Taking up professional wedding photography is a great idea. However, it comes with much more responsibility than any other photography niche does. When you endorse yourself as a wedding photographer, people have very high expectations of you. Those who hire you as their wedding photographer trust you with the most important day of their life. You must have the right amount of expertise and a lot of talent to capture their best memories perfectly. Truth to be told, wedding photography isn’t easy at all.
Contrary to what many believe, wedding photography experts have to undergo a lot of training. They are also expected to catch people’s emotions on their most important day and not just shoot them as they stand there. Additionally, weddings are also about glam and aesthetic decors, and photographers have to make sure that they don’t miss out on any detail ever.
Such factors make wedding photoshoots a complicated thing to execute with perfection. For someone who wants to be a wedding photographer, a powerful camera, along with lots of talent and practice, are must-haves. Lucky for you if you have got the Nikon D7100. This DSLR camera comes with features like a 24 MP sensor, easy to use features, efficient autofocus, comprehensive ISO range, fast continuous shooting, highly resistant body, and a crystal clear LCD screen.
Making the best use of these features, you can become an ace wedding photographer with your Nikon D7100 in your hands. Here are some tips and tricks that you can use to make the perfect use of this camera whenever shooting at a wedding:
Pick The Perfect Venue
Thanks to the changing trends. The brides and their grooms are now giving a lot of importance and attention to the venues where they’d hold their wedding ceremonies. Many couples now choose a different picturesque spot to get their couple shot done. Some others prefer their selected wedding venue and get it decorated in the nicest way possible for their couple shoots.
Your say about the shoot’s location and venue as a photographer is significant despite all of this. You surely know a lot about the best shooting venues around you when you’re doing a couple of wedding shoots each month. The couple is likely to seek your advice about the shoot locations. Your job is to correctly guide them about what’s best and what’s not.
A perfect wedding shot venue isn’t just the one where you can peacefully take good photos with the best backgrounds. Instead, it must be a place where the couple feels comfortable and happy too. If possible, decide a day to take the couple to some of the best wedding venues and let them choose for themselves. A better idea would be to choose two or three locations to shoot.
This would help you if something bad happens at a particular place on the day of the shoot, and you’ve to move somewhere else. Your Nikon D7100 can help you make the best out of any venue you choose. With its exceptional color grading and autofocus properties, this camera will ensure that none of the background details are missed out during the shoots, resulting in great photos.
Back Up Your Files
Imagine shooting a couple’s wedding day and putting in a lot of effort to take the best shots. You wake up the next day, finding out that all the files have been corrupted. Let’s assume that you’ve none of the shoot’s photos saved anywhere else, and you don’t either have any backup. How drastic could it be to your career as a wedding photographer?
Think of the couple, how pathetic they must feel about this! Even when such a thing hasn’t happened in reality yet, the very thought of it is undoubtedly fearsome. This is why you should always ensure a backup for every photo you take during a wedding shoot. Backups help keep your files saved at several places so that you don’t end up losing them permanently.
Expert wedding photographers suggest backing up the files at least twice during the shoot, every time after taking a few shots. Additionally, you can consider backing up the entire event’s pictures at the end of the event before leaving the venue. Good wedding photographers consider keeping one backup of their client’s files with them even after they’ve delivered the shoot. Using high-quality storage cards and shutting off the cameras correctly is also an excellent way to prevent photos’ automatic deletion.
Thankfully, the Nikon D7100 comes with a wide connectivity range and a very fast speed. This allows the users to quickly backup their photos directly from the camera within a few minutes. Such ease allows for a peaceful shooting process and keeps you and your clients stress-free.
Know Your Camera
Out of all the wedding photography tips you’ll ever get, this is probably the most useful one. Knowing your camera entirely is the only thing that helps you take creative and unique photos. When you know your camera, you’re easily able to switch between its different modes to use the one that perfectly suits the shoot’s vibe.
Additionally, you can change the camera’s basic settings like exposure, shutter speed, focus, and ISO within a few seconds and with precision. Knowing your camera is not just about being aware of its features. Rather, you should be so adept in using your gear that you can set up any mode and change any setting within seconds.
This know-how of any device comes only with using it over a long period. Many novice wedding photographers take along their newest gear to the shoot. This is one of the biggest photography mistakes because you can never make the best out of a camera without knowing much about it. As a rule, make sure to use your camera so much that its settings and functions get stored in your memory.
Achieving such a level of closeness with your camera becomes easier if you’ve got a user-friendly camera like the Nikon D7100. This DSLR has the easiest possible user interface, making it very easy for a user to become friends with it within just a few days.
Frame Your Pictures Well
Undoubtedly, wedding photographers are expected to be fast enough to shoot as much as possible in a three-hour event. However, this doesn’t mean that you forget about the placements and framing at all. Not tending to the frame of your shots can simply ruin them even when everything else is perfect.
You could be taking the most fantastic silhouette of a kissing couple, and BOOM … there’s a baby’s leg right in front of the bridal gown’s tail. So, even when the moment and lighting if great, the picture is ruined and is of no use to anyone just because of an imperfect frame.
As a wedding photographer, working to keep yourself calm among the chaos is a needed skill. Once you de-stress yourself, you automatically think a bit before capturing every picture. This helps you take the best possible shots with excellent placements and efficient framing. It’s best to reach the venue a little earlier before time, observing the décor and setup closely. This helps you decide on good frames and better angles to shoot from.
Using your Nikon D7100’s gird-screen features can also help you correcting your placements and choosing better frames. You can use this feature of this fantastic camera to deliver the finely framed photos to your clients.
Capture Unique Poses
Probably no other photography niche needs as much attention to the subject’s poses as wedding photography. You can go on shooting normally if you’re shooting the family’s and friends’ candid shots with the couple. However, when it comes to shooting the couple, and both the bride and groom separately, the value of good posing can’t be ignored. Make sure that your subjects feel comfortable with you and can pose easily.
As a photographer, keep yourself updated with what’s hot in your field to apply that in your shoots. It’d be great to save some creative couple and solo poses on your phone and show them to your subjects for imitation. Besides just your subject’s physical placement and actions, innovative lighting and angles can also make the poses look unique.
You’ve to understand that your clients are a normal human being and not models. Therefore, try to get them to pose as realistically as you can. A regular bride can’t pose like those fashion models on magazine covers. This means you’d have to look up some other ways to add uniqueness to the poses.
Maybe, try to add some emotion in the shoot and let the couple get in their true feels as it progresses. When attempting to capture unique poses, using your D7100’s ISO and exposure settings is an excellent way to add in that unique touch to the shoot. Make sure to use these features to your benefits and take the most amazing shots possible.
