up
There’s nothing worse than losing all the pictures you took even before delivering it to the couple. Such a mishap not only ruins your reputation as a wedding photographer, but it also causes a lot of emotional distress to the clients who are left with no pictures from their special day. As drastic as it may sound, such a mishap is easily possible. Sometimes, the files are corrupted and deleted when you’re transferring them to another device.
Other times, your camera, if not turned off properly, might develop a bug that deletes everything that’s saved in its storage. Sometimes, low battery shutdowns cause the devices to lose huge chunks of the data.
As a photographer who has to deliver the shoots, you must consider backing up the pictures at regular intervals. A good idea is to back up the pictures as you shoot and then back up all the files at least twice before leaving the wedding venue. Upon returning home, make another solid backup and store the photos on your computers and laptops. Keeping these many backups will ensure that you don’t end up losing any of the photos and can deliver them to the clients as they are.
Thankfully, the Canon 5d can be of good use here as well. This camera has a wide connectivity range and is compatible with various software and devices, thus allowing your quick and easy backups everywhere and whenever you want.
Have Back Up Gear
As a wedding photographer, no mistake is as big as going to the shooting venue with just one camera in your hand. You never know when you mistakenly drop the camera on the ground or end up losing it during the shoot. There’s also a chance that your camera’s battery ends up while you’re midway through the shoot, thus bringing in a lot of embarrassment and problems.
To avoid all such problems, you must have at least one spare shooting gear with you whenever you head out for such a shoot. You can consider keeping an extra pair of batteries for each camera you take along, some storage cards, a laptop if needed, some USBs, extra lighting, and an extra camera above all. Additionally, you may need some tripods and props that you can keep more than those required in your bag easily.
Keeping extra gear is a great backup for all the unexpected times that you may come across during the shoot. Even if your camera is as powerful and strong as Canon 5d, there’s no harm in keeping another camera just for the sake of satisfaction. If possible, try to keep 2 cameras of the same model with you for the shoot. This way, the photos will come out quite similar even when the camera has to be changed, thus ensuring a smooth flow of the shoot and equally good photos throughout.
