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Having Kids at your wedding? Things to think about

Kids running around

Having kids at your wedding

Being a newly minted Dad, and a qualified primary school teacher, I know how it is having young children about, and when thinking about your own wedding day, chances are many of your guests will want to know if they can bring their kids, or if they are close enough to be a part of the bridal party. In my opionion, as a wedding photographer, kids can make for some of the most memoriable moments of your day, however as a Dad I know they can also be a huge pain in the bottocks! Having Kids at your wedding can both be super sute and awesome, while also being super tiring and annoying, really depends on the personalities of all involved when considering if you’d like to have kids at your wedding! I’ve put together a few pros and cons regarding having kids at your wedding!

Page boy
Kids dancing
Page boy

Pros

Awesome Photos!

Kids can be super cute and having them at a wedding can make everyone there just beam with smiles due to how cute they can be! Little suits on boys, flower girl dresses on little girls, they make for great moments in time and therefore amazing photos to treasure forever more. It can also make any otherwise (too) playful kids to feel important and have a job as part of the wedding.

Gets people on the dance floor

If you have the type of family who may not be super keen on the whole dance floor idea, just have a couple of kids at the reception and you’ll be sure to have it utlised! Kid’s confidence in dancing have not yet been smirched by years of embarresment yet, so they’ll be sure to jump up and dance their little hearts out and hopefully pull others up too!

Child like awe

Theres nothing like seeing a child all dressed up and excited to be a part of something as special as a wedding. Having kids at your wedding brings a sense of awe and childlike wonder to your day, Children have a way of making everything more fun, as this day will be a special one for them too! They have probably told their whole school and counted down the days; you can’t help but smile with them as you share their excitement.

Kids
Running kids
Kids playing in veil

Cons

Kids can be noisy

Unfortunately kids dont always know when to keep their mouths shut, or when to stand still and not bang those toys against the pews. There will be occasions where a baby will be crying, or otherwaise being distracting. Hopefully its not as you exchange your vows!

Higher costs

Accomodating for kids on a day that’s already quite expensive can make the day that much more expensive. You may need to shell out for entertainment, perhaps a nanny, or games to keep them busy, and you will also need to feed them which adds to the guest list. This is probably the biggest reason why some people disallow kids at their wedding!

Need to keep things PG

There wont be any dirty dancing, loud music or drinking as it’d be a bad influence and traumitising to fragile little minds. So if you’re planning that type of wedding, you may wish to reconsider having kids at your wedding.

Groom and baby
Baby

Some things to think about

I was kindly sent this funky infographic detailing some things to think about when considering having kids at your wedding from people at the Wedding Band Shop. Have a bit of a read and hopefulyl it’ll help you make a decision!

Kids at weddings

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How to keep your wedding photography safe

  • How to keep your wedding photography safe 1

How to keep your wedding photography safe

As a wedding photographer, I’m acutely aware that the wedding photographs I take and provide to you on your final USB may well be the only way you can reminisce about your wedding day, a year, decade or 50 years down the line. As such I’m keep to present this short guide on how to keep your wedding images safe from your special day for years to come. Losing or otherwise damaging your wedding photos is often a huge concern of wedded couples and can cause much grief if they truly are lost, but with some easy steps you’ll be able to avoid this heartbreak.

USB ribbon

Keeping data safe starts with your photographer

Before you consider booking in your wedding photographer or videographer, make sure they have a clear process for backing up and keeping their data safe. Any wedding photographers worth their salt will have their digital photos backed up and secured in multiple ways as they know that their livelihood and business depends on it. It should be the worst thing in the world for a wedding photographer to lose a wedding!

They should use multiple cameras on the day with possibly a third redundancy – preferably with dual memory card slots so they are backing up on the fly, they should also be able to describe exactly what they do with your data after your wedding to keep it safe.

What should you do once you receive your photos?

Copy everything on the USB you receive to your computer immediately. That way you’ll have a duplicate copy of all your memories straight off the bat. However, the expected life for an average computer’s hard drive is only 3-5 years, while a USB flash drive is expected to be anywhere between 5-10 years, which means that that USB drive is more likely to outlast you computer’s hard drive – which is one reason why it’s the current method of choice for photographers to provide your files.

Personally as a professional wedding photographer I keep an archival backup of all my work on two different physical hard drives both on site and offsite (in case of local disaster) Which means I have over 200 weddings backed up in duplicate at all times, While my most recent year’s work is further backed up on 3 further separate hard drives connected to my computer for editing.

