Please plan on at least an hour for your couple shots. The best time for light is morning or evening, about 30 minutes before sunset. Noon sun is tough to work with unless we find good shade.

Once we find a nice spot for lighting and background feel free to dance around, kiss, hug, play, and chase each other, etc. Go ahead and “ham” it up and do some dramatic poses if you like. But try not to look at the camera. Pretend the two of you are alone. When walking, hold hands and lean in once in a while for a kiss without stopping.

We may suggest a few poses. If you have an idea, no matter how silly it may seem, please share it with us. Your idea may just turn into a photographic masterpiece, or lead us in a direction which will.

When you kiss don’t tilt your heads too much. Try to kiss straight on so that both faces have a better chance of being shown. Also, kiss very slowly, pausing with your lips just an inch apart. Relax your face muscles, don’t pucker or smile. Also relax your hands, drape them over your partner. Hands say a lot in a photograph.

If possible, please plan on using a nice outside location with enough shade to cover everyone in the group. Avoid distracting backgrounds and make sure everyone is in the shade.

Make a list and keep it short. Please don't try to get every combination of family members. People can get tired of waiting. It's a good idea to limit your list to immediate families and then take one big family photo. This will allow more time at the reception, and allows us to capture more candid shots.

Many photos are normally taken in the dressing room so take care to make it look great. Light some candles or decorate with Christmas lights. Get rid of trash, empty boxes, and every day clothes like blue jeans. Messes are ok, as long as they are wedding related.

Decorate the reception area as well. Hang Christmas lights or rope lights. This will give some background light so that flash pictures won’t have a completely black background.

If you are having an outdoor reception, placing your dance floor under a tent will make a big difference because we can bounce our flash up into the tent roof and make a much more even light than what we would get with direct flash. A tent also gives you a structure to hang the small lights in the roof which create a mellow warm background light. Outdoors... paper lanterns are beautiful and mason jars with candles inside look wonderful hanging in the trees.

People generally walk too fast down the aisle, especially kids. Have a talk with your wedding party and suggest that they take their time, look up and smile :-) It makes for much better photos. And, of course, this advice applies to the bride most of all!

To keep from blocking the camera you should hold the ring so that your fingers are on the top and bottom instead of on the sides of the ring. This turns your hand so that the ring is visible from the sides and now your photographer and your guests can see it go on.

Don't rush. Take a minute to play with your crowd. This gives us time to get a shot of you holding the flowers and looking back over your shoulder at all the gang getting lined up. Before you throw, I recommend chasing off all the little kids because they will almost always beat your bridesmaids and friends out of the flowers.