Hawaii Wedding Photo and Video
Tips
& Tips for those
who cannot afford a Pro
A Special Moment is a full-service Wedding
Photography & Video Co., located in Honolulu, Hawaii, and
serving all the Hawaiian Islands. We offer photographic services-
35mm, medium format and digital. Our parent Co.- A Photo Video
and Web Co., is a full-service professional Video production
Co. specializing in Television production, convention services,
documentary production and promotional video services for businesses
& individuals. A Photo Video and Web Co. also offers Commercial
Photographic services- 35mm, medium format and digital.
TIPS FOR OPTIMUM WEDDING PHOTOS
& VIDEO
The purpose of this page is to instruct
you on how you can optimize your Wedding Photos and video, regardless
of who performs the work. We have been actively Photographing
and Videotaping weddings for well over 10 yrs., and you will
be very pleased with the results that we offer you. It is recommended
that you ask a friend, or family member, who previously enlisted
a non-professional to Photograph and/or videotape their Wedding,
before deciding to take a chance with your Wedding. If you are confident of your family
members or friends abilities, or if your budget just doesn't
allow for a pro to capture your Wedding day, then we offer you
our very best wishes, and recommend that you apply our tips. If you are hiring us, A Special Moment, to provide
these services, you will definately optimize your Wedding Photos
and video by applying these tips. Doing so will create a more
harmonious relationship between yourself and A Special Moment
Professionals. Planning
well in advance reduces stress, which in turn creates a happier
& more fullfilling experience.
Wedding Photo & Video Tips
These first tips are generally to help
you make the most of your Wedding Photos and Video, regardless
of who is actually Photographing and Videotaping your Wedding.
Further down this page,
I will get into more detailed technical info to assist your friends
or family if they will be shooting your Wedding.
Organization and Coordination
The planning stages are where you can
lay down a solid foundation for excellent Wedding Photos and
Video. Location is very important. Does your Ceremony site have
a nice area for formal shots, ie is the altar area inside the
Church pretty, and is the background dark or well lit? Is the
outside area nice, and is the lighting good? Are there strong
bright spots in the area that you want to shoot at the time of
day you will be shooting? Is the area in deep shade? What you
want ideally is light shade with a background that is hope- fully
not brighter than where the people are standing. Are there nice
flowering plants that will be in the shots? Red ginger is a very
beautiful and striking background. Many hotels have nice tall
red ginger for the purpose of providing you with a striking back
ground. The green and red goes very well with traditional black
and white. Do you have time to shoot at a special location? That
is highly recommended, so if possible, leave enough time in between
Ceremony and Reception for a nearby location with either seascapes
or a waterfall or gorgeous foliage and beautiful land scapes
and trees, etc. The effort is worth it. You might consider shooting
Pre-nuptial photos so you are not feeling rushed on your Wedding
day. Hopefully the weather and lighting is nice on the actual
day. That is an uncontrollable factor. If the weather is bad,
it is nice to have an optional location with a roof overhead.
Be aware of any restrictions on lighting and movement of Videographer/Photographer
if your Ceremony is at a Church. This is extremely important.
Also, if having your Reception at a Hotel or other formal facility,
you need to let your Emcee know that he or she needs to forwarn
your Videographer whenever he or she is going to launch into
the Program, or say anything that you want videotaped. Give your
Photographer and Videographer a copy of your program as far in
advance as possibe. Give them specific instructions in writing,
highlighted, on their copy of the program. Ask them if they have
questions, and if you make sudden changes, let them know as soon
as you can. You need to create a comfortable and pleasant relationship
with both, and you should choose them not only for their work,
but also for their "bedside manner", and ability to
communicate and articulate. Once you have chosen Videographer
and Photographer, it is advised to relax, and trust them. Definately
make your thoughts and ideas known, but don't wear them out either.
You need to maintain your own energy level. keep centered and
allow the magic to happen. Choosing
the right people to capture that magic is a crucial step. Be
sure everything feels right. You don't want to hire someone who's
personality might drive you nuts, even if their artistic talent
is great.
So you want Friends or family
to shoot your Wedding
Obviously, all the above mentioned applies,
irregardless of who shoots your Wedding. This segment is intended to help your friends get
better results. I don't find too many non-professionals that
are aware of these technical things.
