Behind the Shot

Emotion. Movement. Just pure epicness. Those are the kinds of photos I love taking. Anything that makes you look twice and say, "Yo thats SICK!" is something that I want to make. And as a wedding photographer, theres plenty of chances during a session to find those moments, but my favorite time for epic shots that my clients love is during the bouquet toss.

Back in the day, and I'm talking ancient times, the bride was considered to be super lucky, and throwing the bouquet to her guests was supposed to give them a little bit of that luck too. Now times have changed and who ever catches the bouquet is supposed to get married next. I don't care too much about where the tradition comes from, I just know I get most of my most epic reception shots because of it.

Now the photo that you are seeing below is my favorite bouquet toss photo that I've taken so far.

Potential clients who see this image when they view my portfolio almost always ask me for the story behind it. I've had to tell the story so much that I'm making it a blog post so I can direct them here instead of having to tell them again. Instead of laying out the elaborate story, I'm going to break it up into three segments. Step 1: Communicate with Your Bride. Step 2: Flash and Step 3: Timing, Patience, and Luck.

Step 1: Communicate with Your Bride

Communication is one of the most important parts of any service based business. The key to getting this kind of shot starts months before the actual wedding day, it starts at your pre wedding consultation. I ask my bride what types of shots that she's looking for and the answer I normally get are "great photos", and of course, thats all your company should produce, right? I get my brides to send me a timeline for the day, when all the big events are going to happen, thats when you start your planning. Picture in your minds eye what you want to create, plan on how you want it to look.

When the day of the wedding finally rolls around and you arrive at the venue, take a quick walk during a lull if you can. Try and look for any good angles that you might take advantage of later, but don't take too long though, you are on a job after all. Once you've scouted out a little bit, just push it to the back of your mind and do your job. During the reception, when everyone is still eating their meal, pull aside the coordinator or the bride and ask her where she's going to stand and which way she's going to be throwing that big bouquet of hers, or you can play it by ear and wait until everyones called to the dance floor, although I always suggest talking with the person in charge about that first.

Step 2: Flash

Now for the technical stuff. To get this sort of image, you're going to need some sort of flash. Receptions usually start getting real fun after the sun goes down, so its a tool that you MUST have. I've been using an SB-700 speedlite for all my weddings. Its powerful, versatile, and recycles at a decent speed. I keep that sucker on top of my camera and bounce it off the walls, ceilings, or an exceptionally pale aunt that just so happens to be standing next to me. The key is to freeze the action, all while getting a good bit of ambient light hitting the sensor. I want to say that my settings were 1/60th shutter speed at F. 3.5 at 1600 ISO with the flash firing at about 1/16th power. You can see a slight amount of ghosting around the hands and the bouquet, but the faces and bodies are completely frozen. If you were to try to catch this shot without a flash, you'd have to bump your ISO way up and sacrifice the image quality, or slow your shutter speed and end up with a super blurry shot.

Step 3: Timing, Patience, and Luck

So you're in position and you've got your camera settings all lined up for whats about to happen next. you watch the bride step up onto the dance floor and smile at all her single friends gathered together like a pack of hungry, wild animals, just wanting to tear each other apart when that bouquet starts to fly across the room. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife. It takes a special heart to survive this type of tension, but hey, I'm a wedding photographer, if I can deal with shooting an entire wedding on my own, I can handle just about anything, right? 

This is where everything falls together. All the communication, planning, the settings on your camera, what you ate for breakfast all have a factor in how epic your bouquet toss photo will turn out. You need to make sure you are in tune with the crowd. You need your camera fixed on the group of single ladies, but you also need to make sure you know when the bride throws the bundle of flowers. If you watch closely, you can see the ladies start pushing against each other, preparing to gouge each others eyes out. Nows when your skills need to kick in. The method that I've adopted is to start rolling that shutter as soon as the bouquet enters the frame. It only lasts a moment, and I only get about 3 shots fired before its over, but I've always walked away with an epic bouquet toss shot.

If you follow these three steps, and practice practice practice, as well as following your own artistic vision, you will start walking away with purely epic reception photos!