still journaling mostly over  here.

The first thing I am always going to remember about shooting a wedding is that it is long. Long and tiring. It's not that I had to run around and get exhausted or anything like that but it was 12 hours long and the entire time I was 'on.' Well, ok, it's not true. I was 'on' basically from 11 a.m. when I arrived until about 8 pm only taking about 10 minutes out to eat some supper. Then I sat down with some friends and chatted for a while, maybe as much as a half an hour. But even then I was taking pictures. I got one shot that I very much like while I was sitting chatting. It often seemed like every second my eyes were on the prowl for a shot, an op, something to take. It drained me such that I was seriously emotionally drained and even physically drained at times. An interesting effect to say the least.

The second thing I am going to remember is how little control of yourself you have at such an event. I mean, even though there wasn't anyone there telling me what I needed to do or where I needed to be at any one time there was so much that was expected. I mean the list of shots that the bride and groom wanted me to provide was about 30 long. I got pretty much every shot from the list and that's good. But that's not generally how photography works for me you know? Usually it is about me waiting until my eye sees something that it wants to translate into a still image and then it goes ahead and takes the shot. At the wedding I couldn't afford to do that. At the wedding I had to be there and taking the pictures of the things that needed the pictures taken. Interestingly enough, of the 200 shots that I have gone through so far, the ones that I find really cool are the ones that I did manage to wander into an 'see' with my photographer's eye and then take. The ones from the shot list are there and for the most part they are pretty well done but they don't really speak to me.

It is for this reason that I think that I will never really pursue wedding photography as a source of income or something real to do with my life. Photography for me is a love, it is an art, it is something I do because ti captures feeling and emotion and beauty for me. This doesn't really happen when I am being forced to constrain myself by some requirements. I think that in general I wouldn't want to be a wedding photographer. Ideally what I would like is to be hired as a wedding essentialist. There would be some other wedding photographer who's job it would be to get all the essentials. My authority as the auxiliary photographer would still let me go around and take the photos of everyone that I wanted but it would leave me free to only take the shots that my eye thought were worth my time. Or something like that. I think that I could be convinced to do a wedding as the primary photographer again, but only if they were pretty special and knew that my main goal might not always be to take the 'set' shots that exist in wedding photography.

Some interesting things happened at the wedding that caused me some consternation.
At one point the groom came up to me and told me that there were some friends of the family that were just getting started in a wedding photography business and kind of wanted to shoot this wedding in addition to me as practice. If it was ok with me, could they do so? I didn't have a problem at all with it but I thought it was very cool that he came to me and gave me the option that if I wasn't comfortable with the notion then I could say that they couldn't. The concept that I might stop them from doing so because they might come back with photographs that put mine to shame did not occur to me, even for a second at the time that the request was made. It did occur to me a little later. As the Bride was getting ready for the event this guy very clean cut, nice looking guy with a back-pack showed up and introduced himself and told me that he was from Calgary, was just getting started in photography and would like to…blah blah. He was very nice about the way he asked, indicated that he would stay completely out of my way and if he was causing any problems to give just tell him and he would stop. He was quite professional in the way he did such things. I said no problem. And I even thought no problem

Then he started taking his equipment out of his camera bags. Oh. My. God. Talk about equipment big enough to given even an elephant penis envy. He was a professional. He had gorgeous professional level equipment. Every expense. So much better than mine that my inferiority complex could have become huge. I never did dwell upon it but I assure you that the thought that he might be taking shots so much better than mine because of his equipment and his actual professional status did cross my mind more than once during the shooting. But really they were quite nice. His assistant, or partner, was played by his wife who also really seemed to know what was going on. They did bring some value to the posed shoots, coming up with good ideas about settings and posings. They took queues from me about positioning and timing and everything I needed. There was never any doubt in my mind that I was the photographer in charger.

Of course the fact that a few people who were looking for the wedding photographer went to him first before coming to me never caused me any problems, nor fuel my inferiority complex did they? I will heartily admit that in addition to his better equipment he was technically more on the ball than I was. Reading things off his light meter so that I could alter my f-stops based upon his readings talking about this thing and that thing. He knew the patter, the terms the technology. So much for my grand and impressive way of doing everything by feel and the seat of my pants. Ah well, I was also very accommodating towards his needs as a photographer as well I think. Gave him room for direction, made sure he was ready before we moved on and etc.

In the end I got a lot out of their presence and learned a number of things about running photography at a wedding. My efforts will be better for their presence. Might their photographs impress the bride and groom more than mine? Might they be upset that they went with me? I don't think so. I worry so but I don't really think it is possible. We exchanged cards before we parted and I went and looked at his galleries on his website. Technically there is nothing wrong with the photos he has up there in his wedding portfolio but they didn't speak to me, they didn't give feeling. I hope that when mine are done that they do impress in that way, that they do convey feeling and make people love them. So far, with the results I have from the 200 I have gone through I think that I have gained a fair amount of confidence in the fact that they will be appreciated. The weird part? I formed a big crush on the woman of the duo, the wife, the assistant. She appeared to have a much better artistic eye for the process, was very nice and cute and I really liked talking to her. I am such a freak.

As I mentioned above I ran out of memory for my good camera. I had 256kb, a 128 kb and a 16 kb card for my good digital. By the time the ceremony was about to start I had taken enough shots such that there were only about 60 shots left on my digital camera. Thinking I knew what was going on I switched over to my 128 card, thinking that it would be much better to have a full card for during the ceremony. I also put a film camera around my neck and put a 36 roll of film in it. So then I started to take pictures as the aisle movement started happening.

The ceremony was fairly beautiful. They had constructed a may-pole at the front of the seating with 10 streamers that came off it to equidistant spaces in a circle around the pole. The bridge and groom stood at the front with the white streamers. The groomsmen and bridesmaids stood alternating around the maypole with purple or blue streamers. After a whole bunch of talking, singing, i-do-ing and kissing, they actually did a may day dance to cap off the ceremony.

I started by taking pictures. I noticed as the ceremony went on that my memory card was filling up awfully fast. By the time it was half over I was 3/4 of the way through my roll of film and my card was approaching full. I was freaking out and wondering what to do. I had left my bag with stuff off to the side. Could I just pop away, what if something happened. Then the decision was made for me. The batteries in my camera warned they were getting low. As they were listening to some speeches I darted off to the side and changed the batteries and picked up my memory card holder. I didn't miss anything important. Not only that, I didn't fumble during the battery changing and didn't make any large noises. It was smooth. Then my card did give out and as I was waiting for the maypole dance to start I changed to the one that had 60 photo's left. Because I was taking some continuous shots, that roll went away before they were even done the dancing. I changed to my 16 kb card, which I used to capture the exiting the ceremony. Then it was done.

Or you'd like to think it was done. Now we are on the cusp of the portraits and posed shots and I am out of memory on my good digital camera. When I had planned this day I figured I'd take everything with my good digital with a couple, maybe three rolls of film. I brought a back up film camera, my much loved manual, and my second digital camera on a just in case basis. All of a sudden I was taking all of the posed and portrait pictures with my film cameras. By the end of the day I had passed the 2 expected rolls to 9 rolls taken. All I had brought, just in case. I saved a few shots for the important things like cake cutting and the first dance and changed over to my secondary digital.

My secondary digital is a good camera but it isn't capable of the quality of shots of the digital. It simply has less pixels. The majority of the candid shots I took are on that camera. Some of them can't be blown up much past 8x8 or so. Others are better. It's something that will have to be dealt with. Some of those candid shots might be the best shots of the wedding. Ah well, not so much you can do, you know? Far to late to do anything about it now.

Next I'll talk about the post wedding post production steps...