One of my favorite parts of shooting a wedding is the wedding-ring shot. It’s one of my favorite images to capture because it requires a lot of creativity, patience and skill to get a visually appealing and sharp image. It’s especially challenging to capture this shot because I’m not always in the most ideal of locations – such as a dark church or a plain hotel room – so there’s always some extra brainstorming to come up with something great for these shots. I love it!

For ring shots, you really need a macro lens. The one I use isn’t super expensive, but it does the job. Shooting at a higher f-stop makes for sharp stones in the rings, so I try and shoot no lower than f/10 or f/12, but my preference if I have enough light is to shoot around f/18. When you set up this shot, look for lots of bright light. Use a backdrop that will create either a very classic set-up, or something that will help to tell the color story of the day.

Here is a behind the scenes shot of one of my recent set-ups. I had already captured a dark, mirrored image of the rings, so I wanted to do something brighter and more colorful so the bride would have another option for her album design.

how to take wedding ring shots