Planning For Beautiful Light On Your Wedding Day

If you know any photographers you know they all get a little bit obsessive over light. For good reason though, it’s the one thing that can take your wedding photos from meh to next level. 

Wedding photographers are pretty incredible at working in different lighting conditions but these tips will ensure your wedding photos are absolutely incredible!

1. Getting ready.

Windows baby! I don’t care if the walls are painted black, if there’s natural light streaming in we’re making magic!

The best looking spaces are evenly lit with all the lights off. Artificial lighting can make your skin look unnatural in your photos so we avoid it where we can.

If your venue doesn’t have a beautiful space to get ready in we recommend booking an Air BnB. Here’s some of the Grampians best.

The Mountain Den in Halls Gap, Salt Creek Cottage in Dunkeld.

2. Ceremony.

If you’re having your ceremony outdoors there are quite a few things to consider. First of all look for somewhere with even light, preferably open shade, try to avoid standing in the shade while your guests are in the full sun or standing in dappled light where the sun is streaming through tree branches, this can be hard to expose for and be distracting in your photos. The most ideal scenario is that it’s overcast during your ceremony but pretty much the only thing we can’t count on is the weather!

Another thing to consider is the time of your ceremony, if you’re standing in full midday or mid-afternoon sun it can create unflattering shadows though it’s easier to work with than half shade/half sun. 

If your ceremony is indoors then you already know what we’re looking for. Windows! But more specifically we want you standing somewhere where the light falls on you. This will make sure you pop in the ceremony photos.

3. Cocktail hour.

The same rules apply to outdoor cocktail parties. Open shade works best on sunny days, a verandah or the shaded side of a building works great.

4. Wedding party photos.

These are usually done during the cocktail hour while the sun is often still quite high overhead. In this case, we’ll find a good area of open shade to get these photos, if it’s the middle of Summer you’ll thank us for it!

5. Golden hour.

This is where the magic happens! Sometime during the hour before sunset, we’ll steal you for a few minutes for some sneaky portraits of just the two of you. It’s named the golden hour because the light is just that - golden! It’s some of the most beautiful and flattering light we can work with and these are usually the fav photos of the day. We’ll help you create your timeline to make sure you get some of this dreamy magic.

6. BLUE hour.

If we plan our golden hour session late enough we’ll catch some of the blue hour too. This is twilight when the sun has set but there’s still colour in the sky.

7. Reception/dance floor.

We love it when your speeches are early enough to take advantage of the remaining daylight but we can make magic long after the sun goes down! 

Your reception space will look absolutely epic if it’s lit with fairy or festoon lights and I’m a big believer in more is more when it comes to reception lighting! We’ll light your reception with flash and video lights if we need to create some more depth too.