We’re past the halfway point of my 4-part guide to Wedding Photography for Guests, which started two days ago and wraps up tomorrow, so for those of you with no interest whatsoever in wedding photography, you’ll be glad to know we’ll be on to other things soon. Today though it’s time to talk about the photographic opportunities that present themselves during the reception, and how best to avail of them.
Part 3 – The Reception
We finished up yesterday at the point in the day where guests were being called to dinner and by then you’ll already have a nice set of images from the day. Feel free to put the camera away now if you wish – at least until the cake cutting or first dance – though there are still other photos to be had. From here on in the photographic opportunities begin to favour those with better cameras and faster lenses as light levels fall and it gets harder to get good shots, but there are still key moments that anyone can photograph.
Photograph the reception room
This is one that many people miss, and your ability to do it depends on a couple of things – firstly, is the reception room open to guests before the hotel call for dinner. Sometimes, as during the wedding I attended last Friday, it may lead to/from an outdoor patio if the weather is nice, for instance. Or it may happen that it’s closed off, or pretty obvious that it’s a no go area for guests. In that case, you can photograph the room as you enter (especially if you’re one of the first in) or even as you sit at your table.
The photo up top is one I took on Friday before we were called for dinner, when I also took the opportunity to photograph the cake up close – again, this will not always be possible ahead of the meal, but no one is likely to object to you taking a photo of the cake itself if you wish at a lull between courses. As long as you don’t eat it or knock it over!
I also like to get a photo of the table plan, both as a tight crop where all the names are visible, and as a wider shot showing it in its environment (which is often filled with guests during the drinks reception). These photos help, once again, to tell the story of the day, and are some of the less photographed things on the day.
Another tip is to photograph anything on the table when you sit down such as wedding favors or little messages from the bride and groom. In much the same way that the front cover of the mass booklet makes a great opening shot to a slideshow of photos from the day, a photo like that below makes a perfect closing shot (and it’s not a coincidence that the ribbon makes a heart-like shape!)
Don’t overdo the photography during dinner
If you’re at the wedding with another guest, they’ll probably be sick of your photography by now, but even if not, most people don’t like to be photographed while they are eating, so put the camera away during the courses. If you want to follow through on the idea of photographing the details and take pictures of your own starter, main course and dessert as they arrive, feel free, but don’t try to photograph your fellow guests (unawares or with them posing) while dinner is still being consumed. There are always plenty of lulls during dinner, especially between the main course and dessert as the top table prepare for the speeches, so that can be your window for some pictures of those at your table if you wish.
Depending on the lighting, and on the equipment you are using, it may be better to get creative with how you light your pictures. Flash may well be a necessity and if you are using a point-and-shoot the party or night time mode is worth checking out as it will maintain some light in the background, though be aware that what this type of mode does is slow down your shutter speed, so you’ll need to keep a steadier hand. Easier said than done after a few glasses of champagne and wine perhaps! If you have an SLR, do slow down that shutter speed yourself – 1/60s or 1/30s with some fill flash usually gives reasonable results. Better results are possible if you have a hot-shoe-mounted speedlight that you can point to a nearby corner.
Don’t expect too much from your photos of the speeches
Getting good photographs of the speeches is reliant on a number of things going right for you. Firstly, the position of your table relative to the top table is very important. And not something you can control. So you may find straight away that it’s a non-runner to get good photos of the speeches from your table. Yes, you could stand up and move closer, and this is probably acceptable for one or two quick photos, but don’t camp out in front of the top table for the duration of the speeches unless you’ve been asked specifically to photograph them by the bride and groom.
If you’re lucky enough to be at a table with good line-of-sight of the top table, you need to hope that the speakers will be facing you, or at least not have their back to you. Unlikely, but I have been at weddings with round top tables where at least one of the speakers has faced the bride and groom, putting his back to the rest of the room.
One thing you often can control, if there’s any possibility at all of getting photos from your table, is where at the table you sit. If you have the choice (and are in the room earlier than your fellow guests) pick a seat nearest the top table, which doesn’t require you to photograph through the heads of the other guests at your table, because it’ll end up being the back of their heads that you photograph.
If you’re any distance away at all, unless you have a speedlight with good range that you can bounce off the ceiling, you’re unlikely to be able to use flash effectively – a higher ISO and a steady hand is a better option.
If none of these options work out for you worry not – you can still capture something of the speeches by either taking a wide shot of the room during them, photographing the clinking of glasses near you during a toast, or if there is betting on the duration of the speeches, photograph the “betting slip” for your table. On Friday, without a pen we used an iPhone to note the times.
Think outside the box for the cake-cutting photo
I remember from my own wedding that the cake-cutting photo after dinner had a real feeling of a paparazzi shot to it with the constant pop of flashes, and was a fun shot to be in. A photo I like to try to get, both as a guest and as official photographer, is all the other guests photographing this moment, and so I usually move around behind the bride and groom (but to the side) to get a wide angle shot that will hopefully include a few flash bulbs going off. By all means do take a standard photo of the bride and groom too, but remember that chances are their official photographer took a fake one of these before dinner, and they’ll have had the advantage of making sure both the bride and groom were looking at their camera at the same time. You’re unlikely to be so lucky. You can boost your chances by waiting till most other guests have taken their photo to get yours, but the paparazzi shot is definitely a more fun shot. I wasn’t over fast enough to get one of these at last Friday’s wedding, but the shot below from a wedding a couple of years ago is another favourite.
Shoot the first dance with a specific shot in mind
There are a whole host of first dance shots you can get, but the key thing to getting any of them is knowing before the music starts what sort of photo you want – especially a photo of just the bride and groom. With the first dance you’ll have anything from two and a half minutes to five minutes to capture the event, but may have less than a minute (depending on how quickly the bridesmaids and groomsmen are called onto the dance floor) in which to get a photo of the bride and groom on their own. If you want a tighter shot, a longer lens, or your camera zoomed to the maximum optical zoom, will give you the best odds. Or you might repeat the paparazzi effect above and go for a wider shot from the opposite side of the dance floor to most guests.
Again, keep your expectations reasonable if you’re using a cheaper compact camera – at this point in the wedding the dancefloor is probably being lit by stage lights which not only add colour and areas of strong highlights and deep shadow, but also may be shining into your lens making any sort of automatic exposure difficult.
If you’re so inclined, or have been asked by the bride and groom, you can try some off camera lighting of the type that I’ve posted about on the blog before – take a look at some of the how-tos for these sorts of first dance shots by checking out the “wedding” category using the pulldown menu below. And as I managed to show on a couple of occasions in the past, that off-camera flash need not be your own.
Even on-camera flash, correctly controlled, can give nice results.
Once the first dance is over the photographic opportunities get more limited, with the obvious shots – those of various people dancing, with various levels of ability – not necessarily being the best shots. Someone’s “dad dancing” may be hilarious, but will they really appreciate it being immortalized in a slideshow of one guest’s memories of the day?
There are a few other shots you can get which avoid falling into this trap before the night is out – we’ll talk about those, as well as some tips on putting your shots together, in the fourth and final part of the series.
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