Take Better Family Formals, Get Better Wedding Clients

You don’t need another image of the bride’s shoes, the groom’s bow tie, or some other “detail” photo to repost all over your Pinterest album. Really, you don’t. That’s not the photo that will make you the hero of the wedding day, or even keep you in the conversation for the rest of the evening.

Want more wedding referrals from your clients? Want a better relationship with your current wedding clients? Want to actually shoot a photo that counts for something? Good. Focus on your technique and approach to formal family photos.

It’s the wedding day. Per the usual, I’m tired and sweating my way through the schedule, trying to keep a brave face and smile for my clients. The ceremony is over, and now it’s time to photograph the family formals.

Admittedly, it’s a high-stress moment for an event photographer. I’m standing in front of 40 strangers, attempting to keep their attention and direct placement. Lights are going up (thank you, assistant!) and the clock is ticking. They want a cocktail. The flower girl is wailing. We’re missing a cousin! It seems like the end of the world.

I’m stressed? Consider that my bride and groom are trying to look happy while all of the family drama for the day is now on display. Not an easy situation to navigate, but it’s not brain surgery either.

I will come back to this in a minute, but first a short detour.

I rarely show family photos on my website. You’d be hard pressed to find one in my ‘best-of’ wedding portfolio that I share with clients. After all, weddings are different now than they were even 10 years ago. Credit digital cameras, or blame them, you take your pick. Clients want details, right? They want fun shots, right?

Even though I don’t actively promote these images, every potential bride asks me how I prefer to handle family photos, and takes a good, long look at the family images included in our sample albums. Why? The times are a changin’, but they ain’t changin’ that fast.  Your bride and groom still want family photos. Their parents want the family photos, as do the grandparents and extended family.

They want them because family members are going to pass away at any moment. They aren’t going to TELL you this, but that’s the underlying reason. Sure, everyone is there to celebrate the occasion, but that’s the reception. That’s not this. This is going up on the wall for the next 50 years, and for good reason.

I’m not trying to be a downer, I promise. I’ve learned this sad truth directly from my brides. Things change. People go. The family photos stay. It’s something we, as photographers, need to discuss.

Last wedding season, I had a bride call me shortly after we photographed her wedding…just a few days after, in fact. She asked if we could rush a print to her. She needed the print, like, yesterday. She sounded upset, so I immediately asked if we had inadvertently missed someone or forgot a photo, etc. I thought we screwed up. I wanted to make it right, if I could. I totally mis-read the situation.

Mom had passed. It was a struggle for her to get to the wedding, but she made it. Now she was gone. They needed to send a nice photo to the funeral home.

They had a bunch of snapshots at home. They needed our photo.

A few weeks later, we photographed a different wedding. The bride pulled me aside that morning, away from the hustle and noise of the wedding preparations. She asked if I could make a special point to photograph her grandmother during the day. That’s normally someone we are going to keep track of anyway, but she asked if we could provide extra things: close-ups of her reaction as the bride came down the aisle, extra prep images, maybe extra dance photos, but special emphasis on extra family combinations involving Grandma during the formals. We took all the photos she requested, making extra time to capture Grandma with the cousins, babies, aunts, etc.

Her grandmother passed shortly after the wedding ceremony. The family formals were needed.

On a personal note, the last photos I ever took of my grandmother were from a session I surprised her with at the last moment. She was kind of upset that I had tricked her into sitting for portraits – mostly because she was wearing this velour track suit thing and she didn’t feel dressed up -- but I didn’t care. We had fun. I talked with her about raising my father, and family vacations when he was a child. The session went well. I had a few really nice images. I was happy. She told me the photos made her look old, asked me to Photoshop a bunch of wrinkles. I was happy she even knew about Photoshop.

She died unexpectedly early this year. She wanted to be cremated. For the visitation, my father asked me to display one of my prints, so everyone had a chance to see her smile once more.

We have a bunch of snapshots. We need your photo.

It’s easy for photographers to realize the moment we chose to photograph is long gone. Hit the shutter, off it goes into the aether.

This isn’t something your wedding client is thinking about on the wedding day.

On a serious-but-less-serious-note, it won’t ruin the wedding day if you devote a few more brain cells to family photos and a few less to your detail shots of the place settings and centerpieces. That stuff will still be there in 10 minutes.

Here’s how we handle family portraits on the wedding day. It makes for a smooth transition between the ceremony and reception, and your preparation will help keep everyone sane and happy.

• If you want to shoot natural light, that’s great. Make sure you have a back up location identified, as the sun is going to move during the ceremony.
• Using a flash or off-camera setup? Find five minutes to assemble the rig before the ceremony begins. Hide it in the corner. Don’t waste time fussing with the rig when you should be taking photos.
• Get a list of the family photos you need before the wedding day. Don’t shoot from the hip. Make a list. Put it in your phone. Have first names, and call people by their first names. Smile. Ask them to stand where you need them.
• When the list changes on the fly, at the request of other guests and not your bride or groom, find a polite way to say “No.” I always explain that the bride has provided us with a list of photos she would like. After those photos are completed we are happy to take extras, if time allows. If we run out of time, I announce to everyone that we can take any group photo they could possible conjure during the reception. Smile. Move on.
• Understand that your bokeh-licous f1.2 setting is not going to fly for these photos. Be reasonable. Make sure the back row is in focus, too. After all, they are part of the family.
• We aren’t all Annie L., so don’t beat yourself into a pulp if you have to resort to the old standby lineup-type image. Sometimes it’s all you might get from a certain crowd, especially when you are just getting started.

Let me hear some ideas. How do you handle sensitive wedding situations like these? How do you handle formal family photos?