Traditional and photojournalistic are the two main divisions of style in wedding photography. The approach and technique may differ greatly, although both styles use similar equipment. Which style to use depends on what you want and your budget.

Traditional Wedding Photography

Traditional wedding photography puts more emphasis on quality and posed pictures. You’ll need time to set things up for the shots, getting people together, and relocating any equipment. This ensures you get the exact pictures you want, with a lot of control over the pose and location. A disadvantage to this style is the stress that may be involved with the set-up, and your pictures will look like they’ve been set-up.

If you decide to go with this style of photography, it will give you a great wedding album. Traditional wedding pictures turn out often looking like a photo shoot rather than a wedding day. This can be to your advantage to have pictures taken specifically to go on pages in a scrapbook or album.

Traditional photography is for you if:

* You have time for the set-up
* You know what kind of pictures you want
* You want to avoid photos of silly or potentially embarrassing moments
* You want a traditional, old-fashioned look to the pictures
* You’d like posed photos of all the guests in their best dress

Photojournalistic Wedding Photography

Photojournalistic wedding photography involves the photographer being the bride and groom’s shadow, following them throughout the day and taking pictures. You won’t need any time for set-up or moving equipment, but you’ll have less control over what and who gets photographed. Your pictures will be of people interacting and moving, like a storybook of your wedding day.

If you decide to go with this style of photography, you’ll have low stress, high energy pictures. Every shot will show the excitement of your big day, and photos will be taken with the photographer’s creativity and vision. Your wedding will be captured in a more natural and authentic way, going through the day, instead of a series of posed pictures.

Photojournalistic photography is for you if:

* You don’t want to schedule time for set-up
* You want silly, potentially embarrassing photos
* You want the pictures telling the ‘story’ of you wedding
* You’d like pictures of people being themselves while in their best dress
* You want the energy and excitement kept in the pictures

No matter what style of photography you decide to go with, or even some of both, make sure it goes along with the way you want your big day to unfold. Not only do your pictures depend on the style of photography, but the photographer as well, because each person will pay particular attention to different aspects of you wedding.

Make sure to openly communicate with the photographer you choose, so you get exactly what you want for your wedding pictures, with either posed moments or candid portraits, or both!

I know how hard and stressful it can be to decide on every aspect of your wedding. It seems like EVERY decision is a major one from Catering to Wedding Photographers. But if you’d like other tips on how to choose a wedding photographer or for ideas on styles of photographs, as well as how to pick one that works for you.

These tips are simple, but you’ve just got to know what questions to ask and what to look for. You can read more tips at Wedding Photographer Seattle.

Don’t get discouraged, it’s not impossible to make these decisions and stay sane at the same time! Learn more ways to Choose Your Wedding Photographer Seattle by clicking the link or going to http://www.weddingphotographerseattle.org.

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1. Know Your Audience

Knowing who your intended audience is an obvious, but sometimes overlooked step in the process of developing your slide show. For instance, if you’re showing your slide show at your wedding reception, perhaps you’ll want to include some pictures of the guests, and not just pictures of you and your fiancee.

2. Shorter is Sometimes Better

After you’ve determined who your intended audience is you can start to get an idea as to how many pictures you’ll want to include in your slide show. We’ve found that video montages that are between 8 – 12 minutes in length are ideal for wedding receptions. This usually works out to about 3 songs and 75-100 pictures. While you can certainly display more photos during your slide show, you want to be careful not to subject your guests to an extremely long slide show. Some people have elected to develop two slide shows. One that is their “personal” slide show that will be given to their parents or kept for themselves and the other is their “reception” slide show that will be shown during the big event.

3. Choose Quality Photographs

While recent advances in digital photo restoration have allowed torn and poorly developed photographs to be brought back to life, there is only so much that the software can do. Pictures that look great printed (correct lighting, framing, developed properly) will also look great while scanned. Pictures that are extremely dark or grainy, while perhaps improved somewhat, will still not appear the best.

4. Choose a Variety of Photographs

Even though you may love all the pictures of your dog Rusty, you’re audience may not want to sit through all the pictures of him. Instead of showing 10 pictures of ole’ Rusty, perhaps choose the best 2 or 3. Using a variety of photographs can keep your audience interest.

5. Landscape pictures show better than Portrait pictures

Given the standard 4:3 dimensions of television monitors, photographs that are in landscape mode (vertical) as opposed to portrait mode (horizontal) show better on a TV. While portrait photographs certainly can and SHOULD be used, you should be aware that there will typically be a black border that appears around the photograph. It’s best to use these sparingly throughout the slide show and not clump them all together.

6. Give some thought to music

Choose music that has meaning to you, music whose lyrics go well with the pictures. Also pay attention to how long the music you’re choosing is. If you’re only showing 30 pictures, you might not want to choose a 8 minute song.

7. Add short video clips

Do you have any home videos sitting around gathering dust? Think about adding perhaps a 10-15 second video clip in the middle of the slide show. The video clip can help break up the video montage and is a great way to keep your audiences interest.

8. Add motion to your slide shows

Slide shows developed on PowerPoint and other consumer level software will typically be just static photos that go from one picture to the next. Consider having your slide shows created with the “Ken Burns” effects that Pan and Zoom on each photograph. This can help bring your pictures to life.

9. Add transitions to your slide shows

Transitions such as fade in/fade out, dissolve, and image peel are also an effective way to move from one photograph to the next.

10. Test! Test! Test!

If you’re planning on showing your video montage or slide show at an event like a wedding reception, try and test ALL the equipment prior to the big day. Make sure the projector or television, DVD Player or Laptop, and sound is all working.

Creating a captivating slide show or video montage can be done successfully with keeping a few of these tips in mind. Pictures that are preserved to DVD can be enjoyed for years to come.

Mike Yared is the owner of http://dvdPhotographs.com a Michigan based company started in 2003 that is now the leading producer of Wedding Slideshows for couples throughout the United States and Canada. DVDPhotographs produces custom slideshows for weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs, bat mitzvahs and other special occasions. Parterning with a company like DVDPhotographs.com can help ensure your slide show is of professional quality that you can be proud to show at your event.

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