Ask yourself, IF I need to ask these types of questions of flash, am I really ready to accept a wedding in the first place? The fact that its in the fall if you choose now, you likely can give someone time to find someone else if upon further reflection you think it isn't a good idea. Everyone has to get a start somewhere and at sometime. Only you can decide when its right for you. It sure isn't my place to tell you you are not ready, nor will I. If you believe you are really ready to take on these type of tasks, I wish you only the best of luck.
The craft side has to be almost instinctive to do an effective job. Why? Time and 90+ percent of a good wedding book is about people and not photography. Its gee I want these 200 photos all done within 15 minutes after the wedding so we can get to the reception and get drunk. People tend to be far less patient when there is booze waiting. I wonder what the percentage of wedding photogs have had to deal with this. My guess is that its nearly 100. Further more there is ALWAYS someone that is stressed out beyond belief. Its normal and natural, but they often take it out on either the wedding planner or the photographer. You have to grin and bear it, even if you did nothing wrong.
Now the risks. I know of one case where a photographer was sued for poor performance. What did he have to do? Reshoot totally has their expense. That meant rebuy the flowers, rebuy the cakes, re rent the tuxs and fly in the entire wedding party, rent the hall and pay the pastor again. It ran into the 10s of thousands of dollars. Even if they don't go to these extremes, people tend to get real cranky if a once in a lifetime event is fouled up for some reason even if it is a mechanical failure that is not your fault. Do you use two bodies or have another person also taking pictures in case your body fails? What if a card crashes and the images are lost? Do you use multiple cards to keep the number of images lost to a minimum and a book can still be made, even if it isn't an ideal book??? In the days of film I once saw a tech get film out of a machine that she said looked funny. I guess it did. The tech had run a roll of film from a wedding photog through the C41 machine, only this was an E 6 slide film.
One piece of advise that I think works in any photography type of situation is plan ahead and plan for what you don't expect. Have backups for backups and be ready to work with what you have and not complain about what you need that you haven't got. More often than not there is a way, if you can think of it quickly enough.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Flash Photography
From: Gregory Fraser <Gregory.Fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, June 19, 2009 7:00 am
To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students
<photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
I have my second wedding to shoot this fall and I have a question about camera settings for events like weddings. I have noticed that most wedding photos I see appear to have been shot at around f11 because the DOF is quite long. I prefer at least a little bokeh in the background so I thought about why people would shoot stopped down and I figured the reason was that the photographer does not have enough time to get that critical focus.Anyway I'm wondering if the professionals on this list have preferred or standard camera settings for events where you or the subject moves around a lot.Greg
