How to Choose a Hawaii Wedding Photographer

Wedding photography is an important part of a wedding involving capturing important moments and events throughout the entire day. The purpose of wedding photography is to make sure couples have something tangible to help them remember the wedding years and generations to come.

Hawaii is a prime wedding location with stunning scenery, beautiful beaches, and gorgeous mountain views. Weddings in Hawaii are a work of art and deserve amazing wedding photography. With what seems like an overwhelming number of photographers, with different looks and styles, it’s essential to select a capable and reliable wedding photographer that fits you as a couple. A good wedding photographer will know what to do to meet expectations and capture memories to be treasured and shared with each other for years long after the wedding day has passed.

This wedding photography guide was created for couples who really want to know what to look for in wedding photography. It’s a more technical guide, and after reading it through will give you a solid foundation in making the best choice for Hawaii wedding photography.

1. Verify your venue and wedding date first

You can’t have a wedding date without a Hawaii wedding venue reserved. You won’t know what kind of wedding you will actually have if don’t know where it will be and when it will be. It’s surprisingly simple however very commonly overlooked by many couples with the excitement of initial wedding planning.

When planning your Hawaii wedding, securing your venue and getting a date finalized are essential in making progress while planning. Being able to lock in your wedding date and a Hawaii wedding venue can allow you to move forward with wedding planning, creating your guest list and having save the dates. It also ensures that the time you spend researching wedding vendors like event planners and wedding photographers isn’t wasted because you aren’t prepared to book your chosen wedding team due to not having a date or venue.

Many of the best Oahu wedding vendors, photographers included, have full schedules and more than likely will require a final date to be able to provide accurate pricing, availability and more information about their wedding packages. So being able to finalize a wedding date and venue ensures that your time serching for and getting to know your wedding vendors is used wisely and not in vain.

2. Decide on your ideal photography color and style

First and foremost, it’s important to settle on a color and photography style early on before you begin your search. Photographers typically have 1 or 2 main styles/colors and are not able to produce images that are outside of their area of expertise. You need to know what kind of wedding photography you want, in order to be able to make a decision.

There are several ways to do this. You can take look at bridal and wedding magazines, wedding blogs, Instagram and even Pinterest. Doing this will help you narrow down what you specifically want, whether it’s classic, lifestyle, or a more modern, photojournalistic take. However, you don’t need to limit yourself to just one style, keep in mind that photographers can do a limited mix of different styles. Once you decide on this, you can begin to look for potential wedding photographers that fit your preferences and criteria.

COLOR STYLES

Dark and Moody
This style has been trending in recent years and for good reason. It can easily be identified as it is a much more darker, lower in contrast and often with a green or brown tint. This style emulates a more foresty/earthy early morning feel and has an emotional vibe that is great for more smaller intimate settings. Some things to consider with this moody/dark feel is that it may seem out of place when photographing happy/lively moments or with large groups having fun.

Light and Airy
This is a bright color style for weddings and can be identified by its higher than usual brightness. This often gives a “clean” white look to the overall photo and has a sunny, happy and breezy feel.

Natural
This is another color style you may find that can be identified by its accurate colors and normal level of brightness. This color is very versatile throughout the day or at night. Natural colors are comfortable as many newer camera phones produce this look type of natural look but may not allow for much creativity.

Modern Film
This color style is very popular as it gives you gorgeous elegance, while still keeping skin tones alive, colors accurate, and provides a timeless feel. Modern film has its inspiration in classic film stock photography and shows close to natural colors with hints of artistic enhancements to emphasize people and their environment. This style is considered more timeless as it steers clear of possibly temporary trends, while enhancing certain elements to make the image pop. Perfect for wedding albums and wall art in your home for years and generations to come.

HNL Studios Signature Colors

Our chosen wedding photography color style at HNL Studios is modern film. With our hand-made signature look, you can expect to find colors that are bright, vibrant, and full of life. While still keeping the whites natural, our HNL Signature colors incorporates beautiful, blush highlights that give the energy and feeling of classic film stock.

This is intended to give your photography and films a luxurious and bespoke color that is uniform and speaks luxury and beauty. We want our couples to have wedding images that are timeless and will look amazing even decades from now.