Again, ask someone who you know that has had a non-professional
shoot their wedding before deciding to do this. Also, ask your
friends if you can look at some of their Video and/or Photo work.
Look for expressive and artistic qualities, as well as technical
quality.
Photographic advice
Again, the natural lighting inherent
at the locations of your choosing need to be considered. Don't
shoot against a background that is brighter than those being
photographed. Your friend should have skills using manually set
flash in different lighting conditions. Different situations
demand different flash intensity. Generally, with a background that is slightly darker
than area where subjects are, if the natural lighting is a little
too shadowy on peoples faces, you set camera exposure for background
lighting, and set flash manually so that it is 1/2 stop less
than ambient reading or equal. That acts to take the edge off
of shadows. Flash is only effected
by f-stop, not by shutter speed. You use the shutter speed to
control the background, or ambient exposure, flash is set according
to f-stop and distance from you to your subject. A reliable flash
meter is the only way to be absolutely sure about your flash
exposure if you are not a professional. Take light reading on foliage or grass in background,
not the brightest area, and not the darkest area. Don't take
a reading from the sky or ocean, bright or dark areas, or from
objects with unusually low or high reflectivity! If background is equal to subject light, you can
set flash at 1/2 stop under up to 1 stop hotter than your ambient
light. If background is brighter, ie sunset, or bright waterfall
in the back ground, it gets tricky, and this is really where
a pro earns his pay. If shooting sunset, wait until the sun just
goes behind the horizon, or is behind the clouds and near the
horizon. You can also have your subjects block the actual sun
with their bodies, and you catch the colorful sky. That reduces
the occurrence of flairing and ghosting. Set camera exposure
for 1/2 half f-stops less than the BACKGD. light, Selecting proper
MANUAL exposure is not easy unless you do this all the time.
Your camera meter is always going to over-read in these situations,
so you need to decrease exposure by 1.5 - 3 f-stops from your
reading taken to the side of the sun. You will need to shoot
with diferent ambient exposures to get it right. Hit your subjects
with equal to 1/2 stop hotter flash about equal to the f-stop
set on your camera. Too strong on the flash, and it doesn't look
good. Have your friend bracket the exposure, ie try several background
(ambient) exposure settings. They need a camera with a flash
sync of at least 1/250 sec. or better. Most modern 35mm cameras
can synchronize with the flash at 1/250 of a second. They need to set exposure of camera,
and flash output MANUALLY, or you will more than likely have
a disaster on your hands. They should bracket exposure and flash
so you can choose from the shots with the best exposure and expression.
Shoot a lot of pictures!! People blink
and you won't know, so get a lot of shots. You may get fatigued
working with a friend in this fashion, but it is essential to
shoot alot and bracket exposure and flash output. Considering
situations where you are not dealing with strong backlight, if
the natural light is really nice, and there are no strong shadows
on peoples faces, and the background is equal to or slightly
darker than ambient subject light, you can get wonderful shots
with no flash at all, but if in doubt, use flash. If your friend is not skilled at
setting everything manually, I personally would never trust them
to shoot my Wedding. You might see
if they wouldn't mind studying and practicing. See if they are
willing to practice shoot in varying situations, they can learn
a lot from viewing the prints, and if they take notes of exactly
what they did, that is all the better! Look carefully at their
compositional skills. Always be objective and honest with your
INITIAL REACTIONS. These guidelines for exposure and flash are
general, but if your friend follows them and practices ahead
of time, I think they will be very helpful to you.
Video advice
Video does not handle a radical difference
in lighting contrast, ie it does not like real hot and real dark
lighting in the same shot. Video
does well with nice, even lighting, and generally hates back
lighting, but there are exceptions
to this. When you have a good light source on subject, backlighting
can be gorgeous. The
key to good video is good lighting, and also good sound, or audio. If friend or family are to videotape your Wedding,
if everything is outdoors, you won't need any lights. You will
need to determine what the ambient light is like at the time
of day the Wedding is occuring, and position everyone for the
best possible natural lighting, ie light hitting couples faces,
not coming from behind them. It is very hard to control everything
because people change position constantly. What you can do is
take a look at the overallflow of the event, and decide how to
place everyone from the overall situation, and also based on
your priorities. One
often has to make decisions and compromises. It is imperitive
to place the couple in the sunlight if shooting towards a bright
background, or the background will be totally white and washed
out with absolutely no pleasing details at all.
