Dealing with a large bridal party. Make it fun.

Photography tips and how we got the shot. Before and After Bonus.

This post is two parts. First, I want to talk about the importance of having fun. As a wedding photographer, we are often asked to wear a lot of hats on a wedding day. We are often coordinators, planners, time-keepers, in addition to photographers. It seems that bridal parties are getting bigger and bigger with each passing year. This can make our jobs harder. Especially when we get alcohol involved. That’s okay. We just have to bring up the energy, make sure we stay in charge by being assertive, and keep it loose and fun for everyone. You can’t be shy.

A shot like this is great to get the energy up. Especially because it was our 3rd stop and the bridal party tends to lose focus after the first couple stops. I am not afraid to lead the cheer. Like a pep-rally, as silly as it sounds, you have to coax ‘more’ out of them to make an image truly shine. “Come on, you can do better than that, I want to hear you this time.”

First we started with this.

A shot like this does not just happen organically. This is not photojournalism. This is putting on your big-boy pants and creating the shot. We had the bridal party in the first shot, and that was great. We wanted to do something special. As we walked to the Bean we chatted with Ariana and RD and told them our idea. That mean, no backing out. I told them I thought we could get 100+ people. I’m not sure if we quite hit our goal, but it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Having a second photographer is helpful no doubt as we began adding more and more people and cheering louder and louder the crowd great over 3-5 shots. It grew into this.

The last thing I want to share are the before and after pictures. Again, editing matters. Especially when shooting RAW, which we always do. We wanted this image to have punch so we brought up all the beautiful colors in the photo with vibrancy. Remember the little things, like the dirt on the bean. The bean is a giant polished metal ball – it only looks great when it’s clean – and it rarely is. So we cleaned it!