We were lucky enough to photograph this couple that both had a background in Dance. The bride was a former Ballerina and the groom recently took ballroom dancing lessons. We took advantage of their skills and put them in some more challenging poses. As you can probably guess, we also suggested a number of fun dance shots as well. They were more than willing and really had fun with it. Sometimes we struggle a bit to show our couples how we want them to do a particular dance pose. This is not their fault, it has more to do with our own lack of knowledge of dance basics. In the end, we usually just try to show our couples the pose we want them to do and it works out fine. This couple was so easy it was almost funny. They knew exactly what to do and needed virtually no coaching from us. In fact, any coaching we would have done would have likely made the poses worse and not better! In any event, we really had fun and coaxed them into some amazing dance photos with some being a bit challenging. They even suggested some that they figured they could pull off with ease. We were more than willing to allow them to be more assertive with what they wanted to do in terms of dance poses. The image above, is nothing too creative, but always comes out great. The classic dance dip where the groom (traditionally) dips the bride while connected together in some way. As you can see, the bride knew just how to position her legs and the groom knew how to hold on to her to keep her safe. This is probably the most important part of the process. As San Francisco city hall wedding photographers we always want ensure that our brides and groom stay safe and will never ask them to do anything they are not comfortable with. The other nice thing about dance poses is that they portray movement, which was have discussed in other postings. Movement in wedding photography can be very compelling and artistic if done correctly. Overall, I think that in this particular case, we learned more from them about dance posing then we taught.
Not a pose we would ever suggest, but the groom and best man had a history of doing this and wanted to so we said sure. Looking back on this picture, I would probably would have suggested they come away from the railing a little. Not sure what I was thinking there, but they went into the pose so fast, I figured the best thing to do was just shoot. They didn't warn me nor did I have a chance to move them so I thought my best idea would be to get the photo quickly and be done before any safety issues arose.