But that’s just me, you only need to worry about your own wedding photos, so you can also keep multiple backups of your digital files like I do. But you can also take advantage of cloud based services such as Google drive, which is free to a point – you just need to take the time to upload the (rather substantial) size of your wedding USB. This is probably the most robust way to secure your digital files, but still isnt 100% perfect.

Framed Print

Print your photos

The absolute best way to keep your memories and wedding photography safe is simply to print your photos and display then on the wall, or in a wedding album. Just imagine 20-30 years in the future and you’re showing your children or grandkids your photos from your wedding and you whip out the USB drive you were given. They’re likely to laugh at the antiquated technology you have in your hand, and computer may not even have a USB drive that suits anymore. This would be like putting out a roll of film, or slides and firing up the slide projector.

It’s already happening with the recent shift to USB-C based technology rather than the more traditional rectangular USB2 or 3.  But with a wedding album, you will not have that issue with your precious memories. Books haven’t changed in hundreds of years and will last the test of time. Your grandkids will be flicking through the pages and laughing at your outdated haircuts and zany clothes choices – or your otherwiuse most precious moments in no time!

Premium Album

What can you do if you have lost your digital files?

Hopefully this never happens to you, but it’s just the unfortunate fact that technology does fail, and it’s no secret that hard drives in computers are often the most common thing to fail. So what can you do to keep your images safe?

First, contact your wedding photographer – if they are anything like me they’d have every photo they’ve ever taken backed up to wazoo like I do on multiple external hard drives in a fireproof safe and be able to send out a replacement copy ASAP. That said however many photographers only back up to a certain point – be it 1 to 5 years – so that may not be possible.

Damaged or lost files on a hard drive or SD cards can be recovered using certain backup softwares, or if that doesn’t work you can send the hard drive to professional data recovery centers that may cost quite a bit. Just make sure that once you have discovered that your photos have been lost you immediately remove the hard drive from your computer to prevent any data still on the drive being overwritten accidentally.

If your device has had water damage, immediately unplug the device and let it dry completely and you may be lucky with it coming back to life, otherwise a professional data recovery service may be your only option.

 

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One of my favourite shots to get during wedding preparation

Over the years of covering weddings as a wedding photographer, I’ve discovered a certain number of photo compositions I tend to take at pretty much every wedding I cover. one of my favourite shots to get during preparation is a top-down perspective of the bride’s engagement ring floating amongst the flowers of her bouquet. I’ve put together a collection of quite a few such photos in this post just for the fun of seeing the style and colours of each bride’s ring and flower arrangement to hopefully provide a bit of inspiration for your own ring (if you have a choice :P) and flower arrangement.

One of my favourite shots to get during wedding preparation

Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring – One of my favourite shots to get during wedding preparation
Engagement Ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring in flowers
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring in flowers
Engagement ring
Engagement ring – One of my favourite shots to get during wedding preparation
Engagement ring
Engagement ring in flowers
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement Ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
Engagement ring
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Preparation Wedding Photography

Bride leaning on door

Preparation wedding Photography

One of my favourite times of day on a wedding day is the preparation time, the time of day when the bride and groom are getting ready for their big moment in front of family and friends, which allows for some incredible moments of emotion and nerves to show through, painting a story of the personalities of the couple through Preparation Wedding Photography. Capturing the individual moments of personality of the bride and groom before they become an ‘item’ so to speak is a primary goal of taking photos during this time of day. This is the last moments of their lives where they aren’t sharing a family with a significant other. I feel it’s important to make use of this time to paint a portrait with my photography of the lives and personality traits the bride and groom exhibit as an individual. The lovey dovey moments when they are together come later.

If you consider a wedding album as a photographic story, then the preparation photos are the beginning of the story, the coming together of these two individuals would be the ceremony, and the happily ever after the glamour photos and reception.

Groom preparation wedding photography

When photographing the preparation of the groom and his groomsmen, it’s important to recognise the atmosphere of the situation, by gauging the nerves, and/or playful (or lack of) nature of the party getting ready. One is able as a photographer to guide the party through a series of unposed photos while getting dressed, while also focussing on small things like wedding rings and shoes. When having as many weddings as I do under my belt, I’m able to read when would be appropriate to also transition into a more traditional, formal shoot after the more photojournalistic scenes.

