Here is a simple strategy that will boost your business, both in the short and long term. Increase your sales, and market to potential future customers by photographing the guests as they arrive at the church. I normally offer to photograph every guest as they arrive at the church. This has at least four advantages:

1. The couples have a record of everyone who attended their wedding. This is a good selling point; use it to your advantage.

2. You will get reprint orders from the guests; it may not be often that they are so smartly turned out!

3. You will turn guests into future customers.

4. There will be less likelihood of you being asked to photograph a large group of everyone who attended, this shot can waste valuable time.

Prepare for the guests arriving. Check exposure and if you are using fill-in flash (which I recommend you should be), set appropriate values on auto flash setting. Set daylight exposure on camera manually. Choose an appropriate spot to photograph the guests as they arrive.

If it is your intention to take all guest shots in the church grounds you must inspect the backgrounds available and select one or two before anyone arrives. When choosing a new location you must be aware of the direction and strength of the lighting.

Try never to shoot in direct sunlight; it is too harsh and contrasty. If possible choose a shaded area where you can position the guests with the sun behind them to prevent eyes being half closed. With the sun behind the subject you will have to exercise extra caution with your exposure reading, move in closely and take readings directly from the subjects' face.

Try to choose an area where you can use trees or bushes to blank out the sky. Pictures are always more attractive when there are no bright and obtrusive backgrounds to detract the eye from the subject.

Shoot the guests full length, however if you are stuck with an unattractive background, three-quarter length is often more appropriate.

Engage the help of one of the ushers to hold guests back from entering the Church until you have the chance to photograph them in pairs or small groups. This can be a difficult procedure to handle, particularly if the guests all arrive at the same time by bus and it is raining!

If this happens you can either photograph them inside the church or postpone it until the reception. My preference would be to take the shots at the church as the guests enter.

Remember also to use fill flash for all of your shots. The reason I say this is that often the ladies in your shot will be wearing brimmed hats. This causes shadows to fall on their face. Fill flash is the answer to this.