% of posed shots ?

What is your % of posed shots ? Excluding the cake cutting, formals of B&G

together and individuals of each, parents, grandparents,,

I find a lot of my time is taken by posed family shots. I do have to admit

that a wedding past year I shot a small group of family members, & the next

day 2 people in that shot were killed in a motorcycle accident. You have to

shoot some family. When you shoot bride with parents together & individual,

bride with siblings, grandparents, & same for groom's parents, a lot of time

has passed & I miss the creative shots of bride & groom. What do you guys do ?

Here in the south we like our family shots, is there a better way ? Thanks

guys,,

Hi Gregg

 

I work on a your wish is my comand basis, the first wedding this year I had a couple who got me to photograph them with all the guests at the wedding it was only small about 70-80 guests. It worked out that I shot about 30 groups, I organised an asistant that day lined up the guests and did the thankyou next please. We planned for this time and then headed off for a 1 1/2 hour Bridal Party location shoot in the local botanical gardens it was a great day. I did hear of on photog who shot a wedding that had two ceremonies, a traditional Thai ceremony and a Catholic one then shot a formal portrait with every guest who arrived to the reception with the B&G. Not bad I hear you say - there were 600 guests thats 300+ groups. Not bad for a day that started about 9 am in the morning. That's not the best bit, the B&G weren't happy when all of the prints were delivered there was a green plastic chair in the corner of all of the formals. They got the photog to reprint the whole lot. Some days are diamonds!

 

Regards

Greg

Out of a typical wedding where we shoot about 5500 images, we take about 20 group shots, (and 3 of each formal), so out of that 5500 images, about 60 are posed...

 

YMMV...

 

~brooks

It varies based on what the client tells me she/he/they want, both in style and in specific formals groups. The number of total shots, as well as the number or percent of posed vs unposed shots is really immaterial... If you are shooting in the style you want to shoot in (presumably YOUR style) and you are getting jobs because clients want YOUR style, and you are taking the pictures your client wants (both posed and unposed), that figure doesn't matter at all. If you find yourself wanting to take less posed shots or formals, find a way to work that in--look at how you schedule your shooting, your clientele, your package, your style, and make adjustments accordingly. Sometimes, you can adjust one thing, and other times, you have to adjust many different things.

When an all PJ shooter like Brooks shoots a wedding, the high shot counts are a necessity. If you want the "candid gold", you have to shoot the dozens of "in between" shots and edit briskly.

 

 

I shoot about 70% posed, and the other "half" are candids.

Depends on the photographer and the the parties involved. Some photographers won't do posed shots, some seem to only do posed shots. Some brides don't want anything posed, and others hire a pro only for the formal pictures.

 

Last week I was hired at the last minute to shoot only shoot a few formals and what ever else I could cram in to an hour's worth of my time. I think it came out about 50/50. Yesterday I shot a wedding where about 1/4 of the shots were formal poses because the bride wanted a lot of them. The week before I shot a wedding where they mostly wanted casual and PJ stuff to document the experience. That came out to about 85/15 I think.

I guess it must be because I leared photography with a view camera, tripod, and black and white film. When it takes 20 minutes to set up for a shot, you make sure you have it right the first time.

I don't know my percentage and I'm sure it varies from wedding to wedding. You can see dozens of full weddings on my site though if you're interested in seeing what I do.

I ask my customer what they want. They give me a percentage and I stick with it. I don't call it posed or candid, though. I'll ask them how much traditional, journalistic, edgy, and contemporary stuff they want. Hope this is helping! Go with your gut and you'll be fine.

Hard to say an exact %, I only pose a few formals at the prep location, the groom before the ceremony, and the formals after the ceremony. The rest I shoot as candid (journalistic). Some weddings I shoot 400-500 shots, others 1000-1200 shots. It all depends on what is going on, what the B/G want me to shoot (I am there for them and tell them to grab me for a shot they may want).

 

Assuming I shoot 500 shots, I would guess about 10-20% are posed?

Brooks:

 

You shoot 5500 images!?!?

30-40% posed shots per wedding. It gets higher with bigger groups, where I'll shoot more shots of the same pose to try to minimize blinks or distracted glances/broken posing by bridesmaids and groomsmen.

 

Shooting 5500 images per wedding is totally quixotic. You all realize that most shutters are only rated to 100,000, maybe 150,000 cycles. So, good job! you've just up more than 5% of your camera's rated shutter life in one evening! 2,000 shots per wedding isn't much better, that's 50 weddings, for some people one year, before you run into the real possibility of shutter failure in that camera. Of course, if you're shooting with multiple cameras, then 1500 to 2000 isn't so bad. I tend to shoot around 350-400 shots per wedding. If I were shooting digitally, maybe 500 tops would totally satisfy me as to getting everything I wanted. Now that I've switched over from roll film to bulk 70mm and perhaps long roll 35mm soon too, I'll be able to get the same costs for 350-400 shots shooting 500-600 frames of film, so that's ultimately the number I feel I will end up at when I get to the point where I've done enough work to enter the $2000+ wedding bracket.

Yes, we average 5500 images per wedding...

 

We shot 8995 or so on our last 8 hour wedding in the Bahamas...

 

The shutter life of my camera means nothing to me, I have replaced both of my MKII shutters 3 times each...Cost is about $150, which is nothing...

 

Why is it so hard to believe that someone shoots more then 400 images at a wedding? We are shooting REAL moments that cannot be posed or faked (although some photographers try to of course)...The number of images shot is irrelevant, all that matters is, did I get the moment?

 

YMMV, of course...

 

~brooks