"Unplugging" Your Wedding: Are Guests Going to Ruin Your Photos?

Great shot! If that guest's flash wasn't hogging the limelight. Thanks, guest!

This is a very modern and heavily debatable topic I've seen posed by other photogs a lot lately, so I thought it of note to discuss here even if it hasn't much affected my work (yet). There are two parts to the matter: Guest flash interference and guest phone-face showing up in backgrounds. Truly, what are the odds that guest interference will happen to land on the very same critical shot I'm taking? If that potential is critical to you, then this topic is worth discussing.

Although guest flash- or phone-face bombs haven't happend to me in excess, I have anyway (comically) started a Pinterest board highlighting occasions when this actually has happened to me. It's a unique wedding concern born from the fact that everyone partaking in a wedding these days is overly connected to multimedia and also thinks they have the right of way in capturing events, even if that means stepping in front of a pro to do so. These media crashers are beginning to fill wedding backgrounds not with beaming smiles or tearing eyes, but instead with phones or cameras in front of their faces. I've seen it in excess even from parents of the couple, and that does bother me. "Screen face" versus "emotional face" is what I see here when I review the images. It kinda gets to me.

Particularly, I'm borrowing this topic from this Huffington Post article written by Corey Ann, an award winning Ohio wedding photographer, which I thought was very well written to the degree that brides must now consider this factor when it comes to photography. All images in this blog are borrowed from Corey Ann Photography, who collected this amalgamation of guest mishaps during her 6 years of shooting weddings.

Nice. There's no way you can 'shop out that guest.

I never have personal issues with guests at weddings I cover. I more so just figure that people jumping in the way is part of the territory and up to the photographer to clamber around them or position herself so that the camera-faced guest does not appear in the background of a poignant shot. That, OR it's just photojournalism; if that's how your family is, then that's how your photos will portray them. To a degree, certain mishaps are avoidable. But some (above) are not avoidable, and for the paranoia of a guest screwing up shots like this, I'm lead to urge clients to consider this modern topic. Dear Client: How much leeway should your guests have? It really is up to you (not me)!

Here's what your average congregation guest now looks like.

I wish I could say this was taken by a second photog and that guy is the prime photog, but.. you know. Guests gotta get their shots.

As a professional, it is not on my tact-ometer to fend off my clients' guests as would be required in those scenarios. In truth, it is up to the bride and groom to announce an "unplugged" wedding and to take initiative to focus their guests on their moment of marriage rather than capturing everything and posting it to social media before the couple even knows about it. According to Corey Ann, many a first look has been thwarted by the update-happy guest who posts the moment to Facebook before the bride and groom even step off the altar!

Hey, Grandpa! I actually do see this a lot.

For real, many of these reception guest mishaps can be avoided by the photographer, or Photoshopped out, but [to save editing time] it takes your photog extra effort to position herself on the dance floor, or to jump to the other side of it within the duration of a 3-4 minute song and try to fit in the best moments while on time constraint plus guest constraint! I can also say the same challenge is true of having two photographers and/or a videographer (one always gets in some shots). Just sayin'. But I'm a photographer and I like emotional, magazine-type moments and "gear" in shots really bugs me. It kills me when I see my own tripod darkening a doorway somewhere.

This made me cry a little inside. Even a second photog would have a botched shot (from the other side!).

Red light on her shoulder is a digital camera's low light focus beam.

Some couples probably don't mind too much with guest interference, and as a client-driven service provider I say that if the couple doesn't mind, I don't mind. But couples who have issue with the visual "litter" of people jumping into professional shots to get their own non-professional shots should honestly consider instigating an "unplugged" wedding. Sometimes recording something with your eyes and with your heart is really the best way to remember a moment. Here's a quote from Corey Ann's article, a minister preceded one ceremony by saying (at the request of the couple): 

"Please, turn off your cell phones and put down your cameras. The photographer will capture how this moment looks -- I encourage you all to capture how it feels with your hearts, without the distraction of technology."

Hear hear!