PHOTOGRAPHY STYLES

Journalistic/Documentary

A documentary style wedding photographer has little involvement and allows events to unfold using their creative eye to capture and tell the story of the wedding. One thing to keep in mind is that all wedding photographers have a level of photojournalism and will have a secondary style on top of that. Photojournalism or documentary style wedding photography should be in every wedding photographer’s wheelhouse.

Editorial

Editorial wedding photography includes fashion influenced posing and produces images that could be featured in a magazine. Many of the techniques used are drawn from fashion photography to create a unique style of wedding photography. Editorial wedding photographers make sure to assist with posing and making everything look right and natural without making the photos look staged or uncomfortable.

Fine Art

Fine art wedding photography involves the use of many highly experienced techniques to create images with artistic flair. This could be through lighting, angles, and composition. This can be very technical however fine art wedding photographers produce images that are beautiful, unique, emotional, impactful and ready to be hung on your wall like a piece of art.

Traditional

Traditional wedding photography involves plenty of guidance from the photographer, and also involves a bit of assistance in guiding and directing the wedding. You can expect your wedding photographer to be heavy on posing and even directing the flow of the wedding for classic photos.

Our HNL Photography Styles

Our wedding photography styles are fine-art, editorial and photo-journalistic. We are trained in artistic composition and want our couples to be able to enjoy their wedding images and display them in large wall prints and heirloom albums. Our desire is to have the images we provide to be heartfelt, artistic and to never get old.

3. Take a look at wedding photographer portfolios

The Oahu wedding photographers you find are bound to have a portfolio of their wedding images on their website. This is one thing you should immediately look for as it will give you an idea if this is the photography style you prefer. You can tell as soon as you see their portfolio if their style matches yours and if you want to pursue learning more about them. Feel free to spend as much time as you need exploring their website and learning more about the team and their work as simply doing this will provide you with a lot of information to help you make a decision.

4. Schedule a time to talk!

Even after browsing their website and social media, the only way to truly get to know someone is to actually talk to them. This is an essential step, as a brief meet-up or video call can help build rapport and make you feel more comfortable with each other. This is also an opportunity for you to be able to ask any questions you may have regarding their services. Most Hawaii wedding photographers like being able to speak to the bride and groom before booking to help determine if they are a good fit and to get to know them and learn more about what they have in mind for their wedding.

5. Check out their online reviews

The internet is a powerful thing and is a big help as you choose your wedding photographer. Check out your photographer’s Yelp and Google pages to see reviews about other people’s wedding experience. Online reviews can tell you a lot about a photographer’s experience and how they are to work with. These reviews are a big help as they provide actual stories from past couples they have worked with and gives you a peek into their wedding day experience and how they work with couples.

6. Look at special offers and extra features

Photographers usually provide different wedding packages and collections. What you can expect us to be provided with a base package and the option to add ala-carte items to customize four your wedding needs. Feel free to ask your Hawaii wedding photographer about any add-ons or optional features you may want to have added on such as aerial drone photography, heirloom albums, and wall-art prints. Items such as albums, wall-art and prints may seem unimportant when your wedding is months away. However, they do provide a tangible way for you and your family to enjoy your wedding photography and relive memories together. Your wedding images deserve to be seen.

9. Quality Over Quantity

It’s tempting to go with budget packages jam-packed with products. If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is. It’s important to remember that you can’t change the quality of your wedding photography after the wedding. Staying within budget is important, we definitely understand that. If high-quality wedding photography is important to you, it would be good idea to examine the entire wedding budget as a whole and see which low priority items can be adjusted or removed giving room to more higher priority aspects of your wedding planning.

Unlike flowers that will be repurposed or food that will be eaten, what will remain of your wedding are your photography and films. These what you will remember. It pays to have the best, and wedding photography is a worthy investment as it will last for plenty of years to come.

Things to look for:

• Wedding Venue and date booked

• Your desired wedding photography look and color style

• Being able to have collections together with videography and other services is a bonus.

• Fast and prompt responses to inquiries

• High quality print and album options

Things to avoid:

• Poorly created website

• Slow response to inquiries and messages

• No online reviews and presence

• No opportunity to speak with and get to know them before reserving

See our full wedding podcast on how to choose a photographer for your wedding