Wedding Invitations and the Best Lens!
I’ve been working on a magazine submission for one of our bride’s this week. Her wedding has a very good chance of being featured in a well respected wedding magazine (we’re keeping our fingers crossed), and we wanted to send the editor images of her invitations, programs, address labels, etc.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to shoot still life? I totally prefer taking photos of people over still life because people have all the emotion to work with, but wow, when it’s still life…my respect for food photographers goes way up! The food in Cooking Light gets much yummier looking for sure!
In our Getting Published 101 Kit, I write a lot about what magazine editors are looking for when you submit individual stock images or full weddings for publication. I have found that one of the key components that makes or breaks a wedding being featured is the amount of detail images. You can have the most beautiful bride and groom photos, but if you don’t have detail images too your chances of getting published just went way down.
Why? Editors know that brides buy wedding magazines to look for new and creative detail ideas for their own upcoming weddings. Whether it’s the untraditional veil
or making your programs look like actual Playbills
or the gifts for all the dinner guests
and the heirloom pearls and favorite teacup
brides love details! I did when I was a bride. And I still do!
As I’ve been working on these wedding images, I’ve noticed that the 85mm (fixed/prime) lens works best. The below shots are all the way down to a 1.4 F-stop/aperture. This means super blur every where expect the point I’m focused on (the focus point was the pearls on the invite). I feel like the low f stop helps add emotion and dimension.
When shooting details think low aperture/f stop. If you’re a wedding photographer, consider buying a macro lens for your details. (I used the macro lens on the above teacup/pearls image.) There are maybe 10 images I shoot with the macro in the whole 12 hour wedding day, but those 10 macro images may be the very thing that gets the wedding published in a magazine. And that publicity is definitely worth the cost of the macro lens. 
For more tips on getting your images published, check out our Getting Published 101 Kit. We’ve had great feedback from photographers who have purchased it!
Also, the Early Bird Special for the Chicago Workshop ($799 instead of $999) ends tonight at midnight PST! If your planning on coming, make sure you don’t miss out on this 20% savings!!! You can register here!
Can’t wait to meet all of you in Chicago!! And yes, the forum is still in progress so hopefully all of you Chicago ladies will be able to chat there sooner than later. (again, fingers crossed)
Thanks for this post! I love detail shots - and the ones you posted are beautiful!!
I can’t get over how beautiful the picture of teacup with the pearls and ring is. It’s soooooooooo gorgeous. Everytime you post pretty wedding pictures I cry a litle because I have HORRIBLE wedding pictures with almost NO detail shots.
What a great thought, though - making the conscious decision to take good detail shots, not just for the bride, but for publishing.
My stepson’s 11th birthday party is tomorrow and I’ve got lots of little details in the decorating to make it special. I think I’ll focus on taking some of those pictures, too, and not just the big ones of him blowing out candles or opening presents.
Have a great weekend!
Those detail shots are sweet. Love ‘em!
I have the 85mm and I just love it!! It was the only lens I had till last week! I actually think that it helped me get unique and intresting shots because I was the zoom! Now I’m forgetting that my new lens even zooms! And I am missing that 1.8 ap! Well… just a little!
( I’m still giddy about my new lens!)
LOVE the teacup!!!! Your photos just take my breath away……they are amazing. I need to go lens shopping but there are too many to choose from, how do I decide…MeRa what lens could you absolutely not live without????? Are there any special lens we should purchase before the workshop???
I love still live stuff - or at least I’ve grown to love it. We did a recent NACE event (people shots too) but I went totally overboard on the detail shots and loved it.
Jen
PS I ordered the publishing kit quite some time ago but never received a download link. I had used my Oct 07 workshop coupon. Should I try to reorder it?
Jennifer, you never got it!! So sorry! We’ll send it to you today. BTW, how are you friend! It seems like years since you were here taking the workshop in Seattle!
Thanks everyone for all the wonderful comments about the detail shots!
Realy great shots… I love the one of the teacup with the pearls, etc…
Great post …
Paulo Jordao
I am in LOVE with the teacup and the pearls photo…so classic.
Which macro lens do you use? I’m thinking of getting the 100mm macro lens for Canon, but someone said that’s too close for them.