It’s one thing to have a photographer at your wedding, but it’s another to have a videographer. There are always sitcoms and comedies about poor wedding video footage that gets erased or destroyed to the dismay of the characters, but wedding videography these days is the exact opposite. As opposed to days gone by where everything was done on cassette and tape, video quality is so much better these days.

If you’re a wedding videographer on your first job, or an industry pro, these wedding videography tips should help you improve your final product so that instead of just still frames to flip through, the bride and groom will have a DVD to play and relive the whole day once again.

Chapters/Sections

One of the most important things to remember about wedding DVDs is that they need chapters. While the actual wedding day is fabulous by itself, reliving the whole experience from the couch isn’t the same. Having the ability to skip through the “dull” moments is essential. Try putting chapters every 5 minutes or so, so that as the wedding is progressing, it’s easy to skip just a little bit ahead and not miss much.

In addition to chapters, it’s also important to have different sections for the wedding DVD. You can put things like different guest’s speeches together in one section, and the vows in another. That way, if the watcher wants to jump from one moment to another, it’s easily accomplished. Instead of having to watch the entire wedding just to watch grandpa’s moving speech, you can easily jump straight to it.

Tripod

If you don’t already have a tripod, stop reading here and go and buy one. Tripods are a cameraman’s best friend and provide all of the stability that you need in order to ensure that your arm doesn’t get tired and that the footage isn’t wobbly. Tripods can be used to pan back and forth between different moments, as well as for setting up multiple cameras around the wedding to capture different events. That means if you’re flying solo for a videography gig, you can set up a camera near where everyone will be giving speeches, and one to capture the whole room so that in the editing room, you can cut back and forth between the two shots to make things more interesting for the viewer later on.

Extra Shots

What most starting videographers forget is the B-Roll footage. While they may have gotten great at capturing the wedding itself, it’s the extras that make the whole thing worthwhile. Make sure to get footage of guests talking outside the church or at the reception, as well as maybe some interviews with different family members for their thoughts of the day. All of this can be just as important to the bride and groom as the actual wedding footage. You can edit this footage into a montage of sorts to bookend the wedding itself if you want, or even create a separate DVD for the footage so that the married couple can see what their friends were doing during the wedding.

Input

Last but not least is input. If you plan on heading to the wedding without ever having spoken to the bride and groom about what they want and what they’re comfortable with, the day will end terribly. Make sure to talk to your clients beforehand to understand what it is they want you to do. If they tell you to just go with it, make sure you’re quick and watchful at the wedding so that you can capture all of the nuances that make every wedding unique.

Ah, wedding days. Your wedding day is the most memorable day of your life, and if you want to make sure that you can relive it whenever you want, you want to be sure that you’ve hired a quality photographer to do the job. There are so many things you’ll want to have the photographer around for that you sometimes don’t even think about the cost. Since weddings are one off events, most people don’t know how much wedding photography should even cost. They go through friends of friends for recommendations and hope for the best. Hopefully by the end of this, you should know what it is you’re paying for and how much it should all cost.

You Get What You Pay For

This saying holds a lot of merit in the world of photography. Your “best friend’s buddy who owns a camera” isn’t going to charge you an arm and a leg, but he probably won’t come completely prepared to the gig either and you may be left wondering, “what the hell was he even looking at” when you get your photos printed and into an album. If you’re going to get the job done right, it will cost you a few thousand dollars. The top end photographers, also known as the ones who have been in the business for a long time, typically charge between $5,000 and $7,500 for a good day’s work. This may seem astronomical, but there are other options.

These prices are often inflated because they’ve built a name for themselves in the business. If people know they’re good, instead of risking things with someone else, they’d rather spend the money and get a good photographer from the get go. If you’re the type that doesn’t want to fool around with iffy quality, these are the prices you’re going to pay.

