Christin + Justin, a FoxFire Farm Wedding
Lara + Kevin, an Elegant Wedding at the Anderson House
Caroline + John, a Whittemore House Wedding in Washington DC
July 26, 2017

Tuesday Tips – How to Photograph a Wedding Cake

Education

Today I have an extra sweet blog post – all about photographing the wedding cake!

It seems simple, right? Snap a picture of that cake and move on. But wedding cakes are not only incredibly beautiful, but they are so special to the couple! I spent SO many hours designing my wedding cake on PhotoShop – selecting the perfect shades of pink and the exact design I wanted. And then our sweet puppies were made into little fondant doggies and put on top of the cake! I was just obsessed with my wedding cake, and I love that our wedding photographer, Katelyn James, captured so many gorgeous pictures of it. I always aim to do the same thing; not only do I get some full photographs of the wedding cake, but I get lots of detail shots too.

When photographing the cake, I make sure to capture:

  1. A full picture of the cake (both portrait and landscape view). Sometimes I will backlight the cake or uplight it (especially if the cake backdrop isn’t the most attractive). If the cake has a cool table or table cloth, make sure that is included in a full cake photo also. 
  2. Next, I get detail shots – both in portrait and landscape. Oftentimes I will switch to my Macro lens here because it helps me get such beautiful pictures of the elements on the cake. If the couple orders a wedding album, this makes for great album detail pictures also! For these, aim to get close up shots of two things:
    • DETAILS: items on the cake, such as flowers, or decor elements on the cake, such as fondant or piped details
    • EDGES: the top and side of the cake, such as each layer of the cake
  3. If there is a cake topper, I make sure to get a picture of that also. It is important that this photo is taken from the same level as the topper, so the camera should be level with the cake topper. For this, I often do what Kelsey calls “the elf pose” here (you can probably picture that pretty easily! Haha). 
  4. I get pictures of the cake knife and server, in case these are special to the couple, as well as the special forks and plate they are using, if there is one. Sometimes these are not on the cake table when I am photographing details, so right before the cake cutting I will make sure to check for those so I can get a picture of them.
  5. Finally, get a photo of the wedding couple with the wedding cake before they cut it. This is always a tough one because the caterer, DJ, guests, etc. are all waiting for the couple to cut the cake, but it is so valuable for the couple to have a photo together before they cut the cake (and it takes just seconds to do).

I love photographing the wedding cake; oftentimes the day goes by so quickly that the wedding couple don’t even have a chance to get a close look at their cake, so having those photos to enjoy later is so special. Oh, and the last tip? Try a slice of the wedding cake! :)

 

Lauren and Dan’s cake had a beautiful blue backlight behind it, which made for gorgeous photos!

This cake was PERFECT for detail pictures! I made sure to photograph each layer, plus specific elements of each layer.

For this wedding, we used off camera flash to provide better lighting for the cake.

I moved the wedding cake slightly so that these beautiful lights were behind it for pictures!

This lovely ombre blue cake had lots of pretty details to photograph.

I photographed the inside (funfetti!) and outside of this gorgeous wedding cake (and we worked with the planned to put a nice neutral backdrop behind the cake!).

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