Ryan Brenizer's Amazon Blog

2. Make sure that, even with large parties, you can see all of the groomsmen's faces. The couple will want to remember them all, and each of them can enjoy it.

3. Always make sure the groom's suit is falling in a flattering way. If his arms are up, make sure the jacket is unbuttoned.

4. When in doubt, have them do what James Bond would do.

5. To heck with the rules. Take photos that reflect your subjects' personalities.

A quick ring shot from yesterday's wedding of Nicole and Jonathan. Here's a quick, from-the-scene video about the setup.

A glimpse from Sunday's insanely gorgeous, wedding between Paul and Ilana.

I'd like to thank Ken Kienow at Flickr's Starting a Wedding Photography Business group for starting a contest on "best ceremony kiss" shot. It made me sit back and think how tough it is to really enter artistic choice into a situation where you have to play it utterly safe. You can't not get The Kiss. You can't come up to a couple and say, "I tried something crazy, and it didn't work, so … no Kiss."

But trying crazy things is the entire basis of creativity. So, it hasn't been about winning or losing for me, but it's been great to poke at the edges of a very tough envelope.

This portrait of Monica was very simple to do, but gets its otherworldly look from two techniques I've discussed here. First, I was using a manual focus lens and wanted to get a downward angle on here -- luckily live-view, on cameras with high-res LCD backs, is a great focus assist even with the paper-thin DoF of a 50mm f/1.2. Secondly, the rim light, which looks like a heavily blue-gelled strobe, is actually day light. The main light was an old tungsten bulb, much warmer than even a normal camera-tungsten setting. A simple extreme white-balance shift in RAW brings out this look.