1. Set the camera for the highest resolution setting it has. Sure, that will take less images per media card. The solution for that problem is to buy more cards, so you can take more photos. Memory cards are at bargain prices compared to just 1 year ago.
2. Download these images to your computer at your earliest opportunity. Don't just leave them on the card, in the camera. Should you have the misfortune to lose the camera or corrupt the media in the camera, you could lose those moments forever.
3. Make a backup copy of the images on your computer. Store a copy of them in another directory. Files or directories get corrupted, discs fail, things happen, bad things. External drives have become very inexpensive. Buying one to hold just your images is wonderfull protection against a hard drive crash on your computer.
4. Make an archive copy of the images. Copy the files of the images you want to make sure you preserve to CDs. DVDs are okay, but try to find archival quality DVDs. Those discs are gold on both sides and will last far longer than those found at your average office supply.
5. Make prints of the images, maybe even books. Printed photos last for generations; technology doesn't. You don't anything to enjoy a photo album other than a lap and some time.
   

There are a couple of reasons for offering this as a service. None of the reasons has anything to do with selling more prints. The obvious one is the likelihood the couple will retain us after seeing our work. Another is the chance for us to try new techniques and approaches under realistic scenarios, where the results are non-critical. For couples that have already booked our services, this gives us a chance to get the couple used to working with us. We learn more about their personalities and their reactions to each other. An added benefit is a more relaxed couple in front of the camera on their wedding day.

For the couple, there are tremendous benefits from taking advantage of these services. This is a great opportunity to “try before you buy”. You get answers to any questions about a particular photographer’s personality, style, professionalism, etc., over the course of a 1-2 hour session. Before you see what the photographer’s work looks like, you’ll have a good idea if you can work with this person over the course of one of the most stressful days of your life. You also get the chance to practice being in front of the camera for an extended period. You can try different looks and different poses. You get to see just how creative you can be, all while learning how to be comfortable in the presence of the camera.

Naturally, this intent is more than a practice run. The session you have with the photographer you ultimately hire will provide additional images for your families, and your wedding album. Both sets of parents and grandparents will want images of you before you truly set out to begin life as a new family-to-be. You will also likely want “before” images. Even if you don’t make prints to frame, these images make a wonderful addition to your wedding album.

Pay attention to the no-cost engagement photo offers, but only if they come with no purchase obligation. They aren’t exactly free, as the photographer retains the right to use any images from the session for promotional purposes. If you’re not comfortable with that, then don’t take the offer. If you are, then take advantage of the offer, and the situation. Give the photographer and their talents a test run. Give yourself a test run in front of the camera. If you do nothing else, have fun.

Photography is not something one shops for on a regular basis. However, the approach should be as any other major purchase. A typical approach is to set the dollar amount you’re willing to spend. As a starting point, no one would find fault with that logic. If your only criteria is price, you’re going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiations. Price is a very important concern, but you need to understand what’s included for that price. Let’s look at a different example.

You’re buying a car. Your budget is $1500. You walk into a used car dealer and tell the salesperson “I want to buy a car”. You’re likely to get one of two responses. The first is ”How much do you want to spend?” This is a test. It’s not a test to see how much money you have. The answer will tell the salesperson you either know what you want, or haven’t a clue. If you answer with the dollar amount without any additional information , the salesperson is likely to point out the car in that price range that provides them the most profit.

If, on the other hand, you walk into that same dealer and say, “I’m looking for a 2-door compact sedan, something that gets at least 20mpg, with less than 30,000 miles, similar to a [fill in name brand here], that is less than four years old”, you’re going to have a very different conversation. You don’t even have to mention your budget. You can go from dealer to dealer, asking the same question, and effectively price shop with confidence. The difference? In the first example, you give the salesperson the opportunity to sell you something that’s to their advantage. In the second example, you dictate the terms, based on what you want. You are now in a position to basing your price comparisons on similar products.

If you shop on price alone, you have no way to do effective comparisons. A $1500 wedding package will be very different from photographer to photographer. Services will be different. Print and album options will be different. Comparing two packages of equal prices is like comparing apples to coffee pots. What will be common are packages that are the most profitable to the photographer. At best, they are the studios guess at what you might want.

Starting your price negotiations by explaining to the photographer, or any other wedding vendor, exactly what you’re looking for makes it a lot easier for the vendor. We instantly know we need to focus on providing you what you want, as opposed to convincing you to buy something. Take control of your photography consultations by being specific.

Your wedding day is supposed to be all about you. The couple getting married is supposed to get what they want, the way they want it, based on their budget. We as photographers are supposed to serve you, and give you what you want. To do that, we have to know what that is. You tell the caterer, florist, wedding coordinator, bridal gown maker, decorator, etc., how you want things, down to the placement of the napkins on the dinner tables. Why not do that with the photography?

For the photographer, to shot extra frames meant to incur processing and printing costs on the speculation that someone was going to buy them. Frequently they would not. Back then, one of my typical packages contained 12 8x10 images and 48 5x5 images, all assembled in a leather bound album. To get down to those 60 images, I would shoot no more than 84 images, which amounted to two additional rolls of film. Those of us that were very accurate with metering and composition were rewarded for our efficiency with lower costs. Those that weren’t were penalized.