The other option is the $2,000 photographer you found online in your area, but haven’t heard of. There may be a few reasons you’ve never heard of him. Most amateur photographers, when they’re starting out, don’t charge an arm and a leg for their photography. Instead, in order to build up a solid reputation for themselves, they charge significantly lower prices than their competitors to build up a strong following. These prices may not have any representation of the actual quality of their work, so if you can find an up and coming photographer in your area for cheap, he may have some good stuff to look at.

Previews

Before you hire any photographer, take a look at his or her portfolio. The beauty of the internet is that you can look at any photographer’s portfolio to get an idea of what type of photos they take before they ever set foot into your wedding. If you’re still apprehensive about the image quality online, you can take a day and head to all of your local photographers that you’re considering and ask to see their portfolios in person so that you aren’t limited to what they’ve put on their website.

What You Will Get

If you hire just a single photographer for a few hundred dollars, you can expect him to stick around for a few hours at just one or two locations and put the printed photos in a hard cover album. For the prices above, you could expect to see a team of photographers at your wedding at almost any of the locations you choose and the prints in a hard cover folder. These photography teams work much more efficiently and have much more to choose from when it comes time to put your wedding album together. Because they’re shooting from different angles, you can get the exact shots you want.

Whether you’re an amateur photographer looking to expand your list of ideas just for fun, or a professional looking for some new shots to consider while you’re out in the field, all of these photography ideas can be spun in many different ways to get the creative juices flowing. While a photography class may introduce you to some of the basic shot types and places to take photography, it’s not until you get out on your own that you can realize your full potential and explore some uncharted territory. Let’s take a look at some different photography ideas that you can take advantage of, both locations and shot types.

Wide Angle

If a scene or location is getting overused and tired in your repertoire, you could try buying a wide angle lens. Wide angle lenses allow you to capture a broader scope of a scene as opposed to a standard lens or a telephoto lens that focus on the straight and narrow. Wide angle lenses are often used in films to capture a large room or multiple characters in tight shooting quarters where backing up or zooming out can no longer be done. Wide angle lenses don’t have to be an expensive addition to your film kit, but a good wide angle lens will obviously yield the best results. If you’ve already tried using a wide angle lens and are looking for a few more ideas to do with it, try shooting the same scene or object with many different lenses to add different depths and characteristics to a room.

Night Time

A great photography idea you can implement without any cost is simply waiting a few hours and heading out into the field at night. There’s an eeriness to the night time that can’t be captured in a photo editing suite in “post.” To capture the nighttime you’re going to need a decent camera that’s capable of different shutter speeds to let different amounts of light in to capture the different brightnesses of what you’re photographing. Scenes at night obviously aren’t as bright as they are during the day, so different shutter speeds will allow more light into the camera than normal, allowing the image to become clearer. You can also try playing with these low light backdrops to create some photography for your Halloween party next year.

Speed Photography

The last photography idea we’ll throw your way is one that takes a little bit of creativity and study to get the benefit from. If you head to an event that’s happening quickly, like a horse race or a sporting event, you obviously have to have a quick trigger finger to be able to capture all of the action without missing a beat. If you’re just getting started, this can be hard to do and the easiest way to get all of the footage you want without missing any of it is to go “trigger happy” and snap wildly as a race or play takes place. When you get home, you can start the real work behind this technique.

WIth your finger going wild on the button, it’s easy to assume that you got a few decent shots out of everything you managed to capture. The trick now is to whittle down the few good shots that you have from the bad ones and begin to study them. You can take the time to study these photos in comparison to the ones that you threw to see what makes them “keepers” rather than ones you’re getting rid of. As you go back to more events similar to the original one you went to, you can try and implement some new photography ideas to try and figure out how to recapture the same moments without simply mashing the button. Once you’ve got your technique figured out, you can make better use of your time at a fast paced event getting your camera setup just right so that when something awesome happens, you’re ready to take the shot.

