Blushed Rose: DIY Photography Can Save You An Arm And Leg
Photography

DIY Photography Can Save You An Arm And Leg

It’s no secret that weddings can get expensive. With everything you have to do, like renting a venue, hiring caterers, and buying attire for you and your wedding party, things add up. There are several ways you can cut down on cost, and one of those ways is to DIY the photography.

Hiring a photographer for your wedding seems like one of those things you just do because everyone does it. It doesn’t hurt that you want your pictures to turn out nice, either; it is a special day after all. But, hiring a professional is incredibly expensive — according to SnapKnot, the average price for a wedding photographer is $2,814. Yikes! That’s a lot of money, but you can save it by foregoing a professional and doing it yourself. Here are some tips on DIY wedding photography:

Enlist a Friend

Photography is a popular hobby these days, and everyone knows someone with a really expensive and nice camera looking for opportunities to practice. Why not your wedding? Someone who has invested in a high-quality camera is likely not to be a complete novice, and will have the know-how to give you good quality pictures you can cherish forever for a much lower price — perhaps even free!

Get a Photo-Editing Program

One downside to pictures from a high-quality camera is that they show everything … including those wedding-stress blemishes and dark-eye circles you are bound to get. So, once you get your photos from your friend, it will be good idea to get a photo-editing program for your computer. You can now subscribe month-to-month for Adobe Photoshop, making it nice for just downloading for a month to edit photos, then deleting if it you don’t plan to use it again. Of course, there are free programs out there as well that will have just enough features to get the job done. (ami.com)

Don’t go overboard on edits, though. While eliminating some minor skin flaws is harmless, you don’t want to run the risk that many fashion magazines do by over-editing pictures, leaving unrealistic results. We all have things we don’t like about ourselves, but editing your pictures to remove everything you don’t like about yourself is only going to leave a fake feeling and false memories.

Use Your Guests

As elegant and pretty the staged photos of your wedding are, some of the funnest photos are those taken by your guests. Before smartphones, the wedding party would provide disposable cameras for guests to use during the reception to take pictures of the themselves, other guests, and the happy couple. But now, you don’t need to spend any money to get a plethora of candid pictures from your guests — just use social media! Also, rent an RV as a prop for photo shoots which is done often.

Everyone has smartphones these days, and whether you ask your guest to use them or not, they are going to use them. Might as well take advantage of technology and ask your guests to share pictures with you. (cobblerexpress.com) You can make sharing easy by asking your guests to not only tag you in all of their pictures, but to also use a hashtag unique to your wedding. By having your guests use a unique hashtag, you will be able to search it for all photos posted with it, and have a treasure trove of pictures right at your fingertips.

Print a Photobook

In this age of technology, one thing we find ourselves doing is taking hundreds of photos, but then leaving them in cyberspace. But don’t let this habit affect your wedding memories. Having physical photos to go through and show people — including your hypothetical future children — is a must.

If you like scrapbooking, your wedding photos are a perfect chance to express your creativity and create a photobook that you can showcase proudly. If getting crafty isn’t your thing, you can put together a photobook online using your digital files and even photos off of Instagram and Facebook. It’ll be printed, bound, and shipped to you for much less than a professional photographer would charge for the same thing.

While weddings can get expensive, yours doesn’t have to be! There are so many DIY ways to make your wedding inexpensive and unique — and your wedding photography is one of them! Make sure that when looking back at your wedding photos 10 or 30 years from now, you aren’t thinking, “Wow, I sure spent a lot of money on these!”

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  1. Avery

    Feel free to ask any questions or comments about this article either down here in the comment section, by emailing me, or with a tweet.

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