A hedge or other background element is better . If the lighting
on couple is the same brightness as the background, the background
will look fine, not washed out. Most couples do not want to be
in the direct sun, so look
for that background that is hopefully not too bright, and not
too dark. This means you may not be
able to shoot towards that beautiful ocean background. There
is nothing you can do if the Couple is in the shade. Dark backgrounds produce noisy
video. If shooting with DV digital
formats, busy foliage
bkgds. with side lighting can create annoying flicker with DV
formats (mini-DV, etc) They have a hard time with fine detail
that is lit unevenly. This is due to
the high compression of the format, and low quality signal from
consumer cameras. There
is good and bad digital. The DV format
can look awesome with backgrounds and subjects with not too much
fine detail or severe lighting. Watch out for foliage that is
getting hit by the sun. Grass can also be very flickery with
DV. These are the inherent limitations of DV. Other than that,
the colors are very
nice, picture is sharp if properly lit, and in many situations,
DV renders a spectacular picture. We use it, but with a professional
grade camera. We use several other
formats as well. When shooting video, your friend or family should be adjusting exposure
manually only (iris control). If not, camera will expose for
the brightest part of the picture, and the subject is most likely
darker, so the couple will be dark & under exposed. On manual iris, one can open up a little further
to more properly expose the couple or subject. To record good quality sound (audio), you need
a wireless lavalier mic that is placed on the groom. If you don't
employ a wireless mic, your audio of the couple will be almost
inaudible. Make sure your friend has
a wireless mic. If he doesn't, you can buy one for $300. or so.
I recommend UHF with selectable frequencies. Nowadays, we encounter
interference all the time, even with UHF, and need to switch
to the best frequency. This is precisely why hiring a pro is really a bargain. A pro has made
a huge investment in equipment, and he knows how to use it. If
your budget just won't allow for hiring a pro, you should try
to apply these tips.
Indoor Wedding Video Tips
You need lights, period. If your friend has none, go to home depot or similar
place, and pick up two 500
watt halogen work lights with stands for approx. $45 or so. It is advised that your friend have an
assistant to move the lights during program, especially when
out of town guests stand at their table to be recognized. During
the recieving line, I always move a light to the recieving area
to videotape, and then move it back to the position where it
is lighting the podium/head table. Different arraingements obviously
require placing lights in a diferent fashion. Take your wireless mic, and put it on the podium,
taping the actual tiny mic to the podium mic,or just below on
the top ledge of the podium.People tend to man-handle the podium
mic during the program, so I like to tape it to the upper ledge,
as close as possible to persons speaking. The
sound quality is better when closer to speakers mouth (on the
podium mic) but the quality is definately good from podium ledge.
If there is no podium, and people are using a wire- less hand
held mic, and they are moving all over the place there is nothing
you can do except place the mic close to loudspeaker, or record
sound from a camera-mounted shotgun mic. (yuck!!) Sometimes,
that is all one has. This
is why pre-planning and good communications are essential. Pre-planning also helps by placing the Videographer
in an advantageous position to begin with, ie, making an intelligent floor plan, with
the videographer's needs in mind. Remember,
its your video!! Ideally, the videographer
should be about 20-30 ft away from front.
Farther away makes for shakier shooting, inherentsimply by being
farther away, and shooting more zoomed in. Too close, and your
wedding becomes a "Hollywood spectacle", and capturing
entire area may be impossible for lens being used. Light falls off with distance very
rapidly, so the lights should be about 20-30 ft. away at the
furthest. Again, these are rough guidelines,
and you will have challenges
in every situation, guaranteed!! Test
the lighting with camera, and if possible, connect camera to
a video monitor. If the lights are too far away, the picture
will be extremely under-lit, and you may even need to turn on
the camera's "gain" to get a decent picture, which
can add a lot of noise to the picture, especially with consumer
and prosumer cameras. Pro cameras can gain up a little with very
little noise added to the picture.
