Event Photography: Wedding
I shot my first wedding a couple weeks ago. Not for fun, but for real. Not “for real,” like I was the principal photographer (no way, that’s too much stress), but as a second photographer for candids.
I learned a lot doing this, and made a ton of mistakes too. Wanted to share some lessons learned, and also picked out a couple shots that made it into my final set and why I chose them.
- Lessons learned
- Get a fast lens, preferably one with a substantial zoom. I used my 50mm f/1.4 and borrowed a 70-200mm f/2.8 for this event. Glad I did that. Lighting conditions in churches are often fantastically bad, and to get the shot I wanted, I needed a lens that could do event/indoor shots in sub-optimal lighting conditions.
- I opted for no flash. Partially because I haven’t experimented with it and don’t feel so good about it. But also because I didn’t want to distract those who were attending nor the main players (bride, groom, officiant, etc.). I figured, I would be taking shots of the critical moments. The last thing they want is to see a flash bulb and blue light filling the moment.
- Think through the shots you want before the event. It’ll help you get to the right places so you’re not scrambling and tripping over stuff during that important moment. I kicked myself after the actual event because there were a couple good shots that I didn’t think through, and consequently didn’t get. Total bummer. Jenny reminded me that a picture of the hands (especially as the older people are praying a prayer of blessing and protection for the bride) can communicate really powerfully.
Couple as part of the larger context, but in the background.
Laughter is one of those things that when you catch it, people simply understand it. It’s a different quality than saying, “Everyone look here: 1, 2, 3…”
It’s just funny seeing how happy the bride is here, in this symbolic gesture of binding the other person to herself. My one regret is not getting closer and framing the shot tighter.
I like it that Pastor Ed Kang is there in the background, clearly smiling, very happy for the new couple, taking their first steps together.
Exposure slides from class 2 and 3
Alrighty, slides posted! (thank you kev for covering class 2 for me). I added content re: relationship between ISO, shutter speed and aperture (see slides 22-27), the different metering modes from a Nikon screen (see slide 3). Please email with any questions, as well as further topics that I didn’t cover that you would like to see!
[Further Reading]
A Basic Look at the Basics of Exposure
MYT Slides Posted
I’m posting the slides I used last Friday for my students in the Photography MYT (Multiply Your Talents) class.
The main topic I talked about was exposure. Exposure is the total amount of light collected onto your camera’s sensor in order to create that picture. An over-exposed picture is a situation where too much light is collected, and an under-exposed picture is a situation where too little light is collected. (In time, we may have our own preferences as to liking a slightly over-exposed or under-exposed picture for a given subject, but in general the leeway is no more than a couple of stops before the photo is neither usable nor simply pleasing to look at.)
In this first example, the photo is under-exposed. The people are in shadow and you can’t really tell what colors are what. Note that the background is not under-exposed however. The exposure settings used were: 1/125s (shutter speed), f/7.1 (aperture), ISO unrecorded (unfortunately). This exposure is clearly not sufficient for the picture.
1/125s, f/7.1, ISO unrecorded
For this second picture, more exposure was used. You can clearly see the blue jacket now, and the skin tones are nice and clear. Note the background however: the ocean and the hills have lost quite a bit of detail and are now over-exposed; it was a good trade off since I didn’t fill-flash on my Canon P&S (read more on fill-flash here and here). I chose to expose for the people (in the foreground) over the water and hills (in the background). The exposure settings used were: 1/160s (slightly faster shutter speed than the first), f/2.8 (much larger aperture opening than the first), ISO still unrecorded (but unchanged from the first).
1/160s, f/2.8, ISO unrecorded
Got a question? Just post a comment and I’ll field them that way so that everyone can learn …
Now for the more technically inclined, the increased amount of light used in the second picture is almost 3 stops (compared with the first picture). This amounts to almost 8 times the light collected onto the sensor (calculated from this table), which explains why the under-exposure on the people was able to be corrected. In general, you can see that it was the aperture that did the trick (f/7.1 –> f/2.8). In other words, the aperture opening got bigger, thus allowing more light in. The shutter speeds are very close together and not a big contributor to the exposure being corrected (1/125s –> 1/160s).
Higher learning:
Learning about Exposure – The Exposure Triangle
Exposure in Photography