Wedding Photography Tips - Choosing Locations for Wedding Photos

As a photographer, bride, or groom you will want to make sure that you get the most out of your wedding photography. Part of ensuring that this happens is choosing a good location for the photo shoot, but what makes a good location?

1) Lighting
Ideally you'll want to find somewhere with plenty of shade and/or reflected light. This is because these locations provide lovely even light that produces wonderful photos. You may also like to pick somewhere with more intense light but the intense light should be an additional option.

If intense light is your only choice get photos in full light and full back-light before trying anything too clever.

2) Time
You should consider the time when picking your location. This includes the time taken to get there, the time of day (and hence the light), and the foot or other traffic present at the time you choose.

3) Look and theme
Does the location you have chosen fit with the look and theme of the wedding? Will it produce photos that you will be happy with?

4) Think big and small
Remember that most shots will probably not involve the entire landscape. As such most of the time you may not need the full location in view.

5) Look for variation
with all of this in mind now consider how many different looks you can get from a single spot. The more looks you can get from one place the less likely you are to have to use multiple locations.

This has been updated and placed on my wedding photography website in the wedding photography tips section.

On Campus Photos at weddings

Over the weekend I shot a wedding at Nathan Homestead. The weather was beautiful and the wedding was great. The homestead also offered a lot of photo opportunities and the bride and groom had elected to have their photos there.

This was good and bad.

The main advantage was that we didn't need to travel anywhere. Travel time is always a real killer for weddings as it involves more than just the journey from point A to point B. It also includes the time taken to get everyone to the cars (which may involve finding people who have wandered off or waiting for people to finish conversations) as well as the time taken to get in and out of the car. While this last point may seem a bit nit-picky it's important to remember that the Bride will be in a wedding dress. Chances are this wedding dress will be more cumbersome than normal clothing adding to slower vehicle entrance and exit.

The key disadvantage, which may sound a bit mean, is the tendency for some guests to follow the bride and groom around. While some people may view this as the photographer getting grumpy at people for 'stealing' photos this isn't the case. My issue with this happening is it makes the bride and groom more self conscious. When I take photos I like the Bride and Groom to feel really comfortable and just go with their natural emotions. Having people stand around calling out to them clearly stops this happening. Perhaps the only thing worse than this is when guests walk up to the bride and groom during the photo shoot and start having a conversation (yes, this does happen).

In any case those are just some things to keep in mind when choosing on-campus locations. As long as your guests are well behaved you should be fine and may actually gain some extra time.

Additional tips can be found on my wedding photography website under the wedding photography tips section or on this blog by looking at posts labeled with Wedding Photography Tips.

Canvas Quality

When looking to get photos printed onto canvas there are likely to be two main concerns:
Price and Canvas Quality

While we all probably guess that cheap means poor quality and expensive means good quality it's worth considering what actually makes canvas prints good or bad.

Once again there are 2 key elements.
The canvas itself and what goes onto the canvas.

The Canvas itself.
Material
Canvases come as a mixture of two key types of material, cotton and synthetic fibres.
Synthethic canvases are cheaper to produce than cotton canvases but are also considered by many to be of a lower quality.

In particular, people concerned with the quality of synthetic canvases often note that synthetic canvases have been known to yellow over time due mostly to the concoction of chemicals that go into them.

However synthetic canvas also has some strengths over cotton canvas. Most notably it is usually stronger. This is important as it means that synthetic canvas is less likely to sag over time. Also the concoction of chemicals that concern some people can help to make colours appear more vibrant.

As such there is no clear answer when it comes to the material you should use for your canvas print. Your best option is probably to find a canvas printer who prints onto cotton and synthetic canvas and ask to see some samples. Then you should simply choose the one that looks best.

Thread Weight
Thicker weighted canvas costs more than thinner canvas but is also more likely to hold its shape over time. Again, owing to the resilience of synthetic fibres, you can probably get away with a lower weighted synthetic canvas than cotton canvas.

Once again it is probably best to find a printer who offers a range of options then decide based on aesthetics.

What goes on the Canvas
Ink
Higher quality inks will give better quality colours and a higher fade resisitance.

Lacquer
Lacquer adds a number of benefits. First it protects the ink meaning that your canvas will be more resilient to knocks, dust and cleaning. Second it usually includes a compound that helps protect the ink from UV damage. By covering the ink it also helps protect your print from moisture.