How to Come Up with Photo Ideas for Wedding
Wedding photos are one of the first and only times that a couple hires a professional photographer. The wedding photographer is often one of the most important budget aspects of the wedding day. Wedding photography is how we experience the wedding day after it’s over so today I’m sharing how to come up with photo ideas for wedding photographers and brides.
A couple looks at or shares their wedding photos to remember the significance of this important day in their lives. It’s a big day and that couples often spend a lot of money to bring a lot of people together to help celebrate. So it makes sense that there’s a lot of pressure on getting great wedding photos.
From the Bride’s perspective, you want to ensure that the day looks as amazing as you imagined it for years to come. From the photographer’s perspective, you want to make sure you make that wedding day look even better than it was because that’s how it felt to your clients. Let’s dive in and talk about how to come up with wedding photo ideas when the pressure is on.
Determine Your Values and Make Them Priorities
Most of my photography advice for both brides and wedding photographers starts with determining values and making sure your values are your priorities. That’s the best way to make sure that you’re spending all of your time, money, or energy on the right things for you. For the record, it might be could to pause and evaluate your whole like this way, but I digress.
As we walk through various ways to find and places to look for wedding inspiration for wedding photos, head into it with an idea of what’s truly important. If you take the time to determine what a wedding means to you, it will be easier to see opportunities for wedding photo ideas. If you keep in mind what’s really important, then your wedding photos will reflect that.
The Who:
One of the first places to look for wedding photo ideas is at the people. Weddings are about love and family. They are days filled with people at their happiest or most stressed. Therefore, it makes sense that we can look at those people for inspiration for wedding photos.
If you can show the who in the wedding photos then you’re creating images that couples with treasure. In this section, I’ll talk about capturing personalities and knowing what’s important to the couple. you’ll use these to know whether to spend more time on posed wedding party photos or candid moments.
As you read through, remember the best wedding photo idea is one that turns out beautiful but also meaningful. This is usually more about people than the wedding accessories. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need to hire a photographer for wedding photos because we could just use someone else’s wedding photos.
Capturing Personalities
One great way to come up with ideas for wedding photos is to capture the personalities of all of the characters involved. This will vary from wedding to wedding which is why you can’t just rely on a shot list. Instead, you need to immerse yourself in the wedding and get to know the players involved in your story.
Let’s take the flower girls as an example. Are they wild and reckless in their flowery dresses or are the little shadows of the bride? If you allow yourself to be inspired by their personalities the ideas to how to capture them start flowing.
Let the personalities of the couple and their guests inspire your ideas for their wedding photos as what will lead to photo ideas that are meaningly for your bride and groom couple. As a wedding photographer, I love making each couple something unique to them. Even though I’ve been to hundreds of weddings, they only get one.
What is important to the couple?
When you think about the wedding photo album that will hold your favorite wedding photos from one particular wedding, what story will it tell? As a wedding photographer, I always ask my couples what they’re most looking forward to both photographically and from the wedding in general. I like to know what they spent the most time, money, and energy on.
Then, I can use that information to make sure I’m telling a story that is meaningful to my couple. Maybe they’re excited about the food and I’ll spend some time capturing how much people are enjoying the family-style dinner. Or maybe they can’t wait to see all of their friends so I’ll be sure to capture the reunion.
Make a list of what’s important to the couple and then come up with individual photo ideas from that list. The bridal party is a good place to start because these are the best friends of your couple so pictures of them and close family members are likely to be important. Some couples spent hours picking and cake while others would rather have you photography the flower girls.
What Moments are Happening
One of the most popular answers I get when I ask what’s most important is this idea of candid, special moments. A lot of my couples just want to be able to remember how much fun they had in both the private moments and public moments with their best friends and family members. Moments are a type of photo to capture and there are endless ways to capture them.
You can get close up to capture candid moments from the inside or you can back off to show the intimacy from an outsider’s perspective. You can choose what to include and exclude in the frame based on the wider story of the moment. If you keep your eyes open for special moments you can learn not only to recognize when a beautiful moment is about to happen but how to capture it well.
Getting ready shots I a great time to practice this because it’s not as rushed as the wedding ceremony or as chaotic as the wedding reception. You’ll also quickly see if each group is the matching jackets picture-perfect type or if they’re simply acting natural while you capture everything. This will prepare you for knowing what moments to look for the rest of the day.
The What:
When you think about storytelling you think about the what in terms of what is happening. The storyline contains a wealth of ideas for wedding photos. How can you tell the story through images?
You might take a close-up shot at the climax of the story and a wider shot at a scene-setting moment. Many of your wedding photos are going to fall into this category so you might even break it into chapters of what is happening at different portions of the day from the wedding ceremony to the wedding reception.
