My first "Official" Wedding gig.........

[jdesigns]

I don't even know where to start. This is my first official wedding were I was the lead shooter and getting paid for it.

Thoughts:


Pressure kills!
There is a tremendous amount of pressure to shoot quickly, and with perfect exposure. The pace was pretty quick as the Bride and Groom didn't want to see each other before the ceremony to have photo's done. That means that after the ceremony, when everyone wants to start partying, that I am the one holding them up from getting down. The pressure to get the shots done fast was huge! Nobody wanted to stand and smile. Fortunately the wife was in charge of rounding up the proper people and getting them situated and ready.

It was fun!
Nearly everyone is in a great mood and is receptive to having their photo taken. The people are all made up with nice make-up and pretty hair and feeling good about themselves. It makes dealing with the people much easier. (Of course, this is only one wedding, and the term Bridezilla didn't come out of someone's imagination!) The Bride and Groom are appreciative of the work and that is what it's about.

PANIC!!
I had the wife download 3 memory cards to the laptop while I continued shooting the reception. She joined me and we finished up shooting after I formatted the downloaded cards. After getting home and downloading the rest of the shots, we started looking to see how well we did. UH OH! WTF!!! Panic sets in!! Where are the formal shots of both families? Oh Doggy Poo!!!! My heart sank right out the bottom of my shoes and through the condo floor into the neighbors living room below us! Did I mention PANIC!?!?!??? OH NO! We are not going to shoot any more weddings in this town! Our wedding career is OVER! (Am I getting the point across that I had to change my shorts?) I fired up the data recovery program to see if there is anything that can be recovered. Well, it found the shots that I took after formatting. That is a start, but we already had those shots saved. Nearly 8 agonizing minutes after starting the recovery program, it started showing my shots at the Spa, which were taken before the wedding. Yippie! We are not completely lost!!! Then came the ceremony, and finally the formal shots! YES! There is a DOG! (TJ, that's for you!)

So after the drama of losing and finding the lost formal shots, we find ALL the missing shots right were they were downloaded!!! Turns out neither of us had refreshed the viewer we were using and the photo's were there the WHOLE TIME!!! Talk about pressure relief!


Overall, it was a fun and rewarding experience. But now the real work begins. Even thought a lot of my shots look good, they could all use some photoshop touch-up. I have to start weeding out the blurry and bad shots, and then begin the touch-up process of the rest. Then resize and post on the web for online proofs, with a printing of 150 to be put in a book for the Bride and Groom to choose their enlargments. Doesn't sound like much, does it? Well, if 1152 photo's aren't enough, I don't know what is!!! They were taking within 6 hours, and I could have easily shot more had we had a contract saying we needed to be there.



Lessons learned:

Take more memory cards!

[Shutterbug]

Wow, you didn't die of a massive heart failure! This must be the job for you.

I shot ONE wedding, the shoot was for 6 hours as well and it was more than I could do on a regular basis. I get asked to shoot weddings all the time and I have to decline. I don't shoot wedding or births, there are no "do-overs". If you do a bad job EVERYONE will hear about it forever.

Glad you recovered the files! I had negatives....yes good ole trusty negs, all 12 rolls were accounted for and many reprints were made. I don't know if I could ever trust using digital for something so "one time". Too risky for me. I want it in my hand.

Show us some shots if they will allow it.


Congradulations Justin!!!!!

[PhoenixRising]

Yes, there is a Dog...

Man's best friend, Dog is, and won't let you down.

PicS! We want blurry pics!

[jdesigns]

Thank you Gail and TJ! (I'll respond more later!)

Ok, I am still up, so I will share a shot of the cake. Will that satisfy the Pic hungry masses?

[Shutterbug]

All I need now is a fork!

[yellowherbie]

Oh, man..

That cake looks so good right now..

Great pictures.

[jdesigns]

Originally Posted by yellowherbie

Oh, man..

That cake looks so good right now..

Great pictures.

The cake looked YUMMY! but I didn't have a bite...too busy shooting, ya know!

[jdesigns]

Originally Posted by Shutterbug

Wow, you didn't die of a massive heart failure! This must be the job for you.

