How to get prepared for a shoot in a tropical country?

Before you come up with the location for a shoot i would suggest to learn a bit about specifics of each country to understand the pros and cons. Among the South-East Asia countries quite a lot of them may have sompletely different weather at exactly the same time. For example at India and islands of Thailand you will enjoy between Nivember and March, while the best time for travel to Indonesia is starting from March till October. 

Bali island located at Indonesia and Thailand are the best locations for a destination wedding. Surprisingly you may find a lot for wedding planners, florists and other event industry specialist that will help to make your wedding unforgettable. Because of the high competition there is a motivation for all of them to improve their services and products, which is the reason that in average the quality of event related services here is much higher compared to other counties of South-East Asia. 

Planning of the shoot

Professional wedding planner or self-preparation? 

Many people assume, that the services of the wedding planner are much more expensive then self-arranged preparations, but nobody guesses that having such valuable experience the wedding planner will help you to save much more, then the cost of his/her services. For sure you may try and arrange everything on your own, but, please, think twice to understand what you are committing for. 

In order to get an idea on how things were built you may need to live at Bali or Thailand for at least four to six months. Just because you may not know that at some paradise beaches, although they are extremely beautiful, it is restricted to arrange the wedding ceremony, and it is impossible to get to specific locations of an island on your own…You will need, let’s say, the “the special agreement” with locals and this is the task for a planner only!

In case you are not looking forward to arrange the wedding ceremony, but just a casual Love Story shoot, then it will be quite enough to find a prefessional destination wedding photographer or videographer and discuss your requirements with him.

What time of the day to choose for a photo shoot? 

The thing is that in the South-Eastern Asian countries the sunrise and sunsets are happening almost instantly and in result we have no more than 40 minutes for the shoot itself. These “golden hours” are the favorite time of the day for any shoot, as the light is superb and allows to make pictures with soft shadows and highlights. 

Also, what is important it is not that hot during that time of the day, which makes the shoot much easier for a couple. It is better not to plan a shoot between 11am till 3pm as there is a high risk of a sunburn and by the evening you may feel really bad. 

On the wedding day itself it is much better to plan the timing such a way that “wedding morning” would start by the lunch time, and arrange it on a villa or in a hotel room while it is extremely hout outside. The wedding ceremony should planned by the sunset, especially if it takes place on a beach or any other open air location, while the portrait shoot of the bride and groom may be arranged the day before or after.

What is the duration of the photo shoot? 

Love Story photoshoot will take 1-2 hours. It is better not to plan several locations on the same day. especially if you do not have such experience. Professional photographer will be able to use the location in such a way to make photos look different by using different lenses, compositions and other hints. In result you will get a feeling that the shoot was carried out in different places…

Which day of staying at tropical country is the best for a wedding photo shoot?