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First Wedding
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Hi all,
Did my first ever wedding on Saturday and was it a learning experience. :shock: :shock: PRESSURE ALL THE WAY! :shock: :shock: Thankfully the couple were looking for a fairly rough and ready documentary type approach. As they put it they didn’t want to spent hours with a photographer posing in a location away from the wedding and reception while their friends and family were celebrating. So they decided to spend about ten minutes with me and leave the rest to chance.
Overall I was happy but exhausted from the day. I also photographed the events of the night before in various pubs. However, in hindsight I probably made a good number of mistakes, but that the nature of these things.
For any of you that are thinking of taking on a wedding here are a few simple but obvious things that you may find useful. Most of these you will have guessed yourself. But here goes.
1. Scout the locations – I scouted both the church and the hotel. The info. was very useful. BTW make sure you check out location at the right time of the day.e.g. early afternoon sun in the south etc. etc. Last Saturday the natural daylight was gone by 3.30-4.00 due to weather and time of year. Get the location in the church right for line of sight and fall of light etc.
2. Have the right amount of the right gear – I had 2 Canon 20D’s one with a 70-200mm f4 L IS and 580EX and the other with a 17-40mm and a 420EX with a Stofen. I had a 50mm 1.4 and a 17-85mm in reserve. The 20D’s worked resonably well, but if I have say they can be a bit noisy in lowish light-high ISO. If I had the ideal setup it would be a full frame sensor (something like a 5D) and a 24-70mm 2.8 and a 70-200mm 2.8. That would cover everything.
3. Make sure you know everything there is to know about using your flash photography, particulalrly burn out of details in whites and range of diffusion etc., etc. and be confident with it.
3. Take plenty of shots; pixels are cheap, but be prepared for a lot of processing.
4. Tripod – use it for as many shots possible, particularly any that are more posed or staged. (I didn’t do this DUH!)
5. Obvious as it seems talk to the couple well in advance and ask what they want. The feedback I got from the couple was that many of the pro’s they looked at are more willing to suit themselves than the couple and lacked an element of fun and enthusiasm for their big day. It seems that in some cases only big bucks get the enthusiasm going. However, having said that it is hard work, particularly if you don’t fully know what your doing.
I am still processing franitically I have include a few rough shots to give an idea. If anyone wants to see the full gallery you can pm me for the PIN. More later.
MJ
Hey Michael, just noticed this post. Some of the first photos are visible (maybe its just me).
cheers
Cheers Mark,
Pbase is not the greatest of hosting sites for linking. I ‘ll redo in flickr.
MJ
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