A Look at the Wedding Ceremony
Let’s take a deeper look at the wedding ceremony. It’s somewhat predictable with variations for each couple but it starts with a processional and ends with a first kiss as husband and wife. If you think about that story arc, there are great photos ideas that come from it.
Can you show the anticipation of the early portion of the ceremony or the intimacy of the vows? What composition tools will help highlight the mood of everyone cheering as the couple is pronounced husband and wife?
Paying Attention to the Wedding Day Details
Another part of the what might be part of the setting or the where but I’m including it here because it helps give context. All the details help describe the story. The wedding dress photos might be about showing how pretty the dress is or they might be about showing that this is a special day that we dress up for.
Similarly the floral arrangements and table settings might be there to look trendy or they might be part of setting the stage for the story. You can view these things as distractions or you can view all the details as descriptive elements of the story and use them to show what’s happening through your photography.
Telling the Story of the Wedding Day
Which brings us back to this idea of a story. If you think of the wedding album as a wordless book, what story will it tell when you look through it? How can you use your photography to show the beginning, middle, and end of the wedding day?
Using the ideal wedding album as inspiration for what pictures you need to take to create such an album will help set you on the right path. Cocktail hour may not be the most important time to take wedding photos but they help tell the transition to the dance floor. A picture of just the wedding dress is boring to me but a picture of the wedding dress in the background of the chaos if getting ready tells a story that’s bigger than that one wedding dress.
The Where:
I mentioned the setting in the section on details and here’s where we’ll dive into the setting more. The setting is one of my greatest sources of inspiration for my wedding photos. Of course, I live in Colorado where many of my couples are choosing their wedding venue because of the beauty of the setting.
However, regardless of the grandeur of the wedding location, the setting can help tell the story and be a source of ideas for wedding photos.
Using the Environment
Using the environment can mean things like incorporating fairy lights at the wedding reception to show the vibe. It can also mean landscape portraits. Don’t limit your ideas, use the expanse of the environment to expand your ideas.
How does natural light fall in the getting-ready room? Or what if ou can take a landscape shot that somehow looks similar to the design on the wedding cake? Will your group shots and your couple portraits take lace with a beautiful backdrop?
Some seemingly creative poses are actually just poses that seem most natural based on the surrounding environment and how a couple moves through it.
The When:
When is the wedding? What time of day or year is it? What’s going on in the world or everyone’s lives?
Is it a beautiful fall day and change is also a theme of the wedding? Or maybe its spring and it’s all about a new beginning. Better yet, summer is here and the afternoon thunderstorms are unpredictable but this couple with weather any storm together and be stronger for it.
How can you capture the when of your story?
The Why:
Why is this couple getting married? Or why is their love special? Why did they make the choices they made about their wedding?
Perfect wedding photos will vary from couple to couple based on their why. For example, some brides’ pre-ceremony photos will be about fashion and beauty while others will be about intimate moments with mom. Some dance parties will be elegant and formal while others will be out of control.
If you can remember the why of weddings, new ideas for wedding photos will continue to bloom like the love of your couple. The why is the reason that candid moments are so popular. It’s the reason we shoot adventurous bridal portraits or pre-plan shots for the wedding ceremony.
The bridal portraits and wedding ceremony are two of my favorite portions of the day because I know my wedding photography will both tell a story of the vows and show the couple in the beautiful place they’ve chosen to get married. Wedding photography is about capturing a special moment in a wedding photo and making it last forever.
Summary of Photo Ideas for Weddings
In summary, the typical thing that people do to find photo ideas for their wedding is to look at other people’s weddings. Photographers look at what other wedding photographers are doing. Instead, I’m encouraging you to look for ideas everywhere but by being in the moment rather than trying to be someone else.
Sure you could copy someone else’s wedding photo idea and it will probably work because every wedding ceremony is the same as the next. But as a wedding photographer, I love to think of every wedding as different and every married couple as special. The more I can remain limitless in my ideas for wedding photos, the more I can create magic for each couple.
So sure, sometimes I want to try a specific shot at a special moment in any given wedding. But I always need to keep my mind open to creative shots that come seemingly out of the blue. That’s the thing about creativity, the more you make it your mindset the easier it gets.
More Wedding Photography Tips
Here on the Bergreen blog, we teach the basics of photography for both Brides and photographers. We offer tips for planning for weddings from location advice and beyond.
Photographers can learn things about the exposure triangle and camera settings. We also review some of our favorite photography gear. Let us know what you’re interested in and we’ll do our best to help take your photography to the next level.
Next, check out our candid wedding moments shooting guide or our 9 Best Tips for Outdoor Wedding Photographers. Links to products are affiliate links.
About the author
I am Brenda Bergreen, one half of an Evergreen husband and wife photography team specializing in Colorado wedding photography and videography, and adventure photography. If you need wedding photography tips or advice on the best gear for your goals, reach out. I share advice based on 13+ years as a wedding photographer.
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