In this day of digital, we can shoot to our heart’s content, without any additional hard costs. I say hard costs, because the more images that are shot, the more images there are to edit. With the popularity of the photojournalistic style of wedding coverage, each of us now captures 10-15 times the number of images we used to shoot. I attended a seminar recently given by a photographer that captures a staggering 5,000 images per wedding. Naturally, only a fraction of those images are actually presented to the bride and groom. What does this all means to you, the wedding couple?

Your wedding coverage options are now wide open. If you cannot find a photographer that covers the entire day, my suggestion is to go for as much coverage as you can afford. Of course, you’re not going to have all of that printed. However, if you’re goal is to tell the story of the day, that implies the entire day has been covered. If the all-day coverage is not an affordable option, your work is cut out for you in deciding what to have covered. What will help is very careful planning on how you lay out your day.

The ceremony, reception, and portraits are a must. Special activities and cultural traditions are likely to have equal priority. Where it starts to get dicey is the pictures of the bride and groom getting ready and covering all of the reception. If you can’t cover it all, you’ll to Here’s some planning tips you can use to optimize the coverage you have.

• You can save precious time by selecting shooting locations other than the ceremony and reception sites that are either very close to, or along travel routes between, those two locations.
• Carefully planning the timeline will help to, but be careful. Don’t plan the timeline so tight that something has to be sacrificed if one of your activities is delayed.
• Take your formal portraits before the ceremony. If the entire wedding party knows they have to be ready to take pictures before the wedding starts, the chances of the ceremony starting late are minimized.
• If one of your goals is to have formal family portraits, let everyone in the family know about it, in advance. Let them know when and where the photos will be taken. Make this point repeatedly. This is not their wedding. They are going to forget and wander off to do other things. Your coordinator can be a big help with this.
• Immediately following the ceremony, things are the most chaotic. If you plan on using the alter area, plan to have the church cleared as quickly as possible, except for family. Work out a shot plan with the photographer so they can shoot this sequence quickly and efficiently.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. They all revolve around a central theme; planning. Good planning solves many problems, and makes for better pictures.

Planning a very tight timeline for your wedding day may prove to be very stressful. Something always runs counter to your plan as causes a delay. Under normal circumstances, several things go wrong, each one causing small amounts of time to be lost from your plan. The little delays add up, and before you know it, you’ve lost an hour, or more. In worst-case scenarios, enough time is lost to cause you to cut out parts of your planned activities. Guess which is the first one scratched, the photo session.

With everything else about a wedding so meticulously planned, photo planning is frequently left out. That’s not because couples don’t think about it. In most cases, the photographer is contacted after most of the timeline for the day is already set. Photographers will make suggestions, but we’re not about to have you reshuffle your arrangements. Instead, we try to work within your timeline to make sure we can meet your needs.

So, that begs the question; how do you plan for your wedding day photo session? The easiest way is to put it on your agenda for the day. Somewhere on your wedding day plan, between “have breakfast” (this should be there too, trust me) and “leave reception” should be an item for “bride and groom pictures”. That way you’re thinking about it. You can plan the time and the location. You can make sure it fits in somewhere. You can also work around everything else that’s involved with that. This gives an opportunity to have a conversation with the photographer to review your locations to see if one of those will work. On the other hand, you can plan to use a specific location. The photographer will give you an idea of approximately how much time they will need, or you can let them know how much time they have.

This level of planning has a profound impact on your images. Planning allows you to relax. If you are relaxed, your photos will look like you’re relaxed. When photos have to be rushed, they look like it, especially portraits. Those of you in the midst of planning your wedding day, pull out that plan and see if you’ve at least considered your pictures. Next time, I’ll share some ideas on how to make those plans fit in comfortably.

Back in the day, the members of the church would host a reception following the wedding ceremony to allow everyone the chance to congratulate the newly wedded couple. They weren’t elaborate affairs, a few decorations, a cake and some punch. These were the days of the “receiving line”. The entire wedding party would line up at the entrance of the hall, with the bride and groom at the end of the line. The guests would pass down the line, meeting the members of the wedding party. The bride and groom would get to personally greet and thank everyone for coming. The high point was the cutting of the cake. The more fancy weddings included a meal, but this was not common.

Angel and Terrence’s day reflected this long lost tradition while keeping up with the present. They followed the reception at the church with the currently customary private reception at the Wedgewood Banquet Center. This is a wonderfully traditional young couple with deep spiritual and family roots. I have to also say it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a couple so relaxed from the rehearsal, all the way through the reception. They had a lot of help putting it all together. Not only were Angel and Terrence having a wedding, the whole church was having a wedding. That’s how it used to be. A sign of how traditions run deep at Cosmopolitan Baptist Church, neither Cassandra or I are accustomed to being referred to by Mr. and Mrs. Not just by the youth of the church, but my many of the members. We refuse to believe it’s because we’re getting that old.

