Best Wedding Photobook Tips & Advice

When people think of wedding photos, often they imagine staged photos. Perfect lighting and arrangement. Those kinds of photos are great. However if you’re a guest, that kind of shooting may not be an option for you. We suggest taking a more candid approach. Look for moments that are happening around the main event. The happy couple will thank you later.

If you’ve taken it upon yourself to be an unofficial photographer for the day, ask for a guest list. Use the guest list to make sure you capture photos of as many people on the list as you can. Obviously prioritise the couple’s friends and family, but you’ll be a hero if you also capture the other guests sharing the day.

Weddings are exciting, hectic days. You’ll want to do your best to capture that sense of energy. Look for movement, reactions and moments between people to get these kinds of shots. If your camera has the option, experiment with your shutter speed to get a blur of motion or a frozen moment.

When the energy has died down, there are plenty of chances to take a few shots of people in moment of quiet reflection. They might just be catching their breath between dances, finally taking off a tie, sipping the last of the champagne or just taking time to consider the day as a whole. These moments, if captured right, can really sum up the impact of the day.

While it’s obviously important to make sure people’s faces are shown throughout your shoot, there’s a lot to be said for photos of small details – a corsage, a table setting, hands held together. Smaller things that make the day unique. Details can tell much more about the day than you might first realise.

There are plenty of ways to arrange your wedding photos. Here are a few options and the pros and cons of each:

• Chronologically. This is by far the easiest way. Digital cameras and mobile phones will automatically order photos chronologically. That makes it simple to place your photos in the order the day happened. While this is easiest, it’s also probably the least exciting.
• By Person. Assuming you have multiple photos of each guest, you could arrange the photos by grouping photos of each person together and featuring them in a page or pages. This will throw out the order of photos, but seeing someone’s mood and reactions spanning across the whole day side-by-side can be rewarding to see!
• By Colour or Theme. The wedding might have a particular theme or colour scheme that lends itself to visual storytelling using colour. Use it to your advantage.

We recommend simple, pure white pages for most of your wedding photobook. This lets the photos shine. Some tastefully arranged, minimal text can also work, but use it sparingly. Give each photo some space to breathe and offer itself to the eye. Think of the book like a gallery. You don’t see works of art stacked on top of one another in a gallery. Each is allowed its own moment. Do the same with your photos.