What You Need to Know to Take Great Wedding Photographs

Becoming a wedding photographer allows you an exciting way to make a living and offers you numerous opportunities for career advancement. Most people hire a photographer for their wedding, which creates a huge market for your services, no matter where you live. The better you become at wedding photography, the more clients you will bring in, the more in-demand your services will be, and the more you can charge for your photographs.

You can sign up for a formal photography program to learn your craft, or you can learn through practice and individual study. No matter what route you choose, you need to ensure that you know these things to take great wedding photographs:

Lighting

Proper lighting is perhaps the most important element of good photography. Without it, you will wind up with dark photographs that make it hard to see the details, such as the beadwork on the bride's dress or the look of pure joy on the groom's face as he watches the bride walk up the aisle. You need to know how to properly light a shot, as well as how to change the settings on your camera to get the right lighting in the image. You also need to be able to do these things quickly, as lighting can change over the course of the day and as you move between locations, such as from the ceremony to the reception or from outside to inside.

Using editing software like Lightroom can help here. The Lightroom presets wedding can help you quickly adjust images for the best effects. Having those presets will help you save time, and will take some of the guesswork out of the process. Just remember that editing software cannot make a good image out of a bad one. You still need to know how to take good shots.

Focusing

Focusing a shot is about more than just making sure it's not blurry. Though that does seem to be a hard skill for some to master -- especially if the lighting isn't right. Beyond just making sure the shot is in focus, you also need to learn how to play with different types of focus to produce different results. Being able to create these artistic effects is what will set your wedding photography apart and help you get more clients.

One of the most popular techniques used in wedding photography is called depth of field. This technique produces the popular photos that have an object in focus in the front -- usually the bride and groom -- against a background that is blurred. Using this technique requires knowing how to set the aperture and shutter speed. Learning this technique and others will help you create this and other popular effects that will take your photography to the professional level.

Styling a Shot

Taking a good photo is about much more than just telling people where to stand in front of the camera. You need to know how to frame the shot against the other items in the camera's window to create a good composition. But rather than just doing the best with what is already there, you can take your photography to the next level by learning how to style your shoots.

Styling your shoots can involve bringing in props from elsewhere on location to be in the photo, such as pulling in a sign from the reception to place next to the bride and groom for their intimate, couple shots in the pasture nearby. Styling shoots can also involve bringing your own props to the location, such as decorative signs, flowers, garlands, candles, and more. Just make sure that your couple is ok with what you are adding before you take the shot.

Learning a few basic skills is just the start of your career as a wedding photographer. You also need to practice those skills to master them, and you need to learn a few extra "tricks" that can make your photography seem extra special. Put together a spectacular portfolio that shows off these skills and you'll soon have more clients than you can handle for your growing business.