I shot ONE wedding, the shoot was for 6 hours as well and it was more than I could do on a regular basis. I get asked to shoot weddings all the time and I have to decline. I don't shoot wedding or births, there are no "do-overs". If you do a bad job EVERYONE will hear about it forever.

Glad you recovered the files! I had negatives....yes good ole trusty negs, all 12 rolls were accounted for and many reprints were made. I don't know if I could ever trust using digital for something so "one time". Too risky for me. I want it in my hand.

Show us some shots if they will allow it.


Congradulations Justin!!!!!

Thank you Gail! No, I didn't die of massive heart failure, but I did have to go downstairs to our neighbors house to get my heart back after it sank through the floor! The were wondering why it was there.

The way I see the stress of shooting a wedding is that if I didn't get stressed out on a dark aircraft carrier deck trying to fix an aircraft that is holding up an entire strike package of 10-15 other aircraft from going over Iraq in support of our troops, with everyone from my own flight deck chief to CAG (Carrier Air Group officer, who is in charge of the entire Air Group operations) breathing down my neck and yelling at me to get the plane off the deck because the rest of the planes are burning fuel waiting for my airplane, and the package can not fly over Iraq airspace without my jet.......Nothing will stress me out at a wedding. But then again, I was trained for that, not the wedding stresses. (My english professor should be proud of that run-on sentence!)

I understand you are comfortable with film and that is great, I on the other hand, in all the years of shooting film, I never felt quite confident that I got the shot that I saw until the moment was gone and I got my photo's back from the processor. I was always wondering if I had nailed the exposure, composition, focus, etc.... With digital, I am able to verify that I got the shot, and then I can move on.

The missing images yesterday did have me in a panic. Once I realized that the card that held the formals wasn't completely written over, I had a slight bit of confidence that my data recovery program would save me. Does that mean that I will always rely on it? Not a chance in the world! But it's another layer of backup. By the time we shoot our next wedding, we will have invested in a another layer (Memory cards, Laptop are the first two) of backup in the shape of a portable Multimedia Storage / Viewer. It's just too risky to not have multiple backups.

The other problem with traditional that I have is that if I somehow didn't thread the film take-up spool, I could shoot an entire roll of film and not realize that it wasn't advancing until it's way too late to get my shot. Or if somehow the processor had a problem after the event, it wouldn't be possible to reshoot. Of course since you do your own processing, you wouldn't have to worry about it like I would. (I don't have access to a darkroom, but I think you knew that!) I guess I have to admit that I don't trust anyone with my images besides me and the wife.

Either way, I did enjoy the entire wedding photographic experience, even with the added stress of producing great images quickly and with perfect exposure, combined with the added pressure to get things over in a timely fashion. Who needs drugs when you can shoot weddings for a rush!

[jdesigns]

Ok, here is another pic that I can share without getting myself in trouble by posting somebody's likeness.

[PhoenixRising]

I would say what a great cake, but that has been said.

I will add, that I think digital allows for more mistakes, and for more great shots, then film does.

And I love film. I love the smell of it, if you can dig that. But sometimes film can drive you nuts.

Like not knowing if the shot is quite right or not.

I still shoot film, but not as often.

[PhoenixRising]

Originally Posted by jdesigns

Ok, here is another pic that I can share without getting my self in trouble by posting somebody's likeness.

Oh wait, there is the photos. Nice flowers.

[Toad]

Your pics are always awesome. Your a great photographer. But you know that already.

[jdesigns]

Thank You Toad!

You know that I'm available for travel to weddings, so when you get married.......!

[jdesigns]

Originally Posted by PhoenixRising

PicS! We want blurry pics!

No Blurry pics here, just beautiful bokeh!

Bokeh is defined as:

Originally Posted by Dictionary

A Japanese term for the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of a photographic image.

[PhoenixRising]

Zank you, Zen Master...

[jdesigns]

You so funny young grasshopper.

[jdesigns]

Ok, I'm still playing with pics. Here is another flower shot.

[EvilinaDM101]

Very nice!! I like what ya got so far!! Me love lookin at wedding pics!!

[warren]

congrats, jdesigns...glad you found the formal photos...and happy the job went well. Kudos.