Shot my first wedding!

BTilson · Sep 21, 2008

I am by no means a professional photographer, but due to time and budget constraints I was recruited to do photography for my sisters wedding, with a notice of only four or five days. Naturally, I was somewhat nervous, but as it was for my baby sister, I poured myself into this task, doing mass amounts of research and practice in order to be as prepared as I possibly could.

So the big day finally arrived. I looked over my checklist about thirty times and finally went out the door. Everything was clicking along nicely when, between the ceremony and reception, my memory card bugged out on me. I shoot with a D40 which takes SD cards, but I had a mini SD card in a normal SD card adapter. Thankfully, I was able to procure another decent sized card in time to shoot the reception, sweating the whole time due to worry that I had lost all the shots I had already taken.

Well, I ran to the store today to buy a card reader. Got back home and holding my breath, I put my mini SD card in.

KACHING! All my pictures were still there! It was just the adapter that had died. I almost fainted with relief. So, I am sitting here now, going through the 886 pictures I took, and I must say that I am proud of myself. I did some very nice work, if I do say so myself. Being my first wedding, I am thrilled with 99% of my shots. All in all, it was a successful evening.

Moral of the story however, don't shoot anything critical on cheap memory! I lucked out this time, but it easily could've went the other way.

When I have everything organized and edited, I'll share some of my work and see what everyone thinks.

jenn76 · Sep 21, 2008

That's awesome, especially to be happy with that large of a percentage of your shots! I'm looking forward to seeing some of them! :thumbup:

chrisburke · Sep 21, 2008

make sure you post em for us

pongerts · Sep 22, 2008

great story...

would love to see the pix that goes with it.

TamiyaGuy · Sep 22, 2008

Congratulations, man! I'm really glad for you that you plucked up the courage to shoot that wedding. I'm also, in a way, glad that your memory card screwed up; it's a really good lesson to all of us (although I wouldn't say that I would be happy to be in your situation!).

Great work, I'm sure your sister will love them if you do. Can't wait to see them!

BTilson · Sep 22, 2008

Yes, it was really a huge lesson to me. From now on, I am only going to shoot on the high quality stuff. It's still just a hobby for me right now, but that doesn't make it any less important, and my sister would've murdered me had I lost all of her wedding shots!

But yeah, I am also glad I had the courage to do it. I almost backed out, but they talked me into it, and I am now much more confident than I was before the wedding. It really was an ego boost to pull it off like I did, even with the memory card fiasco. I have since made a full backup of all 886 shots onto a DVD which is stored in a fireproof safe.

Dao · Sep 22, 2008

I am wondering if the camera manufacturers out there will think about putting 2 memory card slots in one camera. (Or they already did)

So if the camera owner put 2x 2gig flash memory cards in the camera, he/she can choose either 4gig total combined storage or 2gig mirror storage.