Smashing the Glass | Jewish Wedding Blog
Inspired Jewish Weddings
I am thrilled to welcome Chris Giles Photography to our Smashing Suppliers, Smashing The Glass’s handpicked selection of the best brands and services the wedding industry has to offer.
Smashing The Glass hand selects and verifies each Smashing Supplier, and can personally vouch for the fact that every one of them has the ability to turn your wedding day into something truly special.
You can find Chris Giles Photography in the Photography category of Smashing Suppliers.
Today’s post is written by the super talented contemporary wedding photographer, Emmie Scott. Emmie lets us in on 5 tips from the top on what to look out for when choosing your wedding photographer.
It is not uncommon at a wedding to have a guest walk up to me and ask me “can you Photoshop my wedding images? My photographer got drunk at my wedding and all my pictures are blurry”. Or something to that affect.
As a wedding photographer who takes their profession very seriously, there is nothing more frustrating and upsetting.
There is a lot of advice out there for engaged couples on how to choose a wedding photographer but I feel that much of it is misguided.
Don’t take the following advice for granted. Your photographs will continue to live on once the memories have long since faded. All the guests have left, the marque has been brought down, the food has been eaten, paper details have been thrown in the bin: your photography will last and continue to bring you joy forever more.
I am going to let you in on not only how to choose your wedding photographer but how to choose the right one for you and what to expect so that you can avoid any rogue traders.
Meanwhile here are more tasty treats to send you off into the weekend. Have a wonderful couple of days and see you back here on Monday!
♥ A beautiful traditionally wedding in Israel for an ‘encore bride and groom’
♥ A romantic garden party style wedding
♥ Win a copy of the High Street Bride’s Guide, the hottest new book for brides-to-be!
♥ Chà© Dyer of Indieberries has just launched her awesome new bespoke wedding guestbook business. These beauties are to-die-for!
♥ I’m going crazy for Vivienne Westwood’s new eyewear collection.
♥ 33 brilliant graphs that illustrate painfully true facts about everyday life.
♥ A genius advertising concept
♥ How to be an artist in business
♥ Niki and Will’s super-fun and frolicsome Jewish wedding
♥ It’s my 1st wedding anniversary and to celebrate I am giving away a NARS goody bag worth £110 !
♥ Win with Samantha Birch and her awesome ideas on how to tie the knot in style without blowing your budget
[Homepage WFTW Image: Cheryl Joy Miner for Shay and Karine’s wedding on the Wedding Chicks ]
OTHER POSTS YOU MIGHT LIKE
Michelle & Richard | Jewish/Celtic Winter Wedding at Babington House, Somerset
Sarah & Ben | Tea Party Jewish Wedding at London Zoo
Starr & Jacques | ‘Palace of Versailles’ themed Jewish Wedding, Palm Beach, Florida
Crystall & Ryan | Jewish/Greek Wedding at Brooklyn Botanical Garden, New York, USA
Keep in touch! Check out Smashing The Glass on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Your wedding album will most likely become your most treasured souvenir from the most spectacular day of your life. With that in mind I asked one of the UK’s finest wedding photographers, David Pullum, to write a guest post on getting the most out of your wedding photography. Over to you, David!…
The best way to get great wedding photos couldn’t be more straightforward – just relax and enjoy your day! There really is very little else that I ask for from my Bride and Grooms – its that simple. Of course the lead up to a wedding, and the planning of it all, can be stressful, but the day itself is a time to try to forget all those stresses and strains and just enjoy the excitement of two families coming together as one.
As a wedding photographer it’s really important that my clients like me. That sounds strange, I know, but I’m spending upwards of 8 hours in their company so it’s vitally important that they are fans of, not only my work and photographic style, but of me too!
Personally I choose to use very little direction when I’m shooting a wedding. I’m happy to observe and listen and I don’t want to dictate and be the centre of attention. There are times however when I have to take the lead as family formals and couple shots are really important at any wedding, and this is when I have to take control, organise the shots and tell my couple how and where to stand.
Family formals are one of the most important sets of images that I take during the day so it’s vital for me to liaise with the couple before their wedding to formulate a definitive list.
The formals are a record of who was there on the day, and the most important members of the family and close friends, I will never limit those and I have been known to take upwards of 50 formal shots at a wedding. If I limit them to say five, that for me is just a barrier I am placing in front of the client which says “don’t book me”!
If I do have a long list it’s really important that I have as much co-operation as possible from Best Men, Ushers and members of the families. All of the aforementioned will have the same list as me and as I start to photograph, those assigned to helping me are always three groups ahead of me, getting people ready and in position. I do this at every wedding and I struggle to remember a wedding where it’s taken me longer than 40 minutes to complete all of the family requests.
I normally allocate at least 30 minutes for couple shots – I’d love more but the reality is that at a lot of weddings I will be lucky to get even 30 minutes, so I work with whatever I am given. The shortest time I was given was 38 seconds, the longest 1.5 hours, so Ive learnt to get what I need within the timeframe I am given.
As soon as I got engaged back in September 2012, one of the first things I wanted to research (well, apart from my dress!) was my wedding photographer. I knew I wanted a documentary / reportage style and had I known about Mark Seymour he would have most certainly been a top pick! I love his portfolio and, having recently chatted away with him, adore his lovely, easy manner. It was like chatting to an old friend, and this kind of rapport is so important when it comes to choosing who is going to snap your big day.
His style is classically elegant, combining reportage with a hint of traditional , and his unobtrusive ethos would be the perfect accompaniment to a really smashing wedding. I just know he’d capture it in the way it truly deserves to be shown.
It’ll come as no surprise to you that his work has already been showcased on the pages of Smashing The Glass – I love featuring his images on my blog and it’s always an absolute pleasure to get a submission from him.
I must mention Mark’s accolades too. Not only has he been named ‘UK Wedding Photographer of the Year’ three times, he has also recently been made an Ambassador of Nikon UK. And if that wasn’t enough he is the first recipient of an associateship from the Master Photographer Association (akin to two Michelin stars in the restaurant world) for his wedding reportage and documentary images.
