A problem with a wedding photographer!!!please help

[usndoc]

From a different angle. I attended a wedding a few years ago as a guest. The father of the bride knew I was a photographer and provided me with a medium format camera as I did not bring mine on the out of town trip. He handed me the camera as I walked in the door. He gave me the camera batteries and 2 dozen rolls of film and said "for every picture the paid photographer shoots, you take 2". Not wanting to get in the way of the paid pro, I kept my mouth shut and shadowed him from a few feet back. I took over 400 pictures that night after the ceremony. I took pictures from different angles and positions than the formal shots as well.

I left the wedding reception scared to death that I had just wasted all of the film. I had no experience with that particular camera and flash unit. It was a few weeks later that I found out that the pro had royally screwed up something with his camera and almost all of the shots were bad. I heard from the father that the pictures were out of focus, underexposed, poorly composed and centered, and some showed signs of a mechanical problem with the camera. The pro had screwed up big time.

My photos turned out great. Other than the few that had to be tossed as I was bracketing like crazy almost all of them were usable. If I had not been there, the only photos they would have of the wedding would have came from a couple Uncle Charlies and his POS.

So, having a back up is not a bad idea. I will not do weddings as a pro now as I do not like the liability of shooting once in a lifetime events. I shoot for fun and do not want the responsibility. I have seen what can go wrong.

 

[markc]

On the flip side of that, a photographer friend of mine wanted me to do *his* wedding. Since I was digital now and he prefered film, I used his 35mm for walk-arounds and used another friend's Koni-Omega Rapid for the formals. At the end of the night I put all the film in his camera bag and showed my friend where I stowed it in the corner (he was going to have it developed and printed). Unfortunately, in the headiness of the day, he forgot it. When he went back the next morning, someone had already taken off with it. I felt terrible. Luckily there were a bunch of other photographer friends there. The formals were lost, as no one was shadowing me that I recall, but at least some of the day was captured.

 

[SteveEllis]

People stealing at weddings really ****es me off, someone nicked our guest book!! What on earth does my guest book mean to someone else!! Everyone had written a little something in it too!! And to top it off my best man had supplied and fitted a cd player to my camper van (A 1972 VW Camper which I built and we used for our honeymoon) and had drawn the wiring diagram in the back of the guest book gits!!!