Wedding Shot List: Essential Moments a Photographer Should Capture
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Loading... - Dante Reyes
- 07 Sep 2022
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In my complete guide to wedding photography, I addressed 10 critical moments that a wedding photographer can’t miss. In this guide, I want to dial in and take a closer look at what photos should be taken at a wedding.
I’m going to bring it up into a few categories to help you simplify how you think about your wedding photography shot list. It’s better to have a general, simple, and specific plan that you can achieve than a 1,000-item shot list that will likely end up in a focus on what you missed rather than what you got.
Table of Contents
What Photos Should Be Taken at a Wedding?
Who Are the Important People at a Wedding?
What Are the Important Moments During the Ceremony?
What Are the Important Moments During the Reception?
What is Important to the Couple?
The Ultimate Wedding Photography Shot List
The Most Important Wedding Photos
What Photos Should Be Taken at a Wedding?
For simplicity, I’m going to bring things down into four main categories. These categories are important for the majority of weddings, and understanding why will help you determine what to shoot:
The people photos: Moments with the parents, group pictures of the important people, couples portraits.
The wedding ceremony: Walking down the aisle, vows, first kiss, exiting as husband and wife.
Reception traditions: Dances, rituals, speeches.
What is important to the couple?
Who Are the Important People at a Wedding?
The most important people at the wedding are the bride and groom followed by anyone who is important to the bride and groom. It can be easy to try to please everyone on the wedding day. You’re trying to take good photos for the couple and the crazy Aunt and the wedding planner and the venue, but when it comes down to it you need to think about the couple.
Couples portraits are an extremely important part of the wedding day because they are the photos that end up being printed and hung at various people’s houses. You need some solid portraits and maybe even some creative portraits depending on your couple. It’s also great if the couples portraits capture the joy and excitement of the wedding day.
Beyond that, often the parents are the most important people especially as they relate to their children. If you can capture tender moments between the bride and her mom, for example, those are going to be special. Pictures of the bridal party are important too especially if they have been friends for a long time but the immediate family members are often the people that will solidly be in the life of the couple.
I love that modern wedding photography has moved far beyond the boring traditional posed photos and I believe that candids that come from photojournalism have more meaning and storytelling. However, group portraits are still the photos that many people print and frame for their desks. Therefore, it can be important to get high-quality group portraits of any groups of people that are important to your couple.
Spending too much time on posed group shots can suck up the hours and negatively impact the wedding experience so try not to go overboard with group photos. Work with your couple to come up with a realistic list of combinations of photos that might actually be printed by various family members.
What Are the Important Moments During the Ceremony?
Typically one of the most important photos from the wedding ceremony is the expressions on the couple’s faces when they’re walking down the aisle both before they’re married and after they are married. This is where you’re telling the story of their excitement, anticipation, and then their joy. Some couples cry while others can’t help but smile their biggest smile and these photos naturally tell a story of what is happening. Read More...
