Are you looking for inspiration for your wedding photography? Here are the winning photos from this year’s International Wedding Photography of the Year image competition.

Godox’s line of flashes, including the incredibly popular AD200 and V1, have become a mainstay of the on and off-camera lighting market. They’ve become so popular, in part, thanks to the surprising value and feature set offered at each price point. As a result, the AD100Pro, a new addition to the line, has quite the legacy to live up to. Has it earned a place in photographer’s bags?

With the year coming to an end, it’s a great time to take inventory and see what you did right and what needs improvement. This also translates to your gear. What was used the most and what should be thrown up for sale? This is a list of my most used gear for 2019.

“How did you DO this?!” I remember watching her exclaim with her jaw on the floor shortly before turning to her bridesmaid standing next to her and saying, “Can you believe this?!” She was holding her wedding pictures, in her hand, before the wedding reception had come to a close and I was her hero, even if for just that moment.

Recently I had the distinct honor of being a groomsman in a close friend’s wedding. It’s a lot of hurry and stand while remembering where to look. The pressure really is more on the two people getting married to remember their lines: “I do.” But as part of the wedding party, you also get the full brunt of posing, smiling and cheesing it up for the wedding photographer.

There was a time in my life that weddings were my main source of income. After being laid off from my job as a scientist, my hobby soon turned into a career. When I was first starting out, I took any and every gig I could to make ends meet. However, I held a secret during that time that I would never had admitted until now. I hated weddings.

Warm smiles and serene sun flares seem to be landing on the shoulders of portraits all over the internet nowadays. Complimented with beautiful bokeh from a shallow depth of field, the allure of a sun-kissed image image is easy to see. What happens when mother nature doesn't seem to be on your side? In this article, I am going to show you how to master "faking" sun flare.

Working with a second shooter has a ton of advantages: you can cover more moments, you get different angles and perspective on the same moments, and they even allow you to try new things during the day that you normally couldn't afford to do. One of the more frustrating things about working with a second shooter though, is when you get back home to later find out that your cameras were not synced to the correct time. What you're left with is images from the reception all intermixed with images from getting ready.

Lightroom is more powerful than ever, and you can complete quite a few edits in the application without needing to switch to Photoshop. This excellent video tutorial will show you how to edit wedding portraits using a wide variety of techniques, all in Lightroom.

A wedding photographer has received a demand for a refund from a couple after she posted her support for the Black Lives Matter movement on social media. The couple claimed that they would be too embarrassed to have her photograph their big day.

There's a longstanding debate about using primes versus zooms in wedding photography. Much of it involves balancing a pragmatic approach with maintaining a level of creativity that shows off your style and encapsulates the life and love of the day. This wedding photographer will both tell you why she uses primes and walk you through a typical wedding using them.

Wedding photographers often tell me how annoying it can be to get a consistent white balance across the images of the day. Shooting weddings almost every weekend during the summer myself, I used to have that problem as well. With a white dress for the bride and a white shirt for the groom, it should be easy though. The problem is I like my images to make my couple look good. Meaning I like having the same skin color and tone on every picture. During the day, their skin might change color a bit because of the sun, the emotions, and the alcohol. Switching to Capture One this year I found the perfect solution to avoid this issue: setting my white balance based on skin tones and not on a gray card anymore.

Many photographers start off their careers focusing on wedding photography. I started my career as a wedding photographer in Charleston, and I still enjoy shooting a handful each year. Over the next few months, I hope to share some of my thoughts on wedding photography and how event photographers can improve their photos. Today I was reminded how important "In Camera Cropping" is for emotionally charged photographs. Read the full post to see two examples of how cropping can make or break an image.

There are many ways to skin a cat and wedding shooters all have their preferences when it comes to gear. In this short video, photographer Eric Floberg puts together a compelling list of reasons why you should choose two full-frame bodies and a stack of prime lenses.

Sometimes you need to get rid of that frizzy wind-blown hair but you don’t have the time to mess with cloning and blending. This can be even more difficult and time consuming with more complicated backgrounds that have gradients in them. I’m here to show you my quick and dirty way to get rid of those flyaways.

A new year and a clean state; last year’s resolution was to take wedding photography "back to basics" and capture images that truly matter to couples and their families. At the end of this year, I had the opportunity to look back on the moments of 2014; a new emotional set of images that are imperfect perfection.

When I got into wedding photography twelve years ago, I didn't know a single photographer who was shooting macro shots of their clients' rings. Today, these shots have become expected, and hopefully, if you're a wedding photographer, you've got a macro lens in your bag so that you can capture professional-looking shots of the rings.

