1st wedding...sort of!

[Rsxtacee]

So I went to my buddy's wedding last week. It was small, quaint, but cute. It was at their house, and the theme was very informal. In fact..he worke khakis, a shirt, and some flip flops:hail:. The bride did wear a dress though. This is the first wedding i've been to where i've worn jeans and a dress shirt and felt overdressed.

Anywho, they had a prof. photgrapher taking pictures for them (a family friend i believe). She in turn had 2 people as back ups, and there were a few misc. few others with their rigs as well. So I thought what the hell, ran to my car and grabbed my camera.

Since i was just taking pictures for fun, i had to stay out of everyone elses way (hard) and try to compose pictures from weird angles far away, or with the other photgraphers in front of me (damn hard)

All in all, i filled up my card pretty quickly. It was held outside, so it was nice and sunny. I was able to shoot at ISO 200 at 1/2500 to 1/400 which felt nice. It was honestly the first time i've really gone out and felt like i was using my camera. I knew my shots weren't going to turn out well so i used the experience to practice metering, DOF, and just getting used to the settings.

The bride asked me to make some prints for her. I'm not really satisfied with many of the pictures, and out of 200 or so, i found about 10 (if that!) that i felt were okay. So before i go all crazy in CS3/Lightroom. I wanted to get some feedback as to how i should crop/pp the pictures. As well as some suggestions for the future.

Here we go! Some of the pictures are edited for WB/Tone/effects in lightroom, or a tad bit tweaked in CS3. But for the most part no PP has been done.

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7.

8.

oh come on! its cute! haha (Them, not the picture)

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

Grrr...i had 1 shot left on ym camera and i cut off her head and his feet!

17.

They wanted their picture taken here, just too bad about the shadows.


Well, thats what i'm working with. There are a few other shots i'll prob throw into a book for them, but i just wanted to get some feedback. I know i have a lot of things to work on (Composition, lighting, metering) so i appreciate the help. The damn sun and photographers everywhere didn't help either, but i feel so much more motivated to learn about this craft now that i've had a chance to get out there and use my camera (was a table weight for about 7 months).

one last question. When exporting from Lightroom. I used SRGB. Should i use that instead of prophotoRGB?

Thanks again! I know this a long post, but now i'm hooked and i want to get better!


Ryan

 

[Big Bully]

I really like #'s 5,9, and 16. But I would crop out the untucked shirt on 5, that just looks tacky. I totally would have told him to tuck in his shirt, at least for the wedding and the pictures. *sigh* but that is me.. lol
And even though you cut off part of her head and the kids feet in 16 it is still super sweet! I really like that one.
Great job on the pictures, you did great for what you had to work with, aka other photogs.

 

[JerryPH]

These are all good examples of why photographers REALLY avoid taking pictures under harsh strong light (undiffused). This is not your fault at all, the timing/conditions were just very challenging.

Comments about attire aside, I think you did well.

- Watch your crops, you often have half a face in a pic or shoulders/elbows cut off and in others useless negative space.

- You can easily make your pictures 10% sharper and look better. Play with the contrast 1-2% afterwards too, see what works best. On my end, playing with your small JPG, increasing it helped.

- Did you shoot in RAW? If so, increase the white baance a touch to more accurately depict skin tones and give some colours a more warm feel. The whites tend to be slightly more blue than a neutral white on my calibrated monitor.

- On pics #1 and #2, they could be better cropped. The house is not the center of attention. This is where I would have used a very shallow DOF!

- Watch the DOF, but this time in the other manner. The ring shot would have been better served at F/8 or smaller instead of F/5.6 as the DOF starts to have bokeh at arm length and start to go out of focus. As for composition, either zoom in or zoom out. Headless bodies are distracting and look funny.

- The one right above it (#3), would have been better composed if we could see the 3 heads (B&G and priest/pastor). Right now, the bride is well framed but she has a headless husband beside her.

- For the formals, I would have taken them into some place that had shade... like maybe the back of the house? Angle of the sun suggests this is possible... and used that. How about trees? Were there any large ones nearby that could be used as diffusers?

Finally, I have to say it... I agree with Meg, a round backed shrt goes INTO the pants. A straight edged shirt can be worn outside (that why it is round!).

There are a lot of beginner mistakes made, but it was a good effort and shows lots of promise.

BTW, kudos for having the camera in manual mode!

 

[Warhawk]

the photos looks good

a wedding is something i am terrified to take photos of! 0_0

 

[JerryPH]

I love taking pics at weddings... but even having done 3 weddings while shadowing a professional, I would NEVER dareto do someone's wedding as the main photographer. There is just so much riding on it!

