hey and welcome back to my channel! if you're new here.. I'm Joy
I help photographers like you grow profitable and thriving photography
businesses through videos here on my youtube channel every single week and
also over in my private Facebook group called photo boss. I'll link it down
below. if you're not a part of it, definitely join and I'll leave you guys
the link. so, in today's video I'm going to be showing you behind the scenes of
me working at a wedding. which I've had a few people ask for! you'll
be able to see more insight into my settings my lenses my posing and
direction and just really how it actually looks for me to be working on a
real wedding day and then the images that come of it.
so if you like this kind of video and you want to see more leave me a comment
down below and let me know which part of the wedding day you want to see behind
the scenes from so if you need more help with family formals let me know if you
need more help with reception and off-camera flash let me know. I want to
hear from you guys so that I can make videos that really truly help you here
on YouTube. so this was the first time we brought this GoPro to a wedding, so in
the beginning we were just playing around with it and trying to see what it
was capable of and I was here photographing the ceremony set up this
was going to be outside on the water gorgeous gorgeous view at the Chesapeake
Bay and at this point in the day we had already done the details stationary
rings dress that kind of thing so after the ceremony set up I moved into this
little foyer area where I was just getting the cards the seating chart
cards I wanted to get this picture here of where the guests would be putting
their cards and some of the images of my couple from their engagement session so
just getting these details at this point I'm still working around some of the
employees that are still setting up but I wanted to make sure that I got these
cards before the guests came in and moved them so a lot of times by the time
we get to the reception space it's altered it doesn't look the same and
it's really hard to get published when we don't have these details so I was
lucky enough to get those so now we're just getting some pictures of our bride
with her bridesmaids seeing her for the first time hanging out in the getting
ready room and getting some of those action photos and as you can tell it was
a little bit dark we had some mixed lighting but there was
a window coming in and shedding light on the bride's face and here I'm trying to
tell the bride where exactly I want her and her mom to stand because even though
her dress was a quick zip up kind of dress I wanted to get some pictures of
her and her mom just having a moment before the wedding where you have the
buttoning up of the dress maybe putting on the veil and that kind of thing so we
invited the mom to come over and stand with the bride and as you can see here
I'm still going to be popping a little bit of a flash because there is natural
light but I want to fill in those shadows especially on my bride's face
since she's facing away from the light I continue to use the flash throughout the
getting ready period in here just because I like the way that the images
were coming out and the harsh shadows just weren't working for me when I
turned the flash off
now we were gonna set up the dad for a first look just with the dad
the bride and groom were not gonna do a first look and I had to be really
careful where I positioned him and the bride because we had the groom and my
second shooter taking pictures just on the other side of this like trellis and
so if we went down by the water or if we were in that area he would have been
able to see us so I had to very carefully position them in this area and
this was a little bit tricky but we made it work
so immediately following this father-daughter first look I had the
entire girls side of the bridal party come out to this trellis area because at
this point we hadn't done any of those bridal party portraits because again
they weren't doing a first look so I went ahead I did a quick gathering
before the ceremony and I got some details of the bride as well of her
bouquet just her standing there some really classic portraits and I got a
good portrait of this entire group of bridesmaids here which ended up being
the only natural light portraits we had of them just because of the rest of the
way that the day went so as everybody was going inside getting her tucked away
and making sure that the groom didn't see her I was using this time to really
get those Frodo Trent photojournalistic shots that fill in the album when I had
stopped over at the bar got a crank drink of water before the ceremony and
my assistant who had the camera all day she went up to the balcony so that we
could get this angle for you guys so that you could really see what's going
on where I'm standing and how this ceremony thing works so for a ceremony
where I'm outside I have a lot more leeway as to exactly where I can stand
but when it's in a church and when it's a little bit more confined I am still in
this very similar position I'm gonna be standing at the front a little off to
the side so because I was working with a videographer I also needed to make sure
that I wasn't gonna be in front of his shot and to double-check where everybody
was coming in so at this point you see me talking to the priest he was
instructing and letting me know who was coming down the aisle off the side and
who was coming down in the middle I also wanted
to make sure that he didn't have any rules against us standing at the front I
always want to be very respectful of whatever ceremonies are being held and
whoever's in charge there which is not me so at this point we you can see the
groom and all of his groomsmen are filing in and I'm gonna be able to get
that shot really beautifully here from the front ow
we're going to get all the bridesmaid shots coming down the aisle I'm still
standing in the same place and I'm able to still let them stand by but it's
starting to get a little bit more crowded there at the front and I know
that as soon as the bride comes in I'm going to have to move but I want to be
able to get the shot of the groom's reaction that's my main thing is to get
a nice wide classic horizontal shot of the bride but also to get his reaction
now at the same time my second shooter is going to be getting the vantage point
from the back so you can't see her but she's actually kind of underneath this
