Scott Kelby may have given the best insight when he wrote in his book The Digital Photography Book v1: If you have a long lens, before long, someone you know will get married but they won't have a budget for a professional photographer. He'll ask "Can you shoot our wedding photos?"
Well for me it didn't happen quite this way. I've been working on getting my own photography business going for more then a year now (real business licenses and all). I've had the intention to start to work towards getting into the wedding photography business. Now, BEFORE any of you who are reading this who happen to be seasoned wedding photogs, don't start writing your hate emails just yet. I did not just one day say "oh, I can do that," and I did not just run out to Wal-mart but a digital rebel kit and say "now I'm a Pro." I've been shooting photos for about 20 years now (I started when I was about 6). I can use film, and I learned how to develop my own in a real wet chemical darkroom. I got my first SLR while in high school, and my first D-SLR in 2005. As far as becoming a pro-photographer, it's been a long time coming, it's a long story, and I'll tell you another time. But as far as shooting weddings, I've read most of the books out there on the topic, and I've been studying the work of some of the better ones out there, well they at least impressed me with their work (David Ziser, Jasmine Star, and locally Mel Watson and Louis Torres' podcast is pretty cool too). I've been putting a lot of thought into how I would shoot a wedding and what my style would be like, I've been working up my own confidence, and skills but wasn't feeling like I was 100% ready to shoot a wedding on my own, but then it happened.
A close friend of mine was getting married, I was invited, and one day I was just curious so I asked her who her wedding photographer was going to be and what their website was since I wanted to take a look. She told me that she was just having some guy she worked with take photos, since he used to own his own studio 20 years ago or something." With that, I told her I had been thinking of getting into wedding photography, I asked her if she could ask her "Official" photographer if he would mind if I took some photos while I was there. My friend asked and the other photographer didn't mind, and since my friend really wanted to help me out, she gave me pretty much free reign to shoot anything I needed to build up a portfolio for wedding photography. I worked out great for me, I got to shoot a wedding, use the pics, and there was a good bit of pressure and stress that was removed from my shoulders since there was another "official" photographer.
Well, I just want to say, I am in no way trying to claim to be the best photog out there, I don't have the best equipment on the market, and I know I'm still working on developing my skills. But when I first saw the "official" photographer he was "the guy who got a rebel kit at Wal-mart". (I had a flashback to David Ziser's blog post here)
I'm going to make this brief, but in short, the "official" photographer has a Digital Rebel, the kit lens, and a 430EXII flash with a Sto-fen bounce. I don't know if he had extra batteries, flash cards or anything else. In his defense, he did have a shot list, and he definitely showed he had some experience with setting up group poses. However, when the bride (My close friend) was getting ready to walk down the aisle, the official photogs camera had some sort of a malfunction, and he quickly asked me to step into his position and get the shots of the bride walking down the aisle. As the reception was getting underway the bride came up to me and said the official photographer wanted to do a staged exit to get the photos so he could leave, and she asked if I was staying till the end. I told her I was staying and would take the pictures. I was having a blast, shooting hundreds of photos at the reception. The other photographer also came up to me to see if I was staying to get the shots of the bride and groom leaving, I told him I was, and that was the last I saw him. (I'll add that I don't know what he had agreed to shoot for the bride, or if he had a contract, but, I made the decision that in my business of shooting weddings, I will stay from start to finish). By the end of the night, both the bride and groom, and several guests were telling me that I saved the wedding, and that I was much better then the other photographer. I like to think that it says a lot about the amount of work I have put into preparing to shoot weddings. But it was also a little luck, a little good fortune, and good business.
The morning after, as I was driving back to FL from NC where the wedding was, I got several texts from the bride, thanking me for all I did. I spent the next 11 days editing photos, since the bride was a close friend, and she was letting me use the photos to promote my own business, I probably spent a lot more time. on the 10th day, I selected a few of the best photos and made a quick little animoto slide show and posted it to the bride's facebook page for her to get a quick pre-view as soon as she returned from her honeymoon. By the 12th day after the wedding I had uploaded the best photos 'print ready' to a gallery on my website. I then made a full-video playable dvd with slide shows, and the image files, I made a custom DVD-case and sent that to the bride and groom. There is some more stuff I am still working on (My official gift to them will be a printed photo book type album) and I'm still working on some 'Artist Edits'. This was the first wedding I have ever shot, I left having shot thousands of images. The photos that accompany this post were all shot at this wedding. I would welcome comments from other photographers, let me know how you think I did? Leave me tips for what else I could do, or do better. Tell me what it was like to shoot your first wedding. Just remember, everyone has to start somewhere. And the most important people the bride and groom from my first wedding keep thanking me.
I missed yesterday for my 365Project, after shooting almost 2000 frames at a friends wedding this past weekend, I had to give my cameras a rest.
