People

Yesterday I blogged about overcoming some of the challenges of my first wedding shoot and showed some of the images from just the pre-ceremony, mostly shots of the little details that make up the whole event. Going into this whole project I tried to keep as open a mind as I could not knowing really what I was getting into. As I was told when I was seeking advice beforehand, the best thing to do is to stay confident. If they sense that in you then they will have confidence in you. I have to say for my first wedding shoot, I couldn’t have asked for a nicer family or couple to be working with. Brad and Sarah were easy to get along with and very laid back as I worked through all the challenges that this event had to offer. Despite the actually ceremony only taking a few minutes to take place, it was still hours of shooting before and after.

With the D4, 24-70 AF-S 2.8 and SB-900, I was able to do a lot with the little details, as per yesterdays post. The wedding itself was actually held just 10 minutes away from where I live, which was great. Mostly outdoors with the ceremony at 4:30pm. Not my favorite time for lighting but with the nice open backyard, I couldn’t complain. The whole day I had the camera clicking, trying to capture every moment that wasn’t scripted in between those oh so important ones. Both inside and out it was a matter of capturing the faces of everyone there, while trying to remember everyone’s name. Not my strong suite.

It finally came down to the ceremony itself with me running around both sides trying to capture the feeling of the whole event from everyone’s perspective. Not easy to do. Mostly using the 70-200 VRII and 24-70 AF-S f2.8, I focused on every smile and moment of the ceremony. Now the one thing that amazes me about photography and continues to amaze me was how fast that project can go by after all the time you send prepping for it. The ceremony was over faster than anything I could have predicted but the work was still not done, for all those portraits remained. Every family member and all the newly wed couple shots had to be done.

Even those goofy but fun shoots which you just have to do. You never can go back and do them over.

In the end, after months of worrying, prepping, strategize everything worked out in the six hours of shooting. It of course took longer to do the finishing on the images, making the prints and making the dvds then it ever did to take the images, but it was all worth it. This process taught me many lessons, mostly that something that is as far out of your comfortable zone as possible can be the most rewarding. As photographers we capture moments in time. Sometimes those are moments that only we behind the camera truly realize how important they are while other times it’s the subject in front of the camera that knows it is their moment. Being able to share those moment is truly special and no matter what field, what passion or what reason you are a photographer, remember to always be on the lookout to try anything that might come your way. You never know what it might lead to and who you might meet. For me, I was able to share a very special moment with these two wonderful people and do something that I had never done before. Thanks Brad and Sarah!

Over the last few years I have learned one very important lesson in photography and that is always to be open to everything that comes your way. A while back I wrote about having to become a general photographer and taking advantage of all opportunities that come your way even if those are outside your comfortable area or don’t fall within your passion. Well if your passion is photography then any photo opp is a good one. I’ve spent a lot of time photographing critters, landscapes and planes but never much time photographing people, so this past project has been quite a challenge for me. Thanks to the mysteries that life bring some friends of mine asked me a while back if I would be interested in photographing their wedding. Well I can honestly say that up till that point I had no interest to do so and even told them that I had never done something like that before. Brad and Sarah were fine with my lack of experience in that field because they knew I would work hard. And boy did I!

Everything was started way back in Winter and the wedding was just a few weeks ago in July. I had a lot of prep work to do before then. Photography is still photography and light is everything, and that’s truly the most important lesson in all this. Getting prepped was more about learning techniques, coming up with creative shooting angles and figuring out the best timing to accomplish every shot. Without an assistant it was all me so I was very glad when they didn’t ask for video with their stills. As I have discovered in the past and for anyone out there that has tried to do both before, it’s really tough!

The technical aspect was the hard part at first. When you spend a lot of time working in one particular field you get used to doing everything that way and nothing else. With my planes I use the 200-400 VRII and 70-200 VRII a lot to isolate backgrounds and focus on one subject. Often times trying to capture as much information as possible in both the subject and the background. That seemed to be so inverted in this field as having shallow depth of field was such a key factor in so much of the shooting, something that I am NOT used to doing at all. Using the 24-70 AF-S f2.8and 50 f1.4 were a big help in achieving some of those shots. Black and White is also a key tool which made a lot more sense afterward as the light kind of sucked a lot of the time, being that everything I shot was during the middle of the day.

The last part of the prep was the inspirational side. The best was to do that I found was to research what other people had done and see what they had created. How they placed their subjects, their relationship to the background and the direction of the light that they choose all provided the answers to those questions in my mind. At Photoshop World this past Spring I spent a lot of time attending classes on wedding photography, like Cliff Mautner’s. All of this research material helped. Of course the only way to get the answers to those questions was to put them into practice.