GUIDE TO GET THE BEST OF WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEOGRAPHY

Since its quite often that we hear from our couples that is very difficult for them to choose right photographer and videographer for their wedding we decided to make ultimate guide in 5 blog posts on how to choose right and make the best match to your needs. These blog posts are not meant to be anything of our self-promotions but more they are help that we can offer to anyone in pursuit of wedding photographer and/or wedding videographer after years of experience in the field, no matter geographical position in the world!

Everything you need to know about the wonderful world of Wedding Photography (and what you want to know but don’t dare ask!)

Why wedding photography is important?

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon, and your little girl is dancing in the living room in her prettiest princess dress.

“Mummy I want to be a princess just like you!” she sings.

“I’m not in my best princess dress right now like you my love, but come here and I’ll show you”.

You take out your wedding album and your daughter jumps on the sofa beside you snuggled close.

As you turn the pages, she gasps and giggles and points at the pictures. “Look! You’re such a beautiful princess mummy!”

Each photo brings a smile to your face, and flashbacks of how nervous you were as you got ready for the ceremony, your dad trying his best not to cry while you walking down the aisle, photos of family smiling through tears of happiness, and that first dance, everyone cheering as your song played. “You are the most beautiful princess in the world my girl, and one day you’ll be just like me”.

Your wedding album is not only to remember your wedding day, but also to share memories of friends, family members, and the joy of your day with future generations as a visual storyteller. A good photographer will show you moments that you missed during your special day as you were so busy having the time of your life. A great photographer will capture feelings and emotions on all those photos too. Once the last bite is taken from the buffet, the last song is played by the DJ, and you head to bed after the best day of your life, all that is left of your wedding are your photos and your memories.

Who is wedding photographer?

In the world of photography, wedding photography is often looked down upon. In my humble opinion, wedding photography is the hardest form of photography. A wedding photographer needs to be fashion photographer, studio photographer, macro photographer, war photographer, architectural photographer… all in one. Plus, there is a huge time pressure. We have a one-time chance to nail the moment. No second chances.

A top skilled wedding photographer should master not only natural light photography, which provides light and airy-romantic photos, but he needs to be a master of additional studio lighting set ups too if he wants to capture blue sky and turquoise oceans that will draw gasps of awe from anyone who will look at his photos for generations to come.

He needs to know his gear. Which lens is the best for which situation, how to use objects in his surrounding, which angle will be the best, ambient light, flash light, candle light, portraiture, reportage, creativity, macro photography to capture the rings and jewelry, family pictures, and so on… and all of this, all at once as the day progresses! No pressure :)!

Wedding photographer on your wedding day

Let’s take a peek of one moment of a usual wedding day from behind the lens of this wedding photographer:

I see chairs, tables, centerpieces. Above, on the ceiling, an ornament in the shape of a wreath in the center of it a chandelier. A wooden walkway that stretches towards turquoise water. Waves crashing in the background, a gazebo cloth flapping on the breeze, people murmuring. Then, all of a sudden, everything stops. The bride exhales and steps onto the walkway. It has started. Capture her face. Perfection of that specific moment. Emotions. She tries not to cry. Light has changed. Cloud covered the sun. Change camera settings. She is walking. Capture that graciousness. He is waiting. Capture anticipation on his face between the bride and her dad shoulders. Use different lens. RUN! SLIDE! Sand is all over your pants. Capture her face behind groom back as she realizes that she’s almost there. Dad’s arm is shaking. Aunt is crying. Adjust your camera settings. White dress is swaying down the aisle. Cloud is passing. Different lighting. Adjust camera. Find the best position to see all of them. They touch hands. The ceremony is about to start…

And while my brain is running so fast you may even see a little steam escaping from my ears, my veins are full of adrenaline and I’m LOVING every second of it, because I know you’re going to love these photos.

Good thing about choosing local Punta Cana photographer

Punta Cana is literally paradise on Earth :). Turquoise waters, blue sky, palm trees swinging on a wind… The best thing is that it’s like this all year round. Who wouldn’t like to get married in a Tropical paradise. Any of Punta Cana beaches will give photographer limitless opportunities to capture amazing shoots of a couple. Because of that uniqueness, Dominican Republic has around 10 000 weddings in only one year, most of them in Punta Cana. Imagine experience that we wedding photographers that are working here can get in time. Most of us local photographers did hundreds of weddings, some even well over thousand, giving us a unique opportunity to discover the best photo spots in each resort, at every beach and location in the country… and it’s a golden opportunity to get amazingly verse in art of photography.