Today's shot comes along with a Wedding photography tip. I have read many books on wedding photography, and I have never seen anything like this. In today's market, many wedding photographers put together wedding albums, and the many ways to get book albums published, many photos are designing them. So here is my tip, at the wedding, grab a couple extra copies of the wedding program, ask the bride to send you a copy of the invitation, and grab a copy of anything else that the guests are given (If there are extra copies). Then you can take these back to your studio, or another area you can control the lighting and have some time to play around and get some creative shots of these. Remember, the bride usually spent a considerable bit of time and effort to plan out every detail here. You can then use these shots as either page background images, or as smaller detail images in the album. In this case, this is the invitation to the wedding I went to this past weekend. I could tell that someone spent a lot of time carefully hand painting and decorating these. While at the wedding the bride told me she painted them all by hand. So, I knew this will be an important detail to include in the album. I shot this with a Lensbabies2.0 special effects lens then tweaked it in Aperture3.
So if you have ever been out shooting at a park or wildlife preserve you quite possibly may have seen something similar to this. A whole bunch of photographers all crowding together to try to all get what is essentially the same photograph. The other thing to think about is how often you can show up at that same location and each and every day and see a similar group of photographers all in the same spot shooting the same thing again and again and again.
Now for my tip I want to first acknowledge that there is usually a reason that photography will group up like this. There is usually something half interesting there to photograph.
A good bit of time though, the location where the photographers group up might have been decided on other factors than the location being the best location to photograph from. Consider some of the following reasons that I have seen photographers group up. -The location is the most convenient, easy to access. -One photographer stopped to take a quick photo and everyone else stopped too. -One photographer stopped to take a photo of an animal or another subject, another photographer saw the first taking the picture, but did not see the subject. When the second photographer gets to the location the subject moved, but the second photographer didn't know that, and set up his camera to photograph, and others photogs followed them. -No photographers have bothered to walk around the next corner to see there is a better shot.
OK so here is the tip: When you see a group of photographers grouping together to try to get a photo of the same thing... Walk another 100ft to either side and make your own shot. Oh and you can also photograph the group of photographers like I did here.
There are times when you may be out on a mission to photograph a subject or a location that you have planned out. You know exactly how you are going to take the picture, how you are going to compose it, and how you are going to process the final image. then there are times when you are out, and you stumble across a cool location or you happen to be in the right place at the right time. This was one of the later. I was just a couple weeks into my first ever 365Project, I had planned on shooting all my photos that week at night. I like night shoots, they are different because most people don't think of shooting as much when the sun goes down. I think anytime you can get to a location to make a photo look different from anyone else that shoots it you have done a good job to photograph it. One of the easiest ways to do this is to go out to shoot at night. For this photo, as I said earlier I stumbled upon the location. the photo that I wanted to shoot at this location was going to be a long exposure of the drawbridge in New Smyrna Beach, FL. I wanted to capture the motion of the bridge as it raised and lowered, unfortunately, the hour or two that I was there might be the only time I have not seen any boats on the river. Not to let the opportunity go lost, I looked for some other shots. I had made some shots of a boat dock on the south side of the bridge in front of the Riverview Grill, and I was on my way back to my truck when I happened to notice how the light house in the distance was acting as a backlight and creating a silhouette of the land across the river. There was also this boat just sitting there in a lift out of the water. The boat itself was being lit by the orange mercury vapor streetlights on the bridge. I set up the shot by setting my tripod right under the bridge, and took several exposures. For each exposure I was trying to time it just right to get the moving light beam from the lighthouse to sweep through the picture as it was being exposed, it took me a few tries to get it right. the final ingredient of this photo came along in post processing, and was sort of a lucky accident. As I said the boat was illuminated by orange colored light from the streetlights. A simple adjustment in Aperture2 of using the White Balance dropper tool to click on the hull of the boat and instantly the boat was colored properly, and the water and the sky in the background took on a cool deep blue hue.
Day33- I Speak Through My Camera
Originally uploaded by Emanon Photography
I've been strugling for almost 2 years now to get a full-time job, since finished grad school. There are some days I just want to scream, like today, when I found out that one of the jobs I interviewed for went to an internal candidate who doesn't have the education and experience that I have. I started out just taking some dark and gloomy self portraits, but then shot a few looking into a mirror. I realy like the way this one turned out. I don't really think of myself as artistic or anything, but I do express myself through my photography. My Photography is a release, and a stress releiver, and sometimes I fell it is my best communication.
I'm going to make this brief, but in short, the "official" photographer has a Digital Rebel, the kit lens, and a 430EXII flash with a Sto-fen bounce. I don't know if he had extra batteries, flash cards or anything else. In his defense, he did have a shot list, and he definitely showed he had some experience with setting up group poses. However, when the bride (My close friend) was getting ready to walk down the aisle, the official photogs camera had some sort of a malfunction, and he quickly asked me to step into his position and get the shots of the bride walking down the aisle. As the reception was getting underway the bride came up to me and said the official photographer wanted to do a staged exit to get the photos so he could leave, and she asked if I was staying till the end. I told her I was staying and would take the pictures. I was having a blast, shooting hundreds of photos at the reception. The other photographer also came up to me to see if I was staying to get the shots of the bride and groom leaving, I told him I was, and that was the last I saw him. (I'll add that I don't know what he had agreed to shoot for the bride, or if he had a contract, but, I made the decision that in my business of shooting weddings, I will stay from start to finish). By the end of the night, both the bride and groom, and several guests were telling me that I saved the wedding, and that I was much better then the other photographer. I like to think that it says a lot about the amount of work I have put into preparing to shoot weddings. But it was also a little luck, a little good fortune, and good business. 
