Dazzler - Shooting First Wedding

Posted by MontereyJohn (Salinas, California, United States) on 31 July 2007 in Plant & Nature and Portfolio.

Son Will asked me to join him in shooting a friend's wedding on Saturday. It was the first time I have done this other than amateur shots in the past. It was a "freebie" job. It was quite an experience.

I put up a few shots of the newly weds, but felt uncomfortable about that, like it was intrusive. It was their day. So I pulled them down. So I will just describe what it was like and put a few shots taken at the site. (See home page link below.)

First of all I learned that the 100mm f2.8 macro is just great for shooting occasions like this. While it lacks zoom, it has good clarity in the images. I will be sure to use this lens for similar occasions in the future.

The light was late afternoon so there was a lot of glaring. I should have left the polarizer on. Lesson learned.

I also learned to watch where I put my fingers! The back of the Canon Rebel, like most cameras, has a quick key for changing ISO. Somehow in the middle of the ceremony I hit that key and changed the ISO from 200 to 1600. Talk about noisy images. Glad this was a pro bono job :) The pix are recoverable to acceptable levels but could have been a lot better.

The other lens was a 20-35mm wide. Once off individuals, it was good for shooting the festivities. By that time I had also noticed the ISO fiasco and corrected the situation.

Will was shooting with a D5 and a 70-200mm L IS... beautiful equipment. I have not seen his images yet, but I am sure they will make up for my learning experience. At least I hope so.

I will be shooting a wedding for real in August, so I was grateful for this practice.

For blogroll of sites I visit regularly, items of interest and commentary visit my homepage at
http://montereyjohn-california-photography.blogspot.com/

Thanks for dropping by and sharing in the joy I take in this art of photography. Enjoy your visit, and if you have any comments or useful criticisms, please feel free to share them.

You can visit my web site at http://montereyjohnphotography.com/

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Comments (4)

Photo Buffet from Albany, United States

You're a brave soul! Good practice, as you said, and the "real" wedding should be a piece o' cake. I've read some horror stories about flash cards losing all the wedding shots, but if that should happen, I have to say that I have a phenomenal software I downloaded online that recovers even erased files. The license was less than $20, too. Email me if you're interested in the name/website. Won't list it here because this might get picked up as spam by your filter. It saved my neck when I'd taken 340 photos and they disappeared in a few seconds. It's a great safety net, especially for something like a wedding that would otherwise be a disaster.

2 Aug 2007 10:03pm

Maggie from Canada

Hi John
Nice shot of this delicate little beauty.

Your wedding shoot experiences are going to be useful for me on Sunday. I am only a guest at the wedding but I do want to get some good photos. I must remember to have the ISO, white balance on the right settings. Maybe setting it to continuous shooting might help too.

When I finish cleaning all the noise out of my Lipizzan Stallion shots (With neat image) I will load them to my Flickr account where you can see them in a slideshow.

Do you have a Flickr account?

2 Aug 2007 11:34pm

Laurie from New Jersey, United States

Shooting events can be very stressful, that's why I don't do too many. It can also be a lot of fun. One thing you want to do is to have a back up camera with you because you just never know!

I agree with Bonnie about the recovery software...I wished I had it last summer. I lost 400 images when the card glitched. I haven't had it happen since and fortunately the photos were not so important but it was still a tough lesson.

4 Aug 2007 1:32pm

Jen from Alpharetta, United States

Hi John!
Great shot, love the delicate blooms and the light is gorgeous!
I had a friend ask me to shoot her wedding...I opted to just give her whatever I shoot for free...good thing since I have now moved, not sure if I will make it back next year for the wedding.

5 Aug 2007 2:28pm

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Canon EOS REBEL XT
1/640 second
F/8.0
ISO 1600
100 mm