For bride & groom's viewing pleasure.

WEDDING TABLE SHOTS
Wedding guests are definitely important. They’re the people you invite to share one of the most memorable days of your entire life. They give up a weekend to attend your wedding, they buy hotel rooms, and they bear gifts. Some even travel from far corners of the world in order to be a part of your big day. So it makes sense that you want to honor them in a significant way—to have a lasting record of their faces, so you remember their presence and generosity twenty years down the road.
Photography seems like the perfect solution, right? And it can be. But before you ask your wedding photojournalist to visit each and every table during the reception to take photos of every single guest or the entire table, consider this: as easy as it sounds, table shots may not be the best approach for you, your guests or your wedding photojournalist.
Our award-winning photojournalists offer their take.

WHY NOT? LET US COUNT THE REASONS…


WPJA medallion recipient Mark Romine does his best to discourage his clients from table shots. And not just because he doesn’t like doing them; he’s genuinely invested in the outcome of their photos and wants to help clients make the most of their money. “I explain that table shots are not very attractive, because of empty beer bottles and half-eaten plates of food,” says Romine.
He also asks clients to think about what they intend to do with those photographs. “There’s no way you’re going to put all those photos in your album—they take up too much space. Are you going to frame them all?” asks Romine, who says that guests rarely, if ever, buy the table photos for themselves.
If the client insists, Romine recommends hiring an additional photographer to do the shots. Think about all the moments he would otherwise be missing. “I’m so much more in tune to photographing the spontaneous moments between the bride and the groom and their family—the more memorable photos than the staged table shot. I’m looking in all the nooks and crannies of the reception to find the real moments. When I’m doing table shots, there’s no way I’m going to be able to do that. There’s just not time to do it all,” he says. “Maybe the bride is off dancing with the flower girl...if I’m photographing table shots, I’m going to miss that.”
Romine, like many other wedding photojournalists, finds that guests do not always want their photo taken and calls the practice “an intrusion.” WPJA member Bill Holland agrees, saying that he won’t do table shots without the bride and groom. “We don’t want to be the ones to bother people while they’re eating dinner. If the bride and groom do it, it seems a little more palatable for the guests,” he says.
But that’s not going to be ideal either. He’s happy to do it, if that’s what the client really wants, but he offers words of caution: “It does take a significant amount of time. Do you want to spend the reception naturally chatting with your guests or standing posing with everyone?”
The bride and groom may not realize how much valuable time and effort goes into taking table shots; they’re not as easy as making a pit stop at each table and snapping a quick picture. Why does this seemingly simple exercise take so much time? It’s very rare that everyone is actually sitting at the table when the wedding photographer comes around. Guests have to be rounded up; the photographer doesn’t know who people are or even who’s at what table. Like Romine says, “it’s a nightmare.”

If WPJA award winner Richard Nowitz is going to do a table shot, he wants it to look good—which means even more organizing, time and energy. “I arrange the chairs and make everything look nice. I have the lady sit down and her husband stand behind her, and then I have the bride and groom stand in the center. I shoot it nice and tight, so I don’t see the mess on the table,” explains Nowitz. “When you have hundreds of people, it becomes quite an ordeal. It’s getting all the people at that table; I have to keep coming back to tables where people are missing.”
Holland presses brides and grooms to really think about whom they want to hire for that. “You have to question whether you really want a [wedding] photojournalist to shoot your wedding or not. And you may not,” he warns. Maybe the table shots are an isolated request among an otherwise very candid, un-staged approach. “Or it may be an indicator of the way they want their entire day to be documented. That's one thing we can help a client determine during an initial consultation,” says Holland.

OTHER OPTIONS
If it is, in fact, wedding photojournalism the bride and groom are seeking, but they still feel very strongly about capturing the guests, there are some alternatives to the dreaded table shots that may work out a little better.
Some people solve the quandary by placing disposable cameras at each table and asking their guests—by way of a note at the table, or word of mouth—to take photos of one another. If your guests are adults (and not too inebriated), they’re going to be better at following directions. “I would caution that if you have kids at the wedding, they will grab the cameras. This may be exactly what you want, but you should be able to make an informed decision, regardless,” says Holland.
“My job is to provide them with suitable alternatives, while still maintaining our integrity as wedding photojournalists. We try to be as unobtrusive as possible during the wedding and reception, which is obviously really difficult when you’re going around to each table, asking guests to pose for a photo,” says Holland.

Instead Holland and his wife Anne—his business partner, fellow WPJA member and contest winner—try to focus on the guests during other, more natural moments. This way, the photos of the guests are more in line with the kind of photojournalistic work they’re good at in the first place. “We try to get a wide variety of the people there, which tends to mitigate the need for the table shots,” says Bill. “We try to get shots of them during cocktails or dancing when they're having fun and are engaged in conversation and activity, not sitting around a table with a frozen smile for the camera,” Anne adds. For example, in the featured photograph, Anne captures the bride and groom’s entire table clinking glasses when she photographs the bride and groom kissing after the best man’s speech. “It's not a typical table shot because no one is looking at the camera or even aware that there is a camera around. I suppose you could set a shot like this up, but I think if you did, it wouldn't convey the spontaneity and exuberance,” she says.
Romine’s favorite alternative is to suggest something a little more fun than the dreaded table shot. He likes to organize group shots of wedding guests away from their tables. Friends and family members are likely to want a group photo for posterity. He’s also taken group photos of all the guests on the beach or at a farm wedding. “It’s more attractive and takes much less time,” says Romine. This approach allows the guests, as well as the bride and groom, to spend more time enjoying the reception. And that is, after all, the point.
—by Meghan McEwen for the Wedding Photojournalist Association
(The original article can be read at
http://www.wedpix.com/articles/006/wedding-table-shots/)