Busy busy week this week – heatwave or no – I’m photographing a wedding on Saturday which really means a week of build-up, double checking, lists, and extra batteries & memory cards. You HAVE to have backups for this sort of thing. A wedding only happens once… and it only takes one loose end, one slip up, and YOU, as a photographer, have ruined the day.
Don’t be this guy; cover your ass.
Wow… WOW – it’s been a long time since my last post. I’ll explain.
My computer has the habit of always being placed in the hottest room of my house, every place I go I figure an ideal location that will not only be bad for my computer’s life-span, but bad for me to even be around in a heat wave.
Last week temperatures on my third floor (location of workstation) passed 35°C and we abandoned it, huddling next to a central air vent, a floor below, curled around it like the last ashes of a cool, dying fire.
Ditto for doing anything but getting myself to work in the most direct way possible. Though I did take one walk to force myself into taking photos – it’s easy enough with the G11 – point and shoot. In this case I wanted to get a longer exposure which was no problem for the built-in ND filter. A bit over-processed? I think it suits the image, which for me is about the lines and details – exactly what the tone-mapping process brings out.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, so leave a comment!
Another snapshot from Erinn’s wedding.
One thing I’ll have to keep an eye out on, for my own couples, when shooting weddings I’m paid there to do, is going to be to take a small amount of time away from the safety shots – the gimme’s.
What I need to do is get the portrait, the typical, desired, conventional head-shot – that’s what I’m paid to do – and then make sure I leave enough room to express my vision creatively (that would be why I was actually HIRED in the first place).
Anyone can point the zoom lens of their expensive camera at the bride and groom – not everybody is going to capture emotion with it, and even fewer are going to take note of what’s going on around them.
A second shooter can certainly take some of the pressure off getting crowd shots, and is a great resource to have; certainly one I hope to bring with me on a few gigs, but that’s an extra I’m adding to on my own: feed the artists y’know?
If you were hiring someone for your wedding, or event, you probably hired them based on creativity (if you hired them based on price, as a commodity, then you really didn’t hire THEM but their ability to push a button – no matter if that person has creative vision or not – you haven’t noticed it, or you’re not paying for it), if you hired them based on their personal vision – what ratio of “keepers” would you expect from your event?
What I’m asking is, if they weren’t concerned with the “safety” shots – the MUST HAVES – they may get far fewer keepers, but what they will get, maybe only a few (a few dozen?), I’ll wager is a piece of art unto itself, would you go for it? Or the commodity: the 10,000 most in-focus images available?
There’s no right or wrong answer here. I happen to believe both are valuable given different contexts of need, and any professional worth their salt will come away with a great ratio of both. But I am just curious of the outcome – given creative freedom – how an artist could work, and produce, in what is otherwise a very commercial setting…
Please, leave a comment – let me, and others, know what you think.
Just looking up and around with the G11 checking out all the lines.
Erinn & Meera got Married this weekend… Erinn’s the eyes beyind Urban Nation and is a big fan of film photography. Meera, his lovely bride, puts up with his hobby like all our significant others’ do.
I was not the photographer for this event which was a nice change. I got to sit back, relax, actually enjoy the ceremony. Sure, I took a few shots – including this one – but it wasn’t the flurry of activity the guys paid to be there were into, nor was I one of the few dozen folks who bought or rented their first SLR for this wedding… I’d love to see how those shots turned out.