balcony that you're looking down from so here's where things get exciting
everybody's standing up our bride and her father have come down and you can
see I turn and I get his reaction so they're coming in she can look at him
from underneath this balcony and she'll start to come down the aisle I've
instructed my second photographer to go ahead and follow the bride and her
father make sure that you're getting that angle of them from behind so I also
have a few shots of them that are nice and wide everybody looking at them as
she comes down the aisle so at this point I am going to slowly step back and
I'm gonna stay at the front for just a couple more moments I know that there's
gonna be this important hug passing off handing over the bride and I know that I
want to get some closer more intimate shots of that as well so I stay in the
front I get some images of the bridesmaids fluffing the dress and I
make sure that I get some tighter portraits because I'm probably not going
to be this close to the couple for the rest of the ceremony unless I'm in the
very center aisle so once I feel like I've gotten some good shots of them up
close I know I have a second where I can switch my lenses and start getting those
setting shots from the back of the ceremony site so I want to make sure
that I get a nice wide horizontal I want to get a vertical of just them standing
at the front holding cans and getting ready to say their vows together so
that's really what I'm going for right here I also know that I want to get some
extremely tight shots wherever I can of the ring exchange and anybody who is in
the ceremony sharing versus speaking saying a blessing over the couple that
kind of thing if anybody's in the ceremony they're important to the
couples so I make sure that I get a portrait of them as well by the time the
vows are happening I'm pretty much going to be hanging out here at the back and
making sure that I get the kiss my second photographer is going to get that
side vantage point one photograph that I absolutely love to get is the bride and
groom kissing as they're exiting their ceremony so I always just give them this
signal to stop really quickly and kiss because this is a gorgeous gorgeous
photograph and it's one that I think most of my couples end up putting in
their album so it's a really good one so at this point in the day we're losing
light pretty quickly I ended up doing pretty much all of the family formals
and then stopped paused and you can see the families hanging around some people
are enjoying cocktail our parents are there but I decided that the bride and
groom portraits were more important at this time of day since we had such
limited light so I decided to take matters into my own hands
pose them there on the water make sure that her dress was fluffed and I got
some really classic portraits of them kissing in front of the water I did a
little bit of natural light portraits as well as flash portraits because just the
way that the lighting was coming in and the way that the scene behind them was
so lit made it so that to properly expose for the background they were
gonna be pretty dark so I went back and forth on flash use so I wanted to grab a
couple of portraits of the bride alone with this gorgeous light so I
went ahead and grabbed her bouquet added that back in and it decided to coach her
just a little bit I wanted to make sure that we got some with her veil and that
was really important to her to have her veil in those classic portraits and
really here I'm just telling her that she needs to stand put those shoulders
back and just smile at me so right here we got a mix of some wider shots some
tighter shots and we had to be sure to make sure that we didn't get any of
those peoples heads on the beach because there were people down on the beach so I
had to kind of play around with my vantage point and at the same time here
my assistants getting some behind the scenes for Instagram and my second
shooter is getting some scene setting shots of the guys on the beach you can
see her off to the left actually instructing them so we're working at the
same time because as you can see that we're about to lose the light here so
it's really a team effort and this is a crunch time there's gonna be times
during the wedding day where we're really standing around we're waiting for
that ceremony to start and we might not be doing a whole lot for 20 minutes but
then there's this time of day where we have 20 minutes to get the majority of
the portraits done so you never know how quickly you're gonna have to work and so
that's why it's really important to have some really basic classic poses in your
arsenal just like I'm doing here with the bride right now as you can see my
second photographer right now is hopping in she's getting a totally different
angle different vantage point kind of getting up on her tippy toes and using a
different lens which is great so now when we're moving down to the beach this
is where I really wanted to get my bride and groom portraits but just as I saw
the bride moving down to the beach I decided that I wanted to get some of her
just sitting here I had this vision where you could see her little sneakers
sticking out from underneath her dress so I stopped her for just a moment here
and got this portrait of her sitting on the steps with her sparkly sneakers and
the light of her venue in the background which is really really fun so as you
move throughout the wedding day even if you do have a plan you might have this
photograph in your mind and you have to stop everything and just
make it happen and that's what we did here so now we have our bride and groom
we're on the beach it's pretty much dusk that golden sunlight is completely gone
I really want to be able to showcase that bouquet but not have it take up so
much space between them so as you can see here I had her throw it kind of over
his shoulder and I think it was a nice combination of something a little bit
different but not taking up too much space between them
so if you liked today's video and you like watching me work at real paid
events and just seeing where I stand where I'm working how I'm working you're
gonna love this video on your screen right now this is a posing video that
has real behind the scenes footage of me working with real-life couples not
models and I think you're really going to enjoy it so check it out click the
video on your screen right now and I will see you over there