A friend of Isobel's asked if she would be a witness at her wedding. I was then volunteered to do the photos! I had vowed never to do wedding photos because of the responsibility of recording a very special day it two peoples life and screwing that up would be catastrophic. So I didn't really have any choice in the matter! I watched quite a few professional training videos and most of them really just said that as every wedding is different there are no rules. Just get the best pictures you can!
So on the days prior cameras were cleaned, lenses cleaned and batteries charged etc. I basically had spares of everything so I knew that if something did fail I would have a replacement. All of that was peace of mind. Then remembered that I would have to wear a suit and had to dig that out - still fitted! Then proper shoes too. Not worn them for about five years and had full sympathy with the bride as she was in heels but preferred hiking boots!
So yesterday it was a case of getting to the venue early and casing out the place. I already had a good idea of what the room layout was from online brochures but getting a bit of time to check things helped settle the nerves. Photography was allowed during the ceremony so my aim was to capture the main moments and also the people there but without interfering too much. Also set a GoPro up which I just left running to also capture the ceremony. Everything really went to plan with only one equipment mishap where the camera OS crashed and locked up. Switch off and on cured that. Another learning point is that at the reception there wasn't a lot of room for photos so I had to use a wide angled lens. Wasn't worried about the distortion as that is easily corrected in Lightroom but being tall did mean that I was looking down on folk so if I was doing that again I would be tempted to use a tripod to get a better angle.
Sarah is Australian and Jose is Spanish (he had his family there), but there were also folk from Poland, USA, Greece which proved interesting as the drink flowed and the evening progressed.
I was knackered at the end of the day but I was pleased with the results and preparing well before hand meant little was left to chance. Once home I copied everything on to two different hard drives to make sure I had copies. I think I would rather take photos of puppies - easier to control than people! So I ended up with about 200 decent photos a few of which are below.
So on the days prior cameras were cleaned, lenses cleaned and batteries charged etc. I basically had spares of everything so I knew that if something did fail I would have a replacement. All of that was peace of mind. Then remembered that I would have to wear a suit and had to dig that out - still fitted! Then proper shoes too. Not worn them for about five years and had full sympathy with the bride as she was in heels but preferred hiking boots!
So yesterday it was a case of getting to the venue early and casing out the place. I already had a good idea of what the room layout was from online brochures but getting a bit of time to check things helped settle the nerves. Photography was allowed during the ceremony so my aim was to capture the main moments and also the people there but without interfering too much. Also set a GoPro up which I just left running to also capture the ceremony. Everything really went to plan with only one equipment mishap where the camera OS crashed and locked up. Switch off and on cured that. Another learning point is that at the reception there wasn't a lot of room for photos so I had to use a wide angled lens. Wasn't worried about the distortion as that is easily corrected in Lightroom but being tall did mean that I was looking down on folk so if I was doing that again I would be tempted to use a tripod to get a better angle.
Sarah is Australian and Jose is Spanish (he had his family there), but there were also folk from Poland, USA, Greece which proved interesting as the drink flowed and the evening progressed.
I was knackered at the end of the day but I was pleased with the results and preparing well before hand meant little was left to chance. Once home I copied everything on to two different hard drives to make sure I had copies. I think I would rather take photos of puppies - easier to control than people! So I ended up with about 200 decent photos a few of which are below.
