iPhone Photo Tips For Your Tech-Savvy Wedding

Chances are the majority of your guests will arrive at the big day armed with an iPhone, ready to capture every last detail. Hey, that's why you spent hours on Pinterest searching for the perfect cake toppers, buntings and centrepieces, right?

According to Ipsos Reid, close to half of Canadians now own Smartphones; but ask yourself: Do Uncle Gary and your university roommate Barb actually know how to capture the types of images you'll want associated with your wedding hashtag? It can't hurt to offer up some handy pointers for the amateur photographers on your guest list. Display the following tips on your wedding programs along with your social media hashtag to ensure all of your crowd-sourced photos are keepers.

For first kiss photos... Your first kiss as man and wife is a moment that you'll treasure for the rest of your lives. If you're lucky, someone in the crowd may also snap the perfect memento of that instant when you seal your bond. Remind guests that anyone with an iPhone 5s should set their camera to burst mode. When the shutter button is held down, burst mode continuously captures 10 photos per second, letting guests take hundreds of images in under a minute. Intelligent software algorithms analyze all the shots in real time, comparing sharpness and clarity and even detecting when someone’s eyes are closed. Then iPhone suggests which shots might be the best in the bunch.

For great group shots... Forget awkward shots where half your guests are squatting in front of others. Nearly all of your guests with iPhones should have access to pano mode within their camera apps. This functionality makes taking large group and landscape shots a breeze. With iOS 7, once your guests have opened their camera apps and swiped to the far left to select pano mode, instruct them to hold their cameras vertically, line up the shot then snap the shutter once to initiate pano mode and a second time when the shot is done.

Did you know that you can appear in a panoramic shot twice? For a fun take on traditional wedding photos, stand with your groom at the far left of your group for the first snap of the pano, then run to to the far right and you'll appear at the end of the shot as well!

For first dance photos... Capturing movement with a Smartphone camera, especially in low light can be tricky. Your guests can ensure that the subjects of their photos are always in focus using auto focus lock mode (AE/AF Lock).  To turn this on, guests should press on the area of their screens they want to focus on and hold that spot until the focus box flashes and AE/AE Lock appears at the top of the screen. The iPhone 5s's iSight camera also features an auto image stabilization feature to help eliminate blurriness associated with movement and hand shakiness.

For reception detail shots... With iOS 7 your guests with the iPhone 5s can now capture gorgeous detail shots at your reception, even indoors in low light. The iSight camera on the iPhone 5s features a larger aperture and 33 percent increase in light sensitivity compared to the iPhone 5. It also features an automatic high dynamic range mode (HDR Auto), which kicks in when there is too much contrast in one shot to capture in one exposure. In HDR Auto mode three shots are snapped at the same time, at three different exposures and these shots are combined to create the best possible shot.

For sharing photos... Interested in an album of crowd-sourced photos but not so keen on the idea of your wedding shots hitting Facebook, Twitter and Instagram while your big day is still underway? Consider a shared iCloud photo stream, which you can vet before photos are made public, instead of a social media hashtag. Before your celebration email guests and see who would be interested in participating in your shared stream. Instruct those people to go into their device settings and under iCloud tap "Photos" and make sure "My Photo Stream" and "Photo Sharing" are switched on. You can create your wedding stream by opening the photo app on your phone and tapping "Shared". Give the stream a name, then enter in the email addresses or phone numbers of everyone you'd like to invite. A shared stream can hold a maximum of 5000 photos and videos combined.