I was remember when serving my first couple on pre wedding session than I always asking my seniors about pre wedding photoshoot tips for beginner. It’s truly confusing because if you already doing this job for years than shooting on wedding or pre wedding is just as simple as you made an omelet for your breakfast but if it belongs to your first time than sometimes we get black out or don’t know what to do with those two person who standing by right in front of you, and those guys already pay you for your expertise.
Dear photographer friends my name is Bima and today I wanna share to you about pre wedding photoshoot tips that dedicated to all of you especially for you who just starting your career as a wedding photographer. If you just dealing with your first client than you must be so proud of your achievement or even more you will be so confidence to stand up right in front of your parents, girl friend, and surely your competitors, but if you just have it for your own than I would like to say congratulation, it’s a great step actually.
Once you’re done with your glory than I would like you to concern about what to do next during the photo session because this gonna be so confusing and exciting.
Pre Wedding Photoshoot Tips That You Must Know
I don’t wanna waste your time by reading my ridiculous paragraphs so lets drop into the details and I hope I could deliver great information today.
1 – Preparing Your Gears
I sure that you already know that photography gears are one of the most expensive business tools so if this gonna be your first session than don’t be over gears like buying any ridiculous stuff that you don’t really need it. Lets make it as efficient.
Use any camera that you have even it simple as entry level mirrorless camera but If you get the DSLR or high-end mirrorless gears than use it. Whatever you have on your storage than always remember this,
Gears will just a tools, no more from it but the two most important thing will be your creativity and imagination
Back few years ago I ever doing a pre wedding session with my Canon EOS M 1st generation, it is an old camera that I bought in 2014 but still works till 2020 and generally it is an amazing camera. Due to my experience I ever use Canon 400D or Rebel, Canon 7D, Canon 5D Mark II, Nikon D7100, and Nikon D800, it’s quite long journey but I starting from the scratch.
Here I am now trying my future camera, the Nikon Z7, and you can read my review about this ‘beast’ on my previous article.
2 – Decide Where to Go or Choosing the Location
Number 2 of your next to do is choosing pre wedding location, it could be as simple as behind your client’s house or going somewhere else that belong to your couple’s dream. Some people used to choose location with great landscape or downtown so generally due to my experiences than locations will depend on client’s choice.
My Indonesian couple named Joanna and Angga ask me to fly to Jakarta and choosing a retro cafe and beach for their pre wedding location. In other hand my Singaporean named Denise and Joel couple ask me to fly to Maldives to capturing their location. In other words I just follow where my couple want and I directly go to that location.
Do I have a dream pre wedding location? sure I am and so that’s why I wrote and describe more and more romantic location around the world, educate my future client, deliver great information about location, hotels, food, and other travel information to them.
3 – Decide the Wardrobe
No matter you choose smart casual clothes or bridal looks than you always have to plan and decide the wardrobe. It might be tricky because you have to suggest some of glamorous wardrobe so your couple will looks so amazing both in the real session and in the final album.
When you see our photo above than you gonna see how my wife, Nina, helping the bride named Dickie Ma to fix her white bridal in the middle of our session. On that session we did 8 hours photoshoot and for this duration I used to suggest my couple to bring at least 2 formal gown and 1 casual clothes. Go searching on Instagram, Pinterest, or as simple as Googling about pre wedding wardrobe and you will find thousand of sample in so many concepts.
4 – Mastering the Posing
Posing, this is one of the most important part of my pre wedding photoshoot tips because if you just doing your photoshoot for the very first time than sometimes you could be black out on the location. Actually posing your couple is really simple as long as you know the trick and get so many sample form internet.
Till now I still copying some pictures from Pinterest and Google to guide me doing pose to my couple. What I did is simply searching on internet and keep it on my smartphone and whenever I got lack of idea than I just show the pictures in my phone to my couple and ask them to do like what the picture is.
In my previous article I also share about how to do classic pose for couple, actually all classic posing are so simple but if you could do these pose perfectly than everything will looks amazing.
5 – Remind for the Weather
Few years ago I was shooting for pre wedding in Puri Asri Resort in Magelang Central Java, what I’m worrying about is, it was so cloudy on the way to go to the location, even when I start to push my first shutter than the cloud is still cloudy. Things that really shocking my couple is at 4pm the rain come so hard even we have to go to small gazebo to avoid being wet and we get stuck for few minutes because we definitely can not go out from the Gazebo.
If you face the problem like mine than please cooling down and be sure for being creative because once you do this than everything will be better. What I did during that period is asking my couple to stand out with the umbrella right under the hard rain and I ask my couple to hold my flash light on their hand and I shoot them using the wireless trigger so finally I got this beautiful moment below,
There are a lot of idea about shooting under the rain and you could browse seriously about it cause once this situation is coming than you guys must solve it as soon as possible.
6 – Considering About Client Meeting Before the Session
The goals about meeting is to make sure everything will works well, since at the beginning of my career than I always held a client meeting before the photoshoot. So till now I serve a destination wedding that I still held a meeting with a Skype or Whatsapp video call and it help me and my couple to fix everything.
You may held client meeting anytime but for me I used to do client meeting a week before the session, here I’m gonna double check about my couple’s wardrobe, make up, hair do, accessories like veil and flower bouquet, till arrival schedule because we do cross country photoshoot.
7 – Check Your Flight Schedule and Get ‘Ur Boarding Pass
It’s really important to double or triple check your flight schedule especially if you do cross country photoshoot, once you get miss for this thing than everything will be so chaos. I’ve been flying to Hong Kong for winter portrait shots and since my flight will be depart really early (at 6.30 am) so rather than go to KL city so I choose to stay in a hotel or simply sit down in a cafe for night long.
It’s been tricky for everyone because if you ever watched the National Geographic channel than you must be see some of airlines officer is getting busy just to find their passengers on the last minute call. So make sure you flight schedule and get your boarding both in a digital form like saving it on your smartphone or going to the printing centre to get it on physic.
8 – Make Sure Your Passport Validity
If you do overseas photoshoot than you must considering about your passport validity which approximately is you must have at least 6 months of validity. Overseas photoshoot is really need concern about your national documentation because it will come into big trouble if you get mistake about it and stuck in a custom office and you can not go to your flight.
9 – Book Your Hotel Immediately
Booking a hotel for overseas photoshoot will really exciting especially if you are a photographer who also a person who love traveling, especially my wife, she is so excited to choose where we could stay during the photoshoot. In my humble suggestion I personally you to book an accommodation with two recommended platform, the Agoda.com and Airbnb.com.
I used to to use those platform since few years ago, so if I would like to stay in a fine hotel than Agoda will be the best but if I’d like to stay in a place that feels like home than Airbnb be will the number one choice.
So this is the end of my article about pre wedding photoshoot tips, actually I still want to write something but since 3 days I was sleeping almost 2 am in the morning and definitely feel tired about it. So I will back to my blog and share more about photography and I hope I still meet you in another day.
Good luck and you may share this article if you think that this story is useful for any of you and friends and hoping to see you in person someday.
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