Wedding Photography

[Jonathan]

>> How was it you got the blame then J?

The photographer always gets the blame.  For everything.  Fact.

[That's actually pretty much true - I'm usually the closest vendor and the alternative is blaming a guest.]

>> Have you ever been stopped for taking pictures / using flash when it had not been flagged up at the start.

No.  I've only been stopped from taking pictures during a ceremony once.  I was told not to take "excessive" pictures.  I hadn't taken a single one when a guest near me started hosing the bride with some horrid Canon with a big flash gun.  We were "both" told to stop.

This weekend it was very very dark in the ceremony room and I'd worked out a cool way to light it.  I spoke to the celebrant (yeah, rookie error) and was told it was cool.  He also gave me exact places I could and couldn't stand.  I took one shot with flash (since I was using CLS I could turn it on and off from camera).  I noticed the registrar look annoyed so I instantly turned off the flash, waited for the guest to take her next shot (with obvious on camera flash) and looked startled.  Then took a few shots clearly not using flash so now everybody thinks I never use flash.......

The registrar winced every time the flash went off and started to look angry.  (Out of interest it's the registrar that can stop the wedding at any point and declare it void - do not mess with them).

The venue manager looked really angry too because she was right in the couple's face.  He said to me "I'm going to put a stop to this".  I said "well, if you don't the reg might..." (really I didn't care about guest in face syndrome - but I didn't want the ceremony abandoned).  He had a word and the guest came to berate me in Spanish because she assumed I'd complained about the competition   This was during a quiet bit of the ceremony so I couldn't really argue.

I heroically ran away

[Graham]

I heroically ran away

Always works for me!

[rksmith51]

I went for a test shoot meet the couple at the weekend, and found results a bit varied, well more than I would have hoped for. Jonathan reviewed some of the shots and was sooooo  helpfull and pointed out some basic errors that would have been less than worthwhile on the day.

I'm still very wary about using flash as some images were so badly over exposed, so I've been practicing with manual settings on the camera and the images are much more reliable but now I have to read the back of the flash gun to ensure I'm within usable range for it,

Does anyone have any recommendations on how they setup for manual work and things to watch out for when doing so.

Bob

[Jonathan]

You mean manual on camera and flash in TTL?  Nice combo.

Remember that the shutter speed basically controls how bright or dark the background is.

I set the aperture for DOF I want (maybe f4?) and the shutter speed for the ambient light (maybe 1 - 1.5 stops underexposed) and then let the TTL do the heavy lifting.

Things to watch out for?  Mirrors.

[rksmith51]

You mean manual on camera and flash in TTL?  Nice combo.

Remember that the shutter speed basically controls how bright or dark the background is.

I set the aperture for DOF I want (maybe f4?) and the shutter speed for the ambient light (maybe 1 - 1.5 stops underexposed) and then let the TTL do the heavy lifting.

Things to watch out for?  Mirrors.

Very true Jonathan, I also tried slow sync to get the background properly exposed and now appreciate that the flash rage\power setting illuminates the subject, and ambient light the background. If you use just ambient light you don't have that problem, but your subject may have dark shadows depending on the light angle, so fill flash is now required........ I want to run away now..... I never appreciated how flash is not an instant fix for low light.

My journey in the minefield that is wedding photography has turned a corner, learning how to balance the light to give the desired image is next on the to do list, lot of experiments today