Note: Photographers’ Friday is a weekly blog series directed toward professional photographers, and in some instances, serious amateur photographers. All Photographers’ Friday blog posts will assume that readers have a basic working knowledge of digital SLR cameras, but if you’re left with questions or don’t understand any of the information, don’t hesitate to ask. We love e-mails!

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It can be a hot topic among photographers. There seem to be two camps. There’s the “Wait . . . you use a shots list? What is this, your first wedding?” camp, and then there’s the “I cannot possibly cover a wedding professionally without a shots list!” camp.

We fall somewhere in between. Let me explain. During any given wedding day, Danny’s and I don’t work off a shots list, other than for the formal portraits, when we send our couples our standard family groupings list and tell them to add any extra groupings they would like photographed.

But. But. If our bride and groom have specific shots in mind that they know they want, we definitely want to know. And we would prefer to have those must-have shots written on paper so we can check the list at some point during the wedding day to make sure we’re providing the coverage our couple hopes for.We see it this way: We don’t need shots lists to provide great coverage of a wedding day. But we might need a shots list to provide the exact coverage our couple wants. Now, we’re not talking about shots lists specifying “Picture of bride and father walking down aisle” and “Picture of bride and groom cutting cake.” Those kinds of shots are an absolute given, and I’m really proud of our couples to say that they don’t send us shots lists like that. What they send us are unique details or moments they have planned for their wedding, things we wouldn’t know to anticipate or look for; what they send us are groupings of friends we wouldn’t know we should get together for a photo.

Having those kinds of shots lists is truly essential to making sure couples are happy with their photographs.

Happy weekend, everyone!

~ Laura