Choosing the right photography style for your wedding

(and why you might want to use a combination!)

Choosing the right style of wedding photography can get a little confusing! Looking at the portfolios of providers will give you lots of inspiration, but how do you describe how you would like your wedding to be immortalized as you look through your wedding album years from now? This is where the style of photography comes into play, and having a little know how will help your photographer in delivering the photos of your dreams! All of the photographers use a combination of two or more of the below mentioned styles, but it is very, very, VERY important to choose photographer with the style that resonate with you the most. Here are couple of most recognizable styles in contemporary wedding photography:

Traditional Photography

You have no doubt seen this as you’ve flicked through your grandparents wedding albums! It catches the key moments throughout the day, and are often posed or staged to make sure everyone is captured in their best light. The photographer will give a lot of direction to make sure the picture is as perfect as can be! Of course, it’s important to get these group photos which are traditional for wedding photography. It is a beautiful keepsake and a reminder of the people who were there and the special day itself. However, we also want to capture other moments which we simply can’t in a staged photograph.

Photojournalistic Style

“The father of the bride face crinkles as he is overwhelmed with the emotion of his daughter in her wedding dress, as the light of the sun catches a tear on the brides face as she delicately lifts her hand to wipe it, careful not to smudge her makeup. As they turn to walk the aisle together, a soft breeze blows through her wedding dress, the delicate crystals of the gown sparkling. The groom takes a deep breath before he turns to face his bride, and his face lights up with her beauty, the guests all facing her with joy.”

This small description of the first moments of a wedding has so many beautiful photo opportunities. As it happens, your photographer will be clicking away to document all of it. This style involves a lot of quick thinking, quick movement, creativity, and skill. Knowledge of equipment is vital as the day is documented, as photographers switch settings, lenses and lighting (either natural or artificial) to capture each magical moment. Photographers go with the flow with this style, no posing at all, and it creates a real and natural visual storyboard of the day. The results evoke a lot of emotions as you relive the whole event.

Editorial Style

A combination of traditional photography, fine art, and a little bit of magical storytelling gives us an editorial style. As the name suggests, this style is adapted from the fashion magazines we all recognize, and has the same polish.

Dramatic textures are added to the image using items from the wedding, such as decorations. The location also plays a big part as it compliments and contrasts with details of the couple. Although the photographer will direct the couple a lot, the end result has to look completely natural, and absolutely perfect, wedding magazines worthy.

Fine Art Style

During a shoot of potentially thousands of images in one wedding, it can be difficult to avoid many images becoming too similar. This is where the fine art style comes into play. It creates images that are personal only to the couple, and that cannot be recreated. There’s an artistic perspective added and different angles are used, which creates masterpieces from your special day. Fine art photography goes beyond displaying the subject. It expresses the emotion and feeling behind it all.

Among the photographic community, wedding photography finds its voice difficult to be heard. Which is why wedding photographers are pushing boundaries, to demonstrate how versatile and incredible wedding photography can be!

While we’re here, let’s talk about a couple of other points you may wish to consider:

Color grading

Filters can also be used post production to give a ‘vintage’ feel to photographs. Depending on the location of the wedding it can be appropriate to use color distortion filters to turn images into works of art. Remember that your location is one of the centerpieces of your day, so be sure to follow the recommendation of your photographer, as sometimes the location itself needs no filter.

Light

Light is one of the most important tools a photographer uses, it is very popular to use only natural lighting. This gives amazing results, and it is a very distinct style of its own.

However, that doesn’t mean that studio lighting doesn’t have an important role to play. To really make blue skies blue, and catch all of the colors and sparkles of the wedding, studio lighting creates contrast which is not possible using natural light alone.

Colors

One of the things you’ll be considering while planning your wedding is your color scheme. Preferred style of many photographers is to shoot weddings light and ‘airy’ with pastel shades and delicate contrasts.

However, for those who want something a little more adventurous, we have news! Up and coming for 2020 weddings are COLORS, and lots of them! The bolder the better! A lot of neo mint (not quite pink, not quite purple). Yellow, rich hue with earthy undertones and faded denim, a blue that’s equally fresh and serene.

So, experiment and explore! Your photographer will love creating gorgeous photos with crisp contrasts and daring colors!

https://www.brides.com/2020-wedding-trend-predictions-4799681

Perfect photographer

Now imagine a photographer who has technical know-how, talent and skills to approach all genres of photography and give you powerful imagery which is not influenced by current fashion in wedding photography and therefore stand its value forever. Add a lot of passion into that mix – and there you have perfect photographer :).

