| Greg,
I've shot a bunch of weddings. Always did a good job but didn't love doing it. I got out of the business and now focus on children which I'm good at and which I love (a blessed circumstance, indeed).
Mark makes excellent points. Excellent points.
In your defense, from now until fall gives you lots of time to practice. And that is exactly what I would do if I were you. Set up shots and shoot away. They can be in a church or any large space....just work with your tools and figure out what they will do. That is the best, and really the only way to learn this stuff.
I would encourage you to use manual settings on your flash, not auto, ettl, ttl or any of the other ones that lets the flash and camera think without your input. If your flash does not have variable output get one that d
o use it. Ask your salesperson to give you a tutorial on it.
I have the dvd and I've taken a class with Zack. His work is amazing but his teaching style even more so. You will learn all you need to know if you watch and apply what he teaches.
Good luck.
Lea
Greg I don't mean this to sound mean, but I do think its something you need to ask yourself.
Ask yourself, IF I need to ask these types of questions of f
o 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. F
YS 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
an 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> D
: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
ot. Greg
babies. they're what i do.
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