Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Shooting First Wedding

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.

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.

7 comments:

Ginnie Hart said...

I think congratulations are in order for your wedding stints, John! Sounds like you had a good learning experience from this one.

And I totally agree about that Canon ISO feature, which has "caught" me as well. I hate it when it happens, so I try to check every time I turn my camera on.

I REALLY like all 3 of these pics here. You have some wonderful shots, John!

Anonymous said...

So now you're a big time wedding photographer, too?! :-) Ah, the wonders of technology. You could have never done that with film, but there are a whole host of other things that could have gone wrong with film!

I'm headed out your way on August 25th and will stay until Sept 2nd. I'm looking forward to meeting you and Will. I'll be staying in Carmel By The Sea.

Anonymous said...

nice shots all
but what are those 3 orangey dots behind the sunflower - are they the eyes of some spider? :)

Anonymous said...

Beautiful flowers.

Jill said...

Good luck! Too much pressure for me.

Anonymous said...

Some really great shots, M and C are coming over tomorrow to take a look, I'll let you know what they say!

Anonymous said...

Some really great shots, M and C are coming over tomorrow to take a look, I'll let you know what they say!

Copyright Notice

All images on this site are copyrighted. It is expected that copyright will be respected. Please do not copy or otherwise use these images without permission of the copyright owner, John A. Wilson.