Bend Wedding Photography: Editing Picks

April 3, 2023 Editing Choices

Wedding Photography Group Shots


Wedding group shots are essential for a successful set of images. At least four are included in my final 25 prints for couples. These are the pictures people always hang on the walls and buy reprints of for family and friends. A wedding photographer can do well on them, or he can try for something spectacular, or at least super fun.


Because I need to do a pile of blog posts to move my Bend Wedding Photographers website higher in the Google business profiles this post will only talk about this one picture rather than have thirty group shots. Why not have thirty posts with keyword links all over the place?


Anyway, this picture stands out for me and is one I've used in various advertising for my work. Usually a jumping shot is just slightly too cliche for me to ever use in public. How many of these can a person find on Pinterest? But... This one stands out specifically for all the faces. You can't pose a group of people and get different looks on all of them unless you do something like this. The other piece of the puzzle of why I love this picture is everyone is off the ground AND their faces are all showing.


The Profoto light with a big umbrella was used to light their faces evenly. I never use the sun directly on faces unless it's really close to sunset and even then will try to block it somehow. Hard sunshine really kills a picture. Bright sunshine is the curse of midday weddings and shade, backlighting and my Profoto are the only answers.


To get them off the ground all at the same time took a few jumps. Anytime a group shot has people jumping there's always at least one person standing or landing. Also not every wedding party wants to jump. How to tell the difference? Let them come up with the idea. Or throw a few ideas out there and see which one sticks.


This group at this wedding were all super fun people. They all partied together on a regular basis and so were comfortable around each other and made for a great wedding. This wedding actually made it into a portfolio of one of my old Bend Wedding Photography websites when I was doing portfolios of different weddings. Will have to do a 25 prints blog post of this wedding.

Samantha and Rob at their Rock Springs Ranch wedding. I love all the faces.