Wedding Shoot

This past weekend I photographed a coworker's wedding. Another coworker and I tag teamed the photography. Going in with two photographers certainly takes the pressure off. While I've never had a memory card or camera fail, it can and does happen. So the extra support is always good insurance. It's been awhile since I served as the official photographer in a wedding. I certainly didn't forget how, if anything I found myself more aware of the technical opportunities (or shortfalls) throughout the evening.

I figured I'd jot down my observations and hopefully send a recorded message to Chris for his thoughts. My photos can be found here. I'm making an effort to show fewer images these days (show only your best work), but in this case I've uploaded just about everything I shot. These galleries are essentially servings as proofs. The selection also yields more potential sales since Smugmug offers a great E-commerce solution.

Photographing in and outside the church presented a few challenges. The first problem was the time of day. While the weather was fine, the sun set just about the time the ceremony began. This left me no time to shoot the bride and groom after the ceremony outside. My other wedding shoots left plenty of daylight for some fun with the bridal party - one of my favorites parts of shooting a wedding. So in this case I was left with about 45 minutes before the ceremony to cover posed images in the church of the groom and family. The time I did have outside with the groom was limited and under very harsh light. But Aperture does a pretty good job of shadow recovery - even with jpegs.

The larger problem was in the church. The lighting was a frustrating combination of two color temperatures. Warm spotlights lit the alter and cool fluorescents provided the ambient light. Strobes were necessary for just about all the shots. In fact, I should've experimented with the flash at longer ranges. With the subjects properly lit from the flash (at the flash white balance) the background white balance was very off (note the yellow color cast). What I should've done was bring my strobe gels and set the camera white balance appropriately. This would ensure a uniform color temperature from the majority of the lighting. Hindsight aside, Aperture was able to nail the white balance on the foreground subjects. Even with the background a little off, it's not overly distracting, I managed to get some good shots. And the clients are happy.

The support of another photographer allowed me to experiment a bit with off camera lighting during the post ceremony formals. I set up a light stand on either side of the camera. Nikon's wireless lighting system worked perfectly. Unfortunately, I placed the lights a bit too far from the camera. The result was harsh shadows on any image with more than a few people. I'll have to read up on the light placement for group shots. Otherwise, it was fun to experiment with a 'real' group and off camera lighting.

Lighting the reception was actually much easier than the church. With a flat white ceiling, I aimed the flash straight up. The result turned the ceiling into a great soft box. And I made great use of the trusty 50 mm 1.8 lens. The image quality of this lens has got me thinking about investing in a 2.8 zoom.

Post processing is still in progress. Even though Aperture is supposed to be one of the bet products for cranking through hundreds of images, the process is still painfully slow. My goal is to have all the images up by the weekend. Then I'll go through and select a portfolio of the best images.