Something Borrowed, Something New – My First Wedding Shoot

It’s something you never think will ever happen to you, and when the moment arrives, you begin to get cold feet and second-guess yourself.  ”Today’s the day… am I ready for this?  Am I prepared?  What am I doing?”  As you walk to the altar, your mind starts racing and you’re not quite sure what’s going to happen or if it’s going to go according to plan.  You want to turn around and walk away, but you’ve come this far, and you start to tell yourself everything is going to be OK in the end, once it’s all said and done.  It’s just pre-wedding jitters, right?

I can only imagine how the bride felt.

I met Andrew through Twitter and we had gotten to know each other pretty well over a short period of time.  He’s an aspiring photographer as well and has approached me with a few questions, but it’s not like he’s necessarily starting from scratch.  He’s already shot a few weddings in his time and he wants to focus on concert photography, which interestingly lead him to this gig.  The tour manager of a band he’s been shooting a lot of recently was getting hitched and needed a photographer.  He initially was going to go solo, but decided he would be better off with a second shooter, and I was thankful he even considered me.  Despite the fact it wasn’t a typical “inside a church” wedding, it was going to be a great experience for me to get my first wedding shoot.

We arrived at the house of the bride and found ourselves with plenty of time to kill, so we scoped out the place to get some ideas for where we wanted to get some shots.  Andrew had an idea to shoot from their balcony onto the crowd, but because he was using [an awesome] 70-200mm zoom lens, he wasn’t going to be able to get the shot he imagined.  I figured I was going to be using my 28-135mm, so I’d have the range to get that kind of a shot, and despite the EXTREME humidity, I was willing to run up to the balcony to get the shot.

We sat around and got pictures of the bride and the bridesmaids getting ready, with make-up and all the necessities, while getting to know Lauren, the bride, a little more.  She was the epitome of a rocker chick – inked up throughout, with a big Jim Morrison image tattooed on her right arm.  The dress was simply stunning in its simplicity, and the bridesmaids got to wear black dresses that would accompany the wedding perfectly.  The guys all wore black button-up polo shirts with red ties, red Chucks, and black flat-brimmed baseball caps.  The idea was that, because Dave, the groom, didn’t like his hair that day, he was wearing a baseball cap, so they would be doing so, as well.  It fit the couple’s personality, and after meeting everybody, I couldn’t see it going any other way.

The wedding ceremony took place in a blur.  One minute, I’m watching Lauren being ushered to the altar by her father; the next minute, they’re walking away as newlyweds.  In the meantime, I just kept snapping.  I made sure my exposure settings were set, since the last thing I wanted to do was snap off a round of pictures during the ceremony, only to find out they were over/underexposed!  One good tip Andrew had for me was making sure I had a memory card in my pocket so I could switch quickly if necessary, so I followed his example.  One thing I noticed, however, is I get in a very bad habit of sticking to Mv and a wide aperture, which is probably not the best idea in daylight… something I’ll certainly need to keep an eye on in the future.

There was a lot of spacing between the ceremony and the reception, so it took some time to get to a few of the key moments in the wedding.  It suited the couple – they were extremely laid back, and it definitely gave me time to breathe in between events.  I was able to take my time getting the shots I wanted, and if I realized I made a technical mistake, I had a chance to go back, fix it, and try again – a luxury I wouldn’t be awarded if it was faster paced.  This allowed me to rethink the shots I wanted and come up with something even better, which I was certainly thankful to have the chance to do so.

Once nightfall came and all of the big shots were taken, it was all a cakewalk from there.  Everybody was drinking and having a good time, which put Andrew and I to ease and got to take photos of the reception.  My external flash seemed to do alright, but trying to make sure my images didn’t appear flat was a little tricky with no ceilings to bounce the flash off of.  Also, after all of that time spent shooting, I ended up with a problem: my battery for my Canon died!  Oh noes!  I am fortunate enough to carry around the infamous Sony Alpha, but I knew that for these night shots, it was not going to hold up and the picture qualitywas going to suffer tremendously.  Fortunately for me, Andrew has not one, but FOU   R back-up batteries, and also shoots with a Canon, so I was saved and could go back to using my Canon.  Looks like I need to invest in a few things!

The people were hilarious and fun to be around, and Lauren and Dave were a truly awesome couple to work with!  Andrew and I had a chance to take a breather to eat and get off our feet for a second, which we desperately needed after running around in that heat all afternoon.  I had been asked to do a wedding solo before, but I wasn’t sure if I was up to the task.  After that day of shooting, Andrew and I came to the conclusion that having the other one to rely on was probably the best idea we had.  It was nice to know that if I wasn’t able to get to a shot, he was there, and vice versa.  That way, we didn’t miss anything – after all, four eyes are better than two, right?

It was a load of fun and, even though there are some things I’d do differently the next time around (naturally – any competitive person in their chosen line of work wants to continue to grow and get better), but because of this as my first wedding, it gave me the necessary tools and ideas on the workflow and how the rhythm is going to be.  It really wasn’t as hard as I had built it up to be in my mind, but having a couple like Lauren and Dave to shoot, along with their awesome friends and wonderful families, it made it that much easier and a hell of a lot of fun.  Maybe next time, I can enjoy some drinks with these lunatics!

Enjoy some of my photographs from the wedding – remember to click on the photo again to see the larger, complete image.  And as always, I’m interested to hear what you think!

Until next time,

- Patrick

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 at 12:30 pm. It is filed under behind the lens, photography and tagged with behind the scenes, photo shoot, photography, wedding photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.