First wedding: need advice on pic

kric2schaam626 · Jul 10, 2009

I was a wreck the night before. My fiance actually helped me out, had a second camera, but he really doesn't have "the" eye. If it means anything, I'm self taught. But that's why I am here, I have so much more to learn.

AtlPikMan · Jul 10, 2009

kric2schaam626 said:
I was a wreck the night before. My fiance actually helped me out, had a second camera, but he really doesn't have "the" eye. If it means anything, I'm self taught. But that's why I am here, I have so much more to learn.

What gear are you shooting with? what lenses? Do you have an external flash?

kric2schaam626 · Jul 10, 2009

I have a Nikon D80, the 18-135mm lens, and the external flash is the SB-600

musicaleCA · Jul 10, 2009

Haha, saw your other post. I hope you didn't take it personally. But you did ask for advice.

kric2schaam626 · Jul 10, 2009

You're right, I did ask for advice! I cringe at your responses only knowing that I'll learn from them

and as for this from the other thread:

musicaleCA said:
When it's something people don't understand, then they value it based on how much they pay for it, period. Hell, it's amazing in fashion how much some of these things will go for. *picks up this month's Elle Canada* A single viscose-blend dress, by Donna Karan New York: $3,295. Pg 158 for those interested. Most people would say "It's a freaking, bloody black dress!!! What's so special?!?" Truth be told, people with little understanding of design are likely to like it more simply because it costs so much; "it must be better". (Personally, I could put something together that's respectably close from Sears. Yeesh. Not knocking the designer though, because it is a very nice dress, and probably custom-made too.)

The point is to reinforce the comment above about percieved and actual value. Few clients out there wanting photography done are knowledgeable about photography. That's probably why they're paying for a professional photog in the first place. So, they're probably not going to recognize the artistic subtleties in your port that make you a cut-above the rest, beyond when they compare your shots to blatently underexposed, terribly composed ones. So when they see similar ports, one from someone that's $600 a wedding, and one that's $2000 per wedding, they may very well jump for the latter, just because they may percieve they're getting more out of the deal.

I agree with the way people value it. The wedding photographer that my fiance and I hired told us the very same thing. And I am willing to pay the money for great photography for my wedding, that's for sure.

kric2schaam626 · Jul 10, 2009

musicaleCA said:
#1 is okay, but the flash is too direct. Would have been better bounced off the ceiling, with a gobo to block direct light on the cake. There are also multiple colour temps; looks like you needed a 1/2 or full CTO.

No flash used here! The hall has spotlight in that corner for the cake. Any new word?

kric2schaam626 · Jul 10, 2009

More pictures from the wedding.

1.

with ushers

2.

Mother, bride, and sister

3.

guestbook and whatnot

4.

Bridesmaids at head table

5.

Bride and groom at head table

6.

Cutting the cake

7.

Mother and son dance

C&C please!!!

musicaleCA · Jul 10, 2009

There was no flash in #1? Hrm. Well in that case a very large board to cut-out all that harsh light would help. Or just asking someone to turn-out the light for a few moments while you get some shots.

I'll be honest, I'm a little C&C'd out. Maybe someone else will take a stab at these. Anyway, most of my comments from before carry over to these photos; I'd likely just be repeating myself.

Peanuts · Jul 11, 2009

I am a relative 'newbie' to the whole wedding photography world however I have shot enough to know some key words of advice.

Don't peeve the bride (or groom) off. By that I mean, they may say when they hire you, "we don't care too much about the photos, just capture the day!", don't even think about taking them seriously. They may feel like that at that moment but I can guarantee you at the end of the day they are going to be wanting to have decent images of their big day. Regardless of the wedding you need to approach it like they paid you $10k - that means you need to be proficient enough with your flash to approach even the stupidest reception lighting, change the ickiest venue into a decent hall by learning angles (and flash.. again). As much as I prefer using natural light I have had to tackle my flash and let me say.. it has saved my rear in more then one instance having this ability. I challenge you to take your flash into a variety of different rooms and situations and making it work. Here are a few a) small room with white walls and a low ceiling (score.. probably bounce the flash off the ceiling), b) small room with different coloured walls.. let's pretend black.. I had that once (bounce of nearby objects, blast the ceiling and hope there is some light fall off, direct flash) c) big room, high ceilings... too high to efficiently bounce etc. etc. Flash is your friend

I noticed in alot of these that everything is quite severely underexposed. Typically with weddings people will try to underexpose to 'save' the highlights of the dress. Honestly.. I have never run into that, I will expose to the right and watch that I am not clipping the dress unless it is a cirumstance that would make sense (for instance backlit and the edges of the dress are clipped.. I don't care about that). With your images, even if you did shoot in RAW you will probably be pushing them 'up' two stops and will gain a ton of grain which doesn't look pretty and could have been prevented by properly using a flash.

It is 3am my time and I got up at 5:30am this (past?) morning so... I am now rambling and should probably hit the sack so.. I digress.

Don't be too frustrated, learn from these images and work on some of the basics and you will do A-OK.

musicaleCA · Jul 11, 2009

About high ceilings, it's still possible to use flash for exposure, but you really need two things: An uber-powerful flash, and a body that can give clean images at high ISOs. By really punching up the ISO and flash power, then stopping down the shutter as much as you can get away with, what little light bounces from the ceiling can actually be enough to make it work. Yeesh, some photogs are nuts...

kric2schaam626 · Jul 11, 2009

The church was a horrendously high ceiling; not cathedral, but there were beams that met in the middle and the flash was lost in that.

I'm sorry for my incorrect terminology, but I used one of the reflectors that is placed on the flash. Apparently it didn't help, right? Does this have more of an affect when the flash is used correctly?

And one more thing, what about settings and metering on the flash? I am almost completely new to this. My equipment is the Nikon D80 and the SB-600 flash. I can imagine they work great together... when the photographer knows how to use them!

musicaleCA · Jul 11, 2009

I'm a Canon shooter myself, and the flash systems behave quite a bit differently. Are you using iTTL? It'll make your life a lot easier when running-and-gunning.

If you're actually trying to fill a scene with diffuse light and there's no ceiling to be had, then the bounce card on the flash won't reflect enough light. You'll want to either buy a reflector/diffuser (I use the LumiQuest QuikBounce when the flash is on-camera, and it does the job fairly well), or build one yourself out of some white foam and velcro.