Always be on your feet.
A documentary wedding photographer cannot afford to be lazy. It will defeat the purpose of being one in the first place and more than that, you will not be able to pull off all of the shots that you need to pull off if you are not on your feet and moving around all of the time. This is the reason why wearing comfortable shoes should be a top priority for you if you want to be a really efficient documentary wedding photographer in all of your shoots. When you are at a shoot, you don’t really have that much control over what is going on. You will need to be in the moment and to live in the moment all throughout the time that you are there and out and about.
Change up your positions and the angles that you are going for every now and then.
This will ensure that you always have something going on in the background one way or the other. You will need to produce a lot of variations in your shots when you are trying to become a documentary wedding photographer because this will ensure that you always have something to help you pull things through the entire time that you are there and shooting the wedding.
Anticipate the moments before they happen.
This is simply being able to think on your feet all of the time and having a fairly good working knowledge of the sequence of events. This is something that you can check out with the bride or with the wedding planner, if the clients managed to hire one. Make it a point to constantly be on the lookout for the moments before they actually pan out. This way, you will be in all of the right spots or positions so that you turn out to be capable enough to take the shots that you need to shots. Documentary wedding photography is all about natural looking photos that are being taken in the moment, almost to the point of looking candid and taken as if the subjects don’t really know anything about it. You need to take the shots when your subjects are getting a little distracted or when they are getting caught up in the moment. Eventually, you will be able to get a good feel for things like these. You might start up pretty slow but you will eventually be able to pick up speed one way or the other.
Know the sequence
As a documentary wedding photographer, you should get to know the wedding sequence like the back of your hand. There will always be a sequence out there one way or the other. You should always aim to get a hold of the sequence as a documentary wedding photographer. This is the kind of thing that you will need to watch out for and to constantly search out for at the end of the day. This is what you should always be checking out one way or the other. List the sequence down if you can. Getting things down on paper will always turn out to be different and so much easier for you to follow through with things so always get things checked out in advance.