How Much?! “You’re Only Taking Photos”! Why Wedding Photography is Worth Every Cent!

One of the most difficult parts of our job, and I believe for all ‘creative’ work, is the discussion with our clients over price. Many times we are asked outright, why is it so expensive? It’s not difficult to take photos, I can do it on my smartphone! Well in theory, you could take photos from your phone, but even with all the filters you won’t achieve that professional look you’re aiming for. So why is wedding photography so expensive? Why Wedding Photography is Worth Every Cent?

Of course the standard and absolutely justified response from wedding photographers usually details the following:

• The cost of top quality equipment (REALLY, HIDEOUSLY expensive)
• Time and money spent learning the craft and keeping up to date with the latest trends (THOUSANDS of hours and expensive courses)
• Time spent editing (our job doesn’t finish when we pack up and leave your venue. In fact, it’s just a beginning of many weeks, even months, sitting in front of the computer, editing)
• Finally, when all is said and done and the income is spread over the year, depending on the number of weddings we are selected for, the actual take home income, (after those dreaded taxes) is a lot less than you think. Our price is not clear profit. Far from it.

These are all of course completely true, but let’s take a look from another perspective.

What you get for your money?

When you were selecting your engagement and wedding rings, you went to a jeweler and were overwhelmed with all of the gorgeous sparkling diamonds. You probably set a budget, bearing in mind that you will wear these rings every single day for the rest of your life, you saved so that you would be able to buy something amazing! You find the perfect ones; they look gorgeous when you try them on! You buy them without second thought, knowing that you’ll be proud to wear them forever.

Investment

Your wedding photos, like your rings, will last forever, in the generations to follow. They will bring to life the stories you tell to your children and grandchildren of your wedding, family and friends. They will bring you joy for many years to come. Your wedding photos are as important as your wedding rings.

As with everything in life, you get what you pay for. There will be a difference in dedication, skill and talent between photographers that you consider to hire. Most of us are not in it just for the money. We are photographers because of the passion and love for it, but we also have our families to feed, pay our bills and enjoy life.

Choosing a Wedding Photographer Made Easy!

Your wedding day is fast approaching and now it’s time to select which wedding photographer you will trust with your most precious record of the day! There are so many out there, each promising that your photos will be the ones you’ve dreamed of, each one with similar awesome reviews, so choosing can become very difficult. If you’ve been following us you’ve seen how each photographer is different. So how DO you finally decide which one to use?

Consider Style

First of all, give some thought to the style of photography you’d like for your images. To help you, we’ve discussed this in detail in our previous article which can be found here. Take inspiration from portfolios to decide which suits you best, do you want a glossy editorial style or perhaps something more laid back and natural? Hands down best choice will be a photographer who can combine various styles depending of your wishes, available light and situation.

Consider Location

Don’t forget to give some thought to your location also, as it will play a major role in your wedding and you’ll want to show it off in all its glory!

Sweeping natural landscapes can create gorgeous and dramatic shots when handled by an expert, intimate and cozy venues may need to present a completely different vibe. Lots of decoration details are a must in any case. Capturing each of these to produce incredible results requires different skill sets from your photographer. Therefore, you need to make sure that you pick someone who has the knowledge and expertise to cover all aspects of your wedding.

Consider Personality

You’ll have a lot of fun consulting recommendations and reviews to hear the opinion of other couples! Making a decision may seem difficult among a sea of five star reviews, but take time to read each one! By spotting key words and phrasing you’ll start to build a profile of the photographer to get an idea of not only how they work, but also their personality and if it suits you. Once you’ve found someone who sounds like a perfect fit, move on the next stage!

Get to know person behind the lens

Get in touch! Send an email, a message on social media, or simply call! Once you’ve narrowed down your search, start talking! Ask all the questions you have and photographers will be happy to help. Also, you may find that the photographer’s availability will play a key role so make sure in your first contact you provide your chosen date, you wouldn’t want to be decided only to find out that your perfect photographer is not available!

A perfect “match”

Finally, select a photographer that puts you at ease, someone you ‘click’ with – no pun intended :)! As with any service work, sometimes you find someone who simply blows you away with who they are, how they work, how they deal with you! There are some incredible photographers who are able to connect with couples leaving lasting memories of not just the wedding, but also with the whole experience of being photographed. If you find the right photographer, even the shiest of brides and grooms can become confident in front of the lens!