Over the last few years, weddings have become much more relaxed, and documentary wedding photography is taking over. How can reducing our need to make choices when shooting help our candid game?

Josh Newton is all too familiar with shooting under pressure as a professional wedding and musician photographer. Recently though, he had a wedding shoot that's gotten him national press for it's high stakes and unbelievably gorgeous results. Josh was able to take some time out of his busy schedule for a brief interview to talk about his now famous forest fire wedding shoot.

Depending who your friends are, you either love or hate Lightroom preset systems like VSCO Film, Mastin Labs, or the ever-so aged RAD Labs. The argument on one side of the fence is that everything becomes cookie cutter and lacks unique emotion. The other group of people say that it brings consistency and speed to an otherwise long-winded project. I’m primarily a wedding photographer so I understand both sides of this very reasonable argument. I’ve always hated trying to understand preset systems. I mean, since when is a preset supposed to be harder to get right than doing it all yourself?

Whether or not you have an interest in wedding photography, as a photographer it’s inevitable that at some point in time, you will be presented with an opportunity to photograph a wedding. It could be a request from a friend who is well aware of your abilities. It could be from a recently engaged bride who came across your online portfolio, and after not seeing any wedding photos, contacted you to ask if you shot weddings. One of the most difficult aspects of venturing into the dark side that is wedding photography is deciding on your fee. There are several popular schools of thought on how much to charge for your first wedding.

One photographer has an incredible addition to her arsenal of wedding photography after capturing a newlywed bride and groom while a burning building formed the backdrop.

First looks on wedding days have always been a magical thing. Usually, they are reserved for the father of the bride or the groom. One bride decided she wanted one for her brother, and the results were beautiful.

A photography business requires many things to nurture long-term success, not least of which are determination and business prowess. But after years in the game, can being a successful photographer serve as adequate training for starting another business altogether?

Night photography is something that every budding photographer will play around with at some point in their learning process. It’s a great way to get star-filled nighttime landscapes or to capture the light-painting shots in which you write in the air with sparklers. Most people don’t associate night photography with wedding photography, though, which is a shame, because it can be a good way to capture some non-traditional wedding images. These nonyraditional wedding images can help you stand out in the sea of wedding photographers and can help you book more weddings.

Smartphones keep becoming more and more capable. Put in the right hands, they can create beautiful work, such as this touching wedding video.

Photographer Aubrey Peebles of Macon, Georgia and her newlywed clients were devastated to catch a stranger fleeing the scene after allegedly stealing camera equipment during their wedding reception. The camera's memory card was full of images from their special day, and the thief got away with those photos as well as the photographer's gear.

I’m sitting at my desk on a Friday and I get a phone call. It’s Saturday’s wedding venue, and they’d like for me to sign my life away. In what’s becoming an all too common practice, the venue has decided that for me to be allowed to photograph my client’s reception I should grant them a waiver of liability that allows for their potential future negligence to go unchallenged in court, even if it results in my death. Seems like a pretty fair deal for the guy showing up to take pictures, doesn’t it?

The phrase "destination wedding photographer" never held much meaning to me, other than the rare couple who I assumed was eloping in Bora Bora. Lately that phrase is turning into something completely different and it's being referred to more as "adventure photography." It's slightly different in the fact that these people aren't necessarily having destination weddings because they're still being planned in their home states.

When you think of medium format cameras, you do not generally think of them as working fast enough to keep up with the demands of wedding photography, but on the other hand, the Fujifilm GFX 100 is not a normal medium format camera. This great video discusses how well it performs for wedding photography.

Pye Jirsa of Lin & Jersa Photography is back again with another great tip on how to make fantastic images in less than stellar light. Pye explained in his last video how to create golden hour without the sun, and in this new video, he shows how to take an awesome "hero shot" in harsh sunlight using a single strobe (and an elephant, but let's focus on the light here).

Weddings are busy and stressful, but careful planning usually minimizes hiccups. Unfortunately, for a recently married Southern California couple, Mother Nature had her own plans.

The difference between good and great posing is all in the details. Whether you photograph men, women, or couples together, knowing how to make everyone look their best is 110% your job as a photographer.

Every wedding photographer has a preference for a specific set of lenses to effectively capture all of the critical elements of a wedding. These images include views of the ceremony location, close-up portraits of the couple, and detail photos of jewelry and fine décor. In this brief video, wedding photographer Gemma Peanut shows why having a built-in ring light on the new Canon EF-S 35mm f/2.8 Macro IS STM Lens makes a substantial improvement in a photo of her engagement ring.