Smiling groom
Groomsmen being monkeys
Ring Box
groomsmen preparation glenelg
Boys walking together
Groom and his groomsmen
Smiling groom
All together
Getting ready

Bridal preparation wedding photography

When heading over to the girls and the bridal party, the approach to preparation photos is largely similar. There are still nerves, emotions and drama occurring all around, with the difference being that there’s an additional process (usually) considering makeup and putting on much more complicated clothing (bridal dresses). Once again it’s important to capture the small things, like jewellery and shoes while also being photojournalistic leading up to the point where the ladies are putting on their dresses. Preparation wedding photography also tends to become highly traditional in parts with the bridal party, with shots of the bridal party fussing around the bride, and other scenes such as putting on the garter which are very traditional scenes.

Engagement ring
Wedding Dress
Smiles all round
Lacing up
Flower Girl in Window
Putting on the dress
Having fun in the veil
Smiling Mum
Looking in mirror
Dress

I strongly believe however, particularly with preparation wedding photography that it’s far better to be as invisible as possible when being a wedding photographer as I feel that there would be nothing worse than having someone with a huge camera taking shots of you while you’re getting dresses on the most emotionally charged day of your life. As a result, I tend to stay primarily photojournalistic in having the bridal parties get ready as usual and take photos of that,m and then once they’re used to me being there, join in a little for more constructed photos. I tend to hate turning people into mannequins 😀

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Frame your wedding photography, PLEASE!

Framed print

framed prints

Frame your wedding photos, PLEASE!

I can never stress enough how important it is for everyone to print and frame your wedding photography! It’s so sad that in modern society we place so much importance on simply having the photos in a digital medium, to perhaps share on social media, or to occasionally flip though on your computer foir no good reason! The truth of the matter is that,  if you print and frame the photos from your wedding day, it simply looks so much better! This isn’t only because I want to sell more prints, but it’s very true – let me explain!

rame your wedding photography

Warning! Boring number stuff!

(skip the next paragraph if numbers and sciency stuff bore you)

The average dpi (dots per inch) or more accurately ppi (pixels per inch) of your average monitor on a computer is somewhere between 72 and 130. This means that a wedding photo displayed on your screen is made up of 72-130 ‘dot’s of little colours so close together they create an image.

The more ‘dots’ the better as this makes an image clearer – it’s the reason why 4k TV looks so much better than full HD TV, which looks so much better than standard definition TV as they cram more ‘dots’ into the same space. When printing your photos on paper with a high resolution printer, the print resolution is usually around 300 dpi – if not higher, which makes a quality print around 3 time better quality than what you view on your screen.

Just as a side note the ppi for a 40″ 4k TV is 110, and Full HD, 55 which is the reason why you can sit close to a computer monitor, but not your TV, and also my computer monitors tend to be more expensive than a similar sized TV.

Frame your wedding photography!

As a result of the recent ending of the SvenStudios people’s choice wedding photo of the year contest for 2017, our winner was Milena and Steven from their wedding at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens! The framed print above was produced as their prize. Their framed print was worth $419, and looks absolutely incredible printed on fine art paper and framed professionally. As a wedding photographer, this is so much better than just looking at it on a screen!

MilenaSteven
MilenaSteven

I feel as though people who do not print and frame their wedding photos are put off by it’s perceived cost – and also the idea that anyone is able to print off their photos at places like Officeworks for far cheaper. The fact of the matter is that those cheaper, wholesale places just don’t compare with the quality and feel a proper print has, and the framing options they offer just aren’t great.

It’s like buying a car, but being content with a 1986 Barina, when you could have an Audi A6. I mean, yes there is a price difference, and I mean the Barina does fit the bill, it’ll get me from A to B, but the Audi makes me feel awesome doing it. It depends on what that awesome feeling is worth to you!

Displaying photos from your special day also has huge health benefits to people who live at your home. These precious photos of your big day can transport you back to the time you felt the most joyuous and can overcome any momentary dark feelings you might feel in the moment whenevr you walk by those favourite memories hanging in your living room!

Having family photos prominently displayed in your home canalso be beneficial to the development of healthy levels of self-esteem in your children. It gives them the opportunity to acknowledge the fact that they belong and that they are valuable to the group.

Psychologists are of the opinion that images might communicate to the child’s brain the message that they are an essential part of a family unit. Even when they are in their teenage years, your child will benefit tremendously from the presence of these precious photos, which provide an excellent contribution to your child’s growth and development.