A great photographer’s personality has the power to make you shine, completely relaxed and focused on your day, and a great photographer will also become invisible when needed, creating an environment that will produce gorgeous natural looking shots, from places you never thought were even possible. The end result will be the wedding album you’ve always dreamed of, and a whole lot of fun making it!

Wedding videography, all you need to know

”Wedding photography and wedding videography belong together. They’re like two peas in a pod, two people doing the tango and two soulmates getting married. A photograph of both of you exchanging your vows is beautiful, but in years to come, will you remember the beautiful words you said to each other? The tone of your voices? The gentle break of a sentence when emotion overcame you? Wedding videos trigger your five senses, memories and emotions like no other medium can; coupled with wedding photography, they provide complete memories of your wedding day.” – as ‘marrymemovies’ said very accurately.

Often seen as not obligatory, wedding video frequently doesn’t survive budget cuts. But as much often that exactly is one of the biggest regrets we often hear from brides – that they didn’t hire a wedding videographer https://www.brides.com/story/brides-share-wedding-regrets.

The idea to have a video from your wedding day is that when you re-watch it every anniversary, to feel transported to that wonderful day when it all begin. But, if you have an idea of a wedding video as a guy with huge shoulder-camera standing still in the corner for a couple of hours from which you’ll receive looooong video saga that you’ll watch only once in lifetime, we have news flash for you – that time is long gone!

A beautiful and professional video can do wonders, it will let you listen to your own voice reciting your vows, it will bring back, quite literally, the in-between moments, the sounds of Caribbean breeze and ocean, all the action on one of most important day in your life.

Why you should have a video from your wedding?

Here are some of the points:

• Wedding videos are easily sharable. Sometimes it’s just too hard to get everyone you love to come to your wedding, especially if its destination wedding. If you have one of the family members that couldn’t attend, it would be really special to send them your wedding film so they could enjoy in your day too.

• The quality of wedding filmmakers in Punta Cana is on high industry standards. The films we are producing are cinematic, compelling, made with latest equipment. You’ll be receiving creative product up to latest, modern standards in world wedding cinematography.

• Absolute truth is that a wedding day is over in a flash. Very common comment of many brides is that “wedding day was a blur” and it will become hazier as the time pass. A film can help you remember all the little details, preserve the big moments and experience some of the things you didn’t see the first time.

There is a reason the film industry is worth billions of dollars. It’s because films move people. They can inspire you, provoke you or move you to tears. Why not capture your wedding this way? Imagine that someone makes a movie about moments that you lived, intense experiences that you went through and feelings you had on your wedding day so you can relive them whenever you wish.

How to choose your wedding videographer

Like wedding photography, wedding videography also has different styles.

Did you know that there are virtually endless ways of making a fantastic wedding video? However, since we are human beings, we love to categorize things into genres or styles. Every videographer has his own signature style (light and airy, dark and moody, romantic, fast, slow…) but at the same time we all follow some general rules. There are many, many styles in wedding videography, specially regarding editing style of the final video product and it would be impossible to present all of them so, here are couple of popular styles you might like to choose from:

Cinematic

A cinematic wedding video is filmed and edited to have that cinema movie feeling, with a goal of emphasizing the emotion and feeling of the day. It may rely more on the style of editing and music to present the wedding with all video tricks and transitions, but also the personality of the couple in an interesting and compelling way. The video might not be in chronological order, skipping from the vows, to getting ready, to your walk down the aisle, to toasts, to dancing. They can be fast and funny or slow and romantic, or all the combination in-between, depending on the ‘feel’ of the wedding and the couple. The “cinematic” style has definitively become the new norm in wedding videography.

Journalistic

This is the option that is closer to more traditional wedding video. Sometimes referred as ”documentary” or ”reportage” it is basically a chronological video of the wedding, the way it happened, in its most extended form. This style is one that is more straightforward, capturing every aspect of your big day, from your preparation to your march out. Wedding videos that follow the journalistic style are essentially the summary of the day, without as many effects or transitions seen in the cinematic style.

Let’s talk prices

First, one part of the price depends on the final video product/s that you’ll receive. It can slightly differ from company to company but mainly you have two final video products: short – Teaser, Highlight or Feature Film, and long final video product – Documentary Film. To keep it simple, short video product is modern, sweet, highly edited product suitable for social media sharing and long video is more traditional, slower form, with complete ceremony, vows and speeches included.

Second part of the price would be with how many videographers the day was covered and for how long,  whether you would like aerial footage taken etc.

To recap, the number of hours filming, how many videographers will be working and which video products are included in package will all influence the pricing.

Last, but actually the most important, take in consideration the quality of work.