Wedding Photography – Be Prepared With A Checklist

Photographing weddings can be rewarding, challenging and stressful all the same time. While most events conclude with little fanfare, some precautions should be taken to prevent disaster.  After photographing weddings and high-end social events for over 18 years, few surprises followed me.  I was very prepared.  My equipment (which included cameras, lenses, flashes, memory cards and battery packs) needed to be in great working order.  With every wedding I wanted to have a pre-wedding checklist on my equipment.  To ensure my inventory was complete and in them great working order. 

Just like a pilot about to take off for a long journey, they have a checklist to follow.  There are so many items to worry about; a checklist is imperative to ensure success.  My pre-wedding list included every piece of equipment needed for the job and if service was needed to be completed. 

One important check for me was to ensure that my camera body’s internal clocks were synchronized with each other.  Imagine what a headache it would be to reconstruct images taken at the same event, on two separate cameras and the order and out of sync. For example, using two cameras during the bridal procession taken from you and your assistant.  Every image was perfect, sharp and exposed correctly. Perfect, but you discover that your clocks were out of sync. After the event you return to your studio and download your masterpieces into a common folder on your computer, sorted by date or time and realize that the timestamp was not correct.  Every file would be off! What a headache it would be to correct this.  All of these issues could be avoided by one simple task. This new task is listed on your new checklist. 

We had a pre-event checklist to ensure that everything was set up correctly.  This is how my checklist was born to cover every aspect of the event and, every piece of equipment.  All listed inventory was included; each camera body, each lens and ensure that all of the memory cards were accounted for and formatted prior to the event.  Battery packs are charged and ready. Flashes and sync cords are in working order. Cameras opened and checked for dust and stray hairs.  Yes, I once had a dust particles show up during a wedding and produced a white line in the many images, which created lots of additional Photoshop work for me.

The key to creating a worry free event is to have all your tools in place in the checklist is imperative.  Let your next event to become profitable easy workflow and uneventful, through good planning. 

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