Staging your detail shots is an important step in achieving clear, interesting images to support the story of the wedding day.

As event photographers we are often the observers.  We melt into the crowd to capture the action and remain unseen.  This can lead us to feel like we are not allowed to move things for fear of being pushy or making things looked contrived.  The turth is that the bride is hiring you to make her images look great.  She does not care if you move the dress to get a great shot.  Many people fear staging or posing, but if done properly you are not putting people or things into akward situations, you are putting them in scenarios and poses where they will look their best in a natural way.

Here is an example of the staging process that I went through on a recent wedding day involving the bridesmaid dresses.

The dress as I found it

As you can see, the ress was hung on a garment rack in the ready room.  There is a lot of visual clutter going on in the backgrouns of this image.

I moved over to the window in the ready room for attempt #1

I liked this image, but this could have been taken anywhere and it just seemed too vanilla so I went out in search of a better backdrop.  In the mean time another lady arrived with her dress.

I took both dresses down to the library for attempt #2

I liked this image better because it gave you a better feel for the reception venue, which was a beautiful historic home.

The final image shows more of the charachter of the space and gives more context.

For my final image I zoomed out a bit to capture more of the context in the room.  Tis image has much more depth and does a far better job tel