Such was the case for Michelle and Jourdan. These two surprised their friends during a trip to Lake Tahoe, and slipped away to one of the convenient wedding chapels in the area. Neither had really wanted to have the full-blown ceremony and reception. They later changed their minds and opted to do it all over again; this time, with family and friends in attendance.

They found a small chapel that’s attached to the larger sanctuary or St. Bonaventure Catholic Church in Concord. This was just the perfect size for the 60-80 guests they expected. Behind the church has an incredible rose garden that we used for the bridal portraits and most of the family pictures. The skylights and high windows of the chapel offered a very soft, natural light environment. The tight booking schedule for the chapel imposed some time constraints, but we were able to gets a number of great shots in the gardens. (Wedding Album Design Link)

We shot the bridal party and pre-ceremony shots of the family in the gardens before the ceremony. Another one of those times when wished I had brought walkie-talkies to coordinate moving the bride/bridesmaids and groom/groomsmen around without the bride and groom seeing each other. Logistics aside, this was a fantastic location to shoot in.

The reception location was in a small park in Danville. A part of the facilities is a ranch-style house that is available to rent. Behind the house is a large open area, ringed by trees. The shade from those trees turned a 95-degree day into a nice 80-degree setting that was warm, but very comfortable. A gazebo standing in the middle of a grassy field was one of two portrait locations we used. The other was an iron and wood bridge that spanned the creek bed that flowed behind the open yard. The bright, midday, open sun around the gazebo was particularly challenging to work with, but the near-sunset lighting for the second location was fantastic. The complete album pre-design is located here.

Jourdan, a former chef, prepared the food for the wedding banquet. Without exaggeration, I have to admit that was the best wedding dinner I’ve had in my 30+ years of covering weddings. We came away with more than a couple recipes.

With all this, you wouldn’t think of this as anything but a wedding and reception. This had all the nervousness, excitement, emotions, and tears you would expect. The families, some from as far away as Florida, had a wonderful time together, and celebrated the day like it was the first day of Michelle and Jourdan’s married life. In some ways, it was.

A “destination” wedding can be local. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, any wine country wedding becomes a destination for many of the guests. We just photographed the wedding of a long-time friend’s daughter at the Martinelli Event Center, in the middle of the Livermore Valley. For those that only know of Napa and Sonoma as the California wine country, the truth is, some of the first grapes planted in California were planted in the Livermore Valley in the late 1700’s. The Livermore Valley lies about 25 miles east of Oakland, just south of the busy 580 freeway. The one comment heard most often during the day was, “I didn’t know all this was out here”, coming from the many long-time Bay Area residents.

This July 4^th afternoon was blessed with a bit of relief from the smoke from the many wildfires nearby that had blanketed most of the state for the last few weeks. The sea breeze from the bay cleared out enough of the smoke and haze to make it a beautiful day. The temperature was mild for July in Livermore. Instead of the more typical 95+ degrees, we had a pleasant 85 degrees with a comfortable breeze that made it feel even cooler.

Dawana and Marvin have dated for a long, long time, and their relationship has endured separations while they attended college. As a result, this was a gathering of relatives and good friends from all over the country. The couple themselves was returning home for the ceremony, having recently settled in to live in Portland, Oregon.

The Martinelli Event Center is located in the center of the wine country. Events are managed by Garré Winery, located just a quarter mile away. The adobe styled center, sitting in the middle of a vineyard, has many great scenic backdrops. The opportunities for great photos are almost endless, and we tried to use as many as we could in the short time we were there.

Marvin and Dawana opted to take most of their more posed pictures before the ceremony. With all of the wedding party getting dressed at the facility, and no travel time between venues, this made for a very calm and relaxed atmosphere for everyone. Pictures of the complete wedding party and the bride and groom’s photo sessions were the only formal shooting to be done after the ceremony. Organizing the flow this way allowed the couple to enjoy more of there brief visit with family and friends, without interruption from us. At the same time, we got many great shots of those interactions. (Collage link)

The ceremony area on the open lawn presented it’s usual challenges, but the warm glow of the late afternoon sun blended perfectly with the vineyard scenery. There were fantastic open shade areas that provided some of the most interesting shots of the day. With an unusual amount of free time in our shooting routine, we were able to try out a few new toys. Some yielded glamorous results, some not so glamorous.

We also worked with a great DJ for the event. I DJ’d weddings and events for a very long time and have been disappointed with the quality of the younger DJ’s I’ve seen lately. There is a huge difference between a party DJ and a wedding DJ. Voice quality and the ability to make clear, crisp announcements are very important. Professionalism is critical in coordinating the activities of a reception. I took pride in the attention to detail my longtime DJ partner and I took when handling weddings. Tony Sparks of Close Cut Productions is the only DJ I’ve come across lately that works in the style I used to. His coordination with everyone associated with making the reception flow smoothly is superb. For San Francisco Bay Area couples looking for a wedding DJ, check him out at www.closecutproductions.com.

For us, we have a short break in our schedule. We’ll still be busy preparing for the arrival of our first grandchild in September. We’re just hoping he doesn’t decide to arrive the weekend we’re shooting the Monterey Jazz Festival!