 

[audiobomber]

Lots of good advice above, and I'm a rank amateur, but the one thing I would add is to use fill flash to get rid of facial shadows in the last photo.

 

[Warhawk]

Lots of good advice above, and I'm a rank amateur, but the one thing I would add is to use fill flash to get rid of facial shadows in the last photo.

agreed!

 

[JerryPH]

Lots of good advice above, and I'm a rank amateur, but the one thing I would add is to use fill flash to get rid of facial shadows in the last photo.

By the time I went to my bag, pulled out the flash, put it on, turned it on and composed, it would have been easier to ask the couple to turn 10-15 degrees to their right and taken the shot without all the hubbub... lol

Not all shadows are bad. Without them, all you have are flat lifeless pics with no depth. In this case, though, it was not a question of bad shadows, but just too strong and undiffused a light souce.

 

[audiobomber]

By the time I went to my bag, pulled out the flash, put it on, turned it on and composed, it would have been easier to ask the couple to turn 10-15 degrees to their right and taken the shot without all the hubbub... lol

Not all shadows are bad. Without them, all you have are flat lifeless pics with no depth. In this case, though, it was not a question of bad shadows, but just too strong and undiffused a light souce.

You should follow the boy scout motto, "be prepared". In my case, the flash is IN my camera, so I'm always ready to fill in.

I agree, not all shadows are bad. I found them bad in that last photo though, because most of her face is so brightly lit.

 

[JerryPH]

The point was... we were outside, in already hard and pretty extreme light. An on camera flash would not give you better results. The built-in flash on most cameras is even more pathetic (even on my Nikon D200, when compared to a real flash).

On camera flash makes pictures look flat and lifeless. The 15 degree turn would give better results under those conditions.

If they were inside and facing a bright window, sure fine... but there is no way I would do that when outside.

Give it a try both ways and find out yourself.

 

[solrac8126]

Well that's a good practice, i won't like to criticize since i never done that.
Can you share your equipment?

 

[audiobomber]

The point was... we were outside, in already hard and pretty extreme light. An on camera flash would not give you better results. The built-in flash on most cameras is even more pathetic (even on my Nikon D200, when compared to a real flash).

On camera flash makes pictures look flat and lifeless. The 15 degree turn would give better results under those conditions.

If they were inside and facing a bright window, sure fine... but there is no way I would do that when outside.

Give it a try both ways and find out yourself.

I will give it a try both ways, I still have a bazillion things to learn. I had an external flash on my old Minolta film camera and I'm aware of how much better it is to angle the flash. But my p&s lets me reduce the flash output by 1/3 or 2/3 in Manual mode, and I'm pretty confident that a little fill-in flash would have reduced the dynamic range and improved the last shot.

This page has particularly good illustrations of fill flash in bright sunlight, while not destroying shadows: http://www.danheller.com/tech-fillflash.html

 

[Big Bully]

I love taking pics at weddings... but even having done 3 weddings while shadowing a professional, I would NEVER dareto do someone's wedding as the main photographer. There is just so much riding on it!

Ehh It isn't that bad being the main photographer. I have done 3, while the extended family wasn't happy with me on the last one, due to the fact that I didn't get a "full family" photo, everyone else was ok with what I took. Besides the families couldn't stand each other so I did my best, not to mention the brides parents don't like each other either.
Either way, it is stressful but, as long as you don't have someone over your shoulder trying to tell people the shots THEY want to get, its fine.

 

[JerryPH]

Ehh It isn't that bad being the main photographer....it is stressful but, as long as you don't have someone over your shoulder trying to tell people the shots THEY want to get, its fine.

I meant that from the point of view of getting the results that theB&G deserve or expect on this once in a lifetime event. A beginner to photography has little to no clue as to what is involved in doing a wedding WELL and most presume that its a walk in the park.

Taking a few snapshots is worlds different from the results that a professional will give you. Just getting results... and getting professional level results... if it was your wedding, what would you want?

P.S. - Just like doctors make the worst patients, photographers make the most demanding clients for another photographer for their weddings or special days... lol.

 

[audiobomber]

I shot my sister's wedding many years ago with a Minolta Hi-Matic G (38mm f2.8 lens). The pressure was very uncomfortable for me and I wasn't happy with the results. Looking back, the big mistake I made was not shooting enough film.

It was no cost to them, they seemed pleased with the results, and I'd never do it again.