[impatient? scroll down for the link] I shot my first wedding this past Saturday. Luckily, I was *not* the paid wedding photographer. Instead, some friends of mine who have a videography company let me tag along under the guise of their "still-shot assistant". In any event, I thought I'd share my experience in hopes of any helpful comments, criticisms, etc. Long story short, I learned that I am not ready for "prime time" just yet. But the practice was invaluable.
To state the obvious: shooting a real wedding was a whole lot different than sitting around the house thinking about it! And getting practice in a situation where there was almost no pressure was great0, especially given the fact that I'm not all that thrilled with the results. If I was getting paid as the main photographer, I would definitely be stressing right now over the quality of the pictures. But one thing I will say is that I LEARNED A LOT!! For example... 1. My autofocus is WAY too slow. FYI, I shot with 2 K10D's, a sigma 70-200mm 2.8, 24-70mm 2.8, and the Pentax 12-24 lens. Granted Pentax is known for having slower autofocus than Canon and Nikon (begin debate here)... but I've never seen this become a huge factor until Saturday... maybe because I mostly take pictures of waterfalls, landscapes, and my son who can't walk or crawl yet. Anyway, I missed a lot of shots while the camera hunted for something to focus on. And many of the shots I did fire off were blurry beyond salvaging due to my shutter speed being too slow. In the end, I ended up having to switch to manual focus for almost everything just for insurance purposes. 2. My #1 objective was to not be seen or be a distraction to the other photographer, and with that I thought I could get away with not using flash for the entire ceremony. Big mistake. This particular church is on television almost every day, and so they have great tv lighting. I did some test shots the night before and the light temp seemed perfect w/o a flash. Well, I don't know what happened from one day to the next, but all of my photos in the sanctuary came out with the worst reddish yellow hue. Example here: http://exposedfilm.net/wwsmith/yellow.jpg I haven't a clue how I didn't pick it up during the ceremony, but I didn't. So of course it was a fight to neutralize everything in Photoshop. 3. Probably the most important thing I messed up... I blew the exposure on all of the brides dress photos (d'oh!!). I think this is the one I would've got murdered for if I was the "real photographer". Absolutely no detail in her dress. Just a big white mass. My guess is that I should have exposed for the dress and let everything else fall into place. If the tuxedos ended up pitch black, I think that would've been better. But a bride expects to see every trim line, lace, and bead on her dress in the photos. So I messed up big time on this one. According to all of my photos, the bride just had on a big bright white sheet. But the tuxedos look sharp! (ha) 4. This is the only one that I couldn't do anything about. Being 5th in line behind 3 videographers and a paid photographer, I didn't want to move around too much, so my angles were limited. To be honest, even the paid photographer was in a number of spots that I don't think I would've been comfortable in (seemed a little intrusive). The funny part is, I've got about 5 shots that would've been great... but they've all got some body part of the other photographer in them (head, arm, shoulder, etc.) It's actually kinda funny. But hey, at least I know I stayed out of his way. 5. My flash recycle time was unbearable. I used the AF 540FGZ on both bodies, and switched batteries on each one during the wedding. I missed SO MANY shots because the flash was recharging. The first thing I did on Sunday was to order the Power Pack III from B&H. Hopefully that will make a huge difference the next time around (which is next Saturday, I think). Obviously I really need two, but alas there *is* a budget. And without further ado, here are the wee bit of keepers I managed to salvage from the shoot. As always comments and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. http://exposedfilm.net/wwsmith I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to see if I improve. Thanks for reading. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