Incorporating props into your shots can not only add some more variety to an otherwise dull shot, it can also give the photographer a sense of creativity as he or she arranges the props to complete the scene. Options truly are limitless in terms of what you can and can’t use as photography props, but if you have some stuff already laying around the house, you have a head start over some other photographers. Even the simplest plant or living room item can make or break the scene, meaning you’re free to use whatever you can get your hands on as a photography prop to fulfill your vision.

Online Retailers

If you don’t happen to have a particular prop around your home already, you can always browse the Internet to see what unique ideas you can find for making shots more interesting. Props that you can buy online are available for all types of themes, and aren’t just limited to things like sports memorabilia, holiday themed accessories, and backdrop templates.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for in one of the many photography props retailers that are all over the web, you can always hit up your local stores to see what you can find. Hobby stores generally carry an assortment of things that can not only make a shot more interesting, but also more memorable.

Make Your Own

If you’re the crafty type, you may consider making your own props. If you have a knack for cutting and building, you can build your own scenery for a particular shoot. It can be a lot of work trying to build something custom just for a single job, but once a scene is built, it can be reused many times again. And if you can incorporate some of the props that you found at the hobby store at an online retailer, you can spruce up an overused homemade backdrop to be an entirely new scene.

Backdrops

If photography props aren’t doing anything for you, you can consider looking at some new backdrops for your photography. Backdrops are often available in the same location that photography props are and if you’re looking in the right places, you can snag some great deals. Backdrops don’t have to be expensive, they just have to be versatile. It’s great to buy backdrops that embody a certain theme, but if you’re unable to use them for anything after the shoot is over, it’s not money well spent. Try and find backdrops that can be used for a number of different purposes and not just one or two different occasions.

Common Props

If you own a photography studio and are looking for some props that can better serve your clients, there are a few common props that every studio typically has. These props include things like benches and chairs, as well as different types of floral accessories to add some color to the shot after your guests have been seated.

Buying an entire set of photography props from the get go can be extremely expensive, no matter how much money you expect to make. It’s a good idea to start small and not buy more than you can use right away. Buy the essentials so that you’re not scrambling for impromptu seating arrangements, and then work your way up from there. Before you know it, you’ll have an entire closet full of props to be used for any and all shots.

Digital photography is a great way to bring out creativity. A simple object can look outstanding when you know something about photography. Waterfalls are one of the most interesting subjects in digital photography, but it is also one of the challenging shots to do. There are a number of considerations when making waterfalls as your subject matter. For one, the water is something moving. Since it is outdoor, the lighting can also be quite difficult. There are actually two ways to photograph waterfalls, which are through long shutter speed to blur the water or through fast shutter speed. Most people prefer to do the first one. To know more of the basics of photographing waterfalls, read through below.

1.In order to make the adjustment of exposure easier, you should have a starting point. Shoot the waterfall in auto mode first and check on the settings your camera used. Usually, the auto mode’s exposure would freeze or make the water look still. This setting could be your point of reference for your next shots.

2.If you aim to get a flowing water shot, you would want to have a blur effect on the water. You can use the shutter priority mode to manually control the shutter speed and let the aperture adjust automatically. You can try to put the shutter speed around 1 to 2 seconds; but because of the long shutter speed, you will definitely need a tripod to avoid camera shake. The problem with longer shutter speed is more light comes in even if the slow shutter speed is compensated by the aperture. This then results to a brighter photo.

3.Using a polarizing filter can decrease the light entering the camera. This can also help in decreasing reflections and in making the color of your photos richer.

4.As said earlier, if you want to get a moving water shot, you need to use a slow shutter speed. Because more amount of light enters the camera, refrain from shooting when the sun is up. Choose the time of the day, that is when the sun is not that bright, to decrease the chances of overexposed photos.

5.If all else fail, try switching to aperture priority mode and adjust the settings to the smallest aperture possible. Aside from getting the blurred effect on your photo, a small aperture will also have an effect on the depth of field of the image. The waterfall becomes more focused because of the larger depth created.

6.Adjusting to lower ISO could also help in making your camera less sensitive to light. This is also used to give your waterfall photo more detail.