Have you heard of Drunk History? It started out as a hilarious Youtube series and now it has become an actual show on Comedy Central. Well, this fun couple decided to skip the standard engagement photo session and create their own drunk history video which covers the story of how they met.

When people first get into wedding photography, one of the main pieces of advice they will hear over and over is, “You can’t reshoot a wedding." This instantly leads to photographers asking, “How do I protect my images?" Image backup and cataloging is sort of like baking a cake. Every photographer is going to have a different recipe to how they do things. Over the years my process has evolved into what it is today. This process came about in part from learning by fire, and another part came from learning from others. If you don't want to use my entire process, I at least hope part of it can become a helpful addition to your workflow.

There is a romanticized dream of what it is like to be a destination wedding photographer. Outside of that idea lies a reality of what it actually entails. It is hard and exhausting work to photograph weddings full-time, let alone fly internationally on a weekly basis to cover them while also hosting workshops across the planet. But what is it that actually drives some of us to quite literally go the extra mile? There is a narrative behind the work you are about to see as well as the individual who has completely redefined the meaning of destination wedding photography.

Right before Christmas a sale popped up for the FitBit Flex (a fitness tracker) and even though I didn't "need" it, the FitBit would help me stay in shape. So of course I bought it. Over the last couple of months I have been making a conscience effort to make sure I am active. I love seeing how different activities affect my daily step count and, well, shooting a wedding sure does.

Wedding photographers make the worst wedding guests. I know that when I’m at a friend’s wedding, I have a hard time turning it off. And no one should make me - least of all the hired guns photographing the bride and groom for the day. If that sounds blasphemous, let me explain.

Being a wedding photographer is tough enough, but there are some small steps you can take to make your job easier that really add up in the long run. This helpful video will give your four lesser discussed ideas to make your wedding photography life just a little better.

Every wedding photographer has their favorite lens for photographing the couple. Some swear that shooting at 200mm produces the most flattering portraits, while others love the sweeping view of the surrounding environment that is showcased when composing with a wide-angle lens. In this video, Pye Jirsa of Lin and Jirsa Photography reveals his most frequently used lenses from over 10,000 wedding photos.

As a former computer scientist, I’m all about finding efficiencies in my workflow and making my life easier. Some people might call it laziness. Logically, after years of shooting with a traditional DSLR kit, I was ready to ditch it in favor of moving to a small and light mirrorless set up. However, no other camera body appealed to me as much as my Nikon bodies for professional shooting. The combination of the great grip and ergonomics, fast and accurate autofocus system, solid battery life, and great image quality makes them a delight to use professionally. I didn't want to let go of the camera bodies so I decided to try something else first…

Weddings are a nonstop whirlwind of technical and creative challenges, and the more knowledge and tricks you can have for both categories, the better. This awesome video follows a photographer behind the scenes at a wedding and focuses on his use of off camera flash to help you learn how to quickly and effectively turn dull and drab lighting into professional images no matter where you're shooting.

For the longest time, I avoided shooting weddings at all costs. I personally thought they were something photographers only did to make money and that no one truly enjoyed them. But as I developed more and more as a professional I started getting the itch to just try one, just to say I could do it. Soon after, I got in touch with my contact that worked weddings and lined up a job as a secondary shooter the following week. When it was all said and done, those four hours were possibly the most fun and challenging times I’ve ever had with a camera.

It's an exciting time of the year for wedding photographers and a time of plenty of chaos. Having a great second shooter is paramount among the necessities of any wedding photographer. If you're new to the genre, second shooting can be a fantastic way to get your feet wet and learn the ropes from a seasoned professional. I've put together a list, pulled from my own experiences and with talking to other wedding photographers, of the qualities we like to see in a second shooter. The better you are as a second shooter, the happier the clients and the lead photographer are, and ultimately, that leads to you being hired again and being recommended to others.

For most of us living in the Northern Hemisphere, the wedding season has begun, and the first images are being sent out to brides and grooms. Delivering pictures to clients is more important than most photographers would like to think, especially for weddings. It is an opportunity to surprise customers, get referrals, and sell more prints or albums. The smallest details will help you separate your business from the crowd.

When I first started shooting flash, I would lug my big studio lights and battery packs from location to location. But after a while, this became such a hassle that I stopped doing it. I instead settled for using a hot shoe flash or just shooting with no flash at all. But this may change now that Elinchrom has the new ELB 500 TTL. Not only does this light offer a significant increase in power compared to a traditional hot shoe flash, but it also does it with a much smaller package than standard studio lights while maintaining the benefits of TTL and HSS.