Help with banquet shoot

[roadkill]

Don't do the wedding.

 

[Sgtchavez]

Wow, this place is crazy. I have known plenty of people that get married without even a camera in sight. Some pictures are definately better than no pictures. I'm new here and I'm also fairly new at this art as well, but I have assisted multiple times and have seen the amount of work put in by the photographer and assistant. Maybe you can get a friend who is more experienced than you to help you shoot or just guide you around for your first time. Like someone else said, they can only say no.

 

[JerryPH]

One has to walk before they run. For an experienced photographer, a wedding is an exciting and VERY challenging event. For a beginner, it is an exercise in futility. The equivalent of you are asking a 16-year old who just got their driver's license to not drive in a NASCAR race, but win it! It's not going to happen.

Wedding photography is *the most demanding event* that any photographer will ever face. In no other aspect of photography will you face as many challenges in a short period of time... period. A beginner cannot hope to do anywhere near as well as a seasoned pro anymore than my 16-year old above can win that NASCAR race.

What sincerely needs to happen, is that the egos of the budding photographers need to be put aside and the B&G should be thought of first, not the now possibly injured pride of the "relative" wanting to play pro 'tog.

Near anyone can learn to shoot a wedding, that's not the issue here. What *is* the issue is that if your knowledge base is not solid, you are simply not ready.

If the budding photographers here *really* cared about the B&G, they would politely refuse to shoot and would instead assist in finding them a proper photographer, one that would do them justice.

The battle cry of the new photographer is "well some pictures are better than none". Well that may or may not be true and I seriously wonder about that. Just think of what the bride and groom have to look at 20 years later... if they were given the choice and told to find a good photographer, 20 years later and looking at those pictures, they would be smiling... instead of fervently wishing someone had cared enough to tell them the truth and stood up for them to get proper pictures done. But, it's all too late now, and they have to spend the rest of their lives living with that mistake... all mostly because of a good samaritan who did not care enough about the couple to either pass the baton to someone competent or did not bother to take the time to learn to do it right.

It always make me feel sad for the bride and groom... to come out on the dirty end of that stick. It's just not fair for THEM... to hell with the injured pride of the beginner, the day is not about them, its about the couple standing there at the front exchanging vows and rings. The day people start to believe that, is the day that the couple starts to get what they truly deserve.