These days, everyone is bringing their own compact digital cameras to weddings to capture the action from their own perspective. Many of these photos, of course, are going to include some cut-off heads and less-than spectacular lighting and angles. In other words, these are not always the type of photos you would want to have printed. However, since there is often so much going on at any given time, the bride and groom often enjoy seeing photos would have been impossible for any one person to capture on his or her own. So how might these photos fit with the photos that you, the photographer, are taking at the event?
There are many answers to this question, and one answer might simply be "They don't." However, for those who would like to venture into tying together all the loose ends of the event, one answer might be to use Flickr tags. Here's how:
Step 1: For each wedding (or any event, for that matter), you could decide on a certain tag (a tag is just like a keyword that you can use to describe a photo) that you would like to use. For example, you might use the tag "reith-jones-2007" for the Reith-Jones wedding.
Step 2: Encourage guests to use this same tag when posting their pics to their Flickr account (this assumes they use a Flickr account, of course...not always the case, but at least it's free if they don't already). You could do this by leaving small cards on each table with this information or by posting a slide on the screen in the event that there is a slide show at the reception.
Step 3: View all the photos of the wedding by going to that tag on Flickr: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/[your tag] For example, here are all the photos tagged with WPPI: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/wppi
So where does this get you? For most, this could serve as a simple tip for you to give brides and grooms as a way for them to capture additional photos from their guests. If you want to go an extra step, then you could include information on how you would prefer them to license their photos through the various Creative Commons licenses so that you could include them in photo books or other products that you then sell to the client.
This might not be for everyone, but this is one way that all the photos of an event could be aggregated in one place instead of the bride and groom having to hunt them down over the next year. :)