Well, finally I seem to be getting the hang of this digital thing. I have had two weddings these past two weekends that I would consider to be "ok". I have also discovered the virtues of using the FAJ 18-35mm lens, and have achieved some interesting results. I am still having some blown highlight problems, but they seem to be getting less frequent and not as dramatic, so I must be doing something right!
The first wedding, which was from last weekend, is here: http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/index.html It is a complete gallery, so there are alot of images, but here are some of my favourites from the day... Actually, I have alot of "favourites" from that day - she was an incredibly beautiful bride, so it made for some gorgeous results. Of the 485 shots that I captured that day, I delivered 308 proofs to the client, the majority of the "rejects" were due to closed eyes, but I'll post about that later... http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0021.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0023.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0031.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0040.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0046.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0178.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0194.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0240.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0259.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0264.jpg and while everyone is posting moon shots... http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/bean/images/Bean0262.jpg (yeah, I know, the moon sucks, but hey, it was begging to be in the pic!). The colours and quality look a bit wacked out due to me editing them in a different colour space, and them being very low resolution for the gallery, but you'll get the general idea. Some shots are a bit soft, due to clever Tanja leaving her tripod at home 180kms away, but hey, you get that. And for weddings, most of my clients prefer softness anyways... Ok, I'll stop making excuses now... Oh, and although they aren't revealing at all, they are private in nature, but I DO have the bride's permission to post the lingerie shots that are in the gallery before anyone begins to worry about that! lol. And from yesterday's wedding - the results weren't AS great as last week's. It was a smaller event, lower budget, an erm, unfortunate looking groom, with, yet again, no teeth! (What is it with fairygirl and clients with no teeth?!!?). But a couple of nice shots all the same, and they were a really lovely couple to work with: http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light008.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light030.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light148.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light158.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light181.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light183.jpg http://www.tanyamayer.com/weddinggalleriesprivate/light/images/Light190.jpg Now as for the closed eyes thingy - with these two weddings combined, I shot exactly 835 separate images. In total, I delivered 585 images as proofs, leaving me with 250 "rejects", from two separate shoots. Of these 250, 35 were due to exposure problems (flash misfires and blown highlights etc), 40 were due to crappy focus/camera shake/unwanted movement, 26 were from blown highlights, 16 were due to bad facial expressions and the remaining 133 "rejects" were thrown away due to people CLOSING their eyes!! That is a HUGE amount, and all I can say is that I am LUCKY that I usually shoot multiples of most shots. In the second wedding in particular, there were three separate ladies who had their eyes closed in EVERY shot that they were in. One lady wanted a shot with her husband and 7 children - I took 16 separate shots and STILL didn't get one with her eyes open!! Another lady wanted a shot with her fiancee, and again after 9 separate shots, we achieved only 2 with her eyes open! I am guessing this problem is due to the P-TTL flash prefire on the AF360fgz, but I am starting to wonder if P-TTL really stands for P(ain in the arse)-TTL. I am finding that when I used it set on manual, I don't have half as many eye closing problems. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated... And now that I have put you all to sleep "flogging my wares", I am going back into my hidey hole to work on some clients' albums... TIA, tan.