Tag Archives: shoot

First Wedding

This serves to somewhat document the first wedding I shot, including some photos, thoughts and lessons learned.
The first curious fact about it all is how I ended up shooting this particular wedding. The soon to be married couple remembered some photos I had taken years ago when I was still an engineering student. They apparently like them so much they ended up finding me and asking if I’d shoot their wedding. At this point there was no way I’d say no.
They wanted something really simple with no frills. Candid style photos of the whole event and as a final deliverable a DVD with the photos. No prints, no albums.

Gear I used:

  • Canon 5D mk2
  • Canon 40D
  • EF 24-105mm f4 IS L
  • EF 70-200mm f2.8 L
  • Zenitar 16mm f2.8 full frame fisheye
  • Canon 430EX flash
  • Canon 430EX II flash
  • 1x Sandisk 16GB CF
  • 2x Sandisk 8GB CF
  • ThinkTankPhoto Skin 50 pouch to pack the zenitar and extras (on my belt)
  • Domke F-3X to pack it all in

Software:

  • Adobe Lightroom 3
  • Adobe Photoshop CS4

This is what came out:

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00163The groom

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00175The bride

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00237Rings

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00261Nice perspective given by 16mm on full frame camera

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00336The interior shots were being challenging because of the fluorescent lights… I din’t realize this at first and only adjusted my shutter speed after seeing some shots with a pronounced banding/gradient effect

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CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00635-EditGroup shot. Had to get to a 3rd floor to shoot this. To complicate the shot some of the people were standing in the shade (those on the right) and the rest in bright sunlight. Fortunately I managed to correct that. Oh, and clone out a whole table sitting in the foreground.

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00755

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00775

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00806

CasamentoRicardoTeresa_00808

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CasamentoRicardoTeresa_01045

Some lessons learned:

  • Shooting a wedding is hard work. You have to be constantly alert while handling two rather heavy cameras and be ready to quickly change settings. For instance, I forgot on several occasions to dial down my ISO when I stepped outside… and do the reverse when getting back inside… noob
  • For group shots I found myself stepping back way more times than I would deem necessary, 24mm just isn’t wide enough. Thus I need a zoom lens with a wider focal length to replace the 24-105mm in this type of events. That means I’ll be getting a 16-35mm f2.8 II L
  • I need fast lenses to better isolate the subjects. I have quite a few shots were a thinner DOF would make a very real difference. The 16-35mm f2.8 covers this too