I shot a wedding recently, my last one, as a matter of fact. I don’t need the money anymore, and to be honest, I find them way too stressful. I don’t mind pressure, but weddings cause emotional pressure, which isn’t very conducive to a normal sleeping pattern in the run up to the big day.
And so I dedicate this blog post to anyone who shoots weddings for a living–you are a better man or woman than I (Definitely a better man, though I do look great in a dress).
Wedding photography, is, pressure wise, the photographic equivalent of invasive surgery. Were it not for my steely spirit and stalwart British resolve, I very well may have floundered during this most recent yomp through the salt mines.
Imagine, if you will, the myriad nuances that go into a successful wedding shoot. At the beginning we have the Bride and the Groom. Their day is to be celebrated by them and their family and documented by the photographer in a way that is (generally) in keeping with whatever wedding fantasy the Bride had when she was 12. They’ve looked at your photographs, and they like your “style”. Job booked; deposit paid–Let’s get drunk!
I arrived at the church early, since I know the importance of giving yourself enough time to set your equipment up. I had been there a few minutes when a lady arrived and introduced herself as the verger. I gave her a warm smile and informed her that I was the photographer for the day.
“Not during the service, I hope?”
“Well, yes, mainly for the service, in fact”
“Hmmmph, this is supposed to be a sacred service”
“I admire your pluck, but you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that this camera is sacrilegious”
“Well, you can’t sit there either…”
“But this is the very back of the church, this is where the Bride and Vicar have told me to sit”
“You can’t sit there, the guests are going to be there”
“The guests only fill up the first four rows, this is the 8th”
“This church only holds 50 people”
“I am inclined to believe you, but luckily, there’s only 22 people in attendance, and two of those are standing”
“Well, just so you know, if you cause a disruption during the service, I will stop it and have you ejected”
“wha?”
I’d imagine there was some Christian bravado on her part for this (Possibly the same bravado that put 50,000 woman to death during the middle ages for the crime of photography, er, I mean witchcraft), but I just couldn’t help feeling slightly unwelcome. I couldn’t be bothered to argue, since I knew there was nay ‘a chance in Old Nick’s boudoir that she would, or even could, stop the service. Still, were it not for my aforementioned British moxie, I may very well have had cause for insult.
More from her later.
Cue the guests arriving, cur everyone else, blah blah, cue the British rain, the British cold, and cue that most rare and beautiful celestial phenomenon–thick gray clouds. Wonderful, we officially have a wedding!
The service went off without a hitch. The Bride entered through the door looking radiant and immaculate; the Groom didn’t scrub up too badly either. I was situated at the back of the church in the shadowy recesses behind the organist, and there I stayed, purposefully snapping away, being sure to conserve my battery and memory cards for the day that lay ahead.
The Bride and Groom had just been officially married, and were kneeling at the alter in receipt of their blessing, when the verger approached me again. Now, before I write the dialogue that occurred between us, note that I was tucked in between two rows of seats, in semi darkness, not moving an inch, completely silent, and invisible to everyone, since they were 15 feet in front of me with their backs showing.
She approaches and takes a seat directly over me. She continued talking in a whisper, her manner suggested that she was merely picking up where we left off previously…
“But why must you take so many pictures?
“I don’t like to just randomly fire the shutter, but I do like to take shots as it happens, since what I’m looking for is a particular expression from, or connection seen between the Bride, Groom and vicar that will capture the atmosphere of the day. I can’t be sure when it’ll happen, so I like to hedge my bets by taking a few shots”
“But the camera is so noisy”
“Indeed, it’s quite easy to hear when you lean over it with your ear three inches away from the mechanism, but they are 15 feet away, and singing”
“How long are you here for?”
“The Bride and Groom have paid for me to service them the entire day”
“That was the wrong answer”, she replied, getting up and walking back to sit behind the organist…
My devilishly seductive personality be damned, I had a slight inkling that this lady didn’t like me! Me! I wondered upon my fate, were this to have happened back when the clergy manned the gallows; I closed my eyes and imagined the red hot embers tickling my feet as I thanked God for the Enlightenment, not forgetting to note the irony.
The Bride and Groom were now Mr and Mrs Groom, and everyone was happy, smiles filled the church from all vantage points, and the newlyweds lead the Bridesmaids out into the Church courtyard. Aside from the ego-maniacal rantings of a hysterical verger, the entire service appeared to have gone off without a hitch. My camera had obeyed the laws of incidence, and my settings appeared to have been in order.
And therein lies my problem with wedding photography….
But what it hadn’t obeyed, and what if the settings were wrong?
Think of all the things that need to be in order before you take a shot. What is your shutter speed? What is your aperture? Can you shoot handheld in this light at a low enough ISO to hold a clean file? Are you using a long lens, and if so, is there enough light to increase the shutter speed to eliminate camera shake? Can you afford to shoot in AV or TV, knowing the metering system isn’t perfect?
Shit, the Bride’s walking up the church path. Is she framed correctly? Are you actually picking a shot, or are you shooting randomly? You’ve only got another three shots maximum before she’s right on you. Get a couple of portraits shots and go for a landscape shot to get some of the church in. Get ahead of her again to catch her coming into the church.. Shit, the lights changed. The church is far darker. What camera setting do you use in here? You’ve chosen manual because it gives you the most control. You need a shutter speed of at least 1/100th to stop the camera from blurring faces. That means you’ve got to bump up the ISO, but ISO 2500 doesn’t create a very clean image, which means you won’t be able to increase the exposure in post-production without making the noise even worse. The exposure has to be as near perfect as it gets. The widest you can open the lens up to is f2.8, which means the depth of field is razor thin, still a lot softer than the f4.0 you were shooting with outside. Also, you have two cameras. The other camera is an older model. It doesn’t handle high ISO very well, and realistically, only 1600 is going to give you a usable image, but that means you’ve got to shoot at 1/40th. The Bride’s at the door, and you last tested the settings for this room an hour ago at 3pm. The light has changed, cloud has turned gray and the sun has moved lower in the sky. SHE’S IN THE ROOM, SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT. The Groom just looked back at her and smiled, but you know there’s no possible way you can handhold the camera at a high enough aperture to capture both of their faces in focus, they both have amazing expressions on their faces, which one do you pick? The focal depth means the other is going to be blurred beyond recognition. Every decision you make in situations like these are compromises. Meticulous planning and knowledge of your camera is the difference between giving the Bride and Groom a wonderful memory, or a mere snapshot of their big day.
Get any of this wrong, and you end up with a picture that’s too dark, a shot that’s too blurred, a scene that’s wrongly composed, sometimes even all three. Every time you click the shutter, it’s the one chance you have to give the couple a picture of the day they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Often, aside from the craptastic happysnaps the aunts and uncles shoot on their sony handycams, your pictures will be their only lasting memory of this most auspicious event. What if you mess it up?
If you are getting into wedding photography, or you’ve toyed with the idea of starting a wedding photography business, bear these things in mind. For YOU it may be a business, but for the people who employ you, it’s a dream. A memory that will never fade. They are paying you to be perfect. To capture every single important moment of their day. When they open the book 40 years down the line, the day itself will have gone from their minds, and all that will remain to rebuild the memory are the photographs you took.
That’s too much responsibility for me…
The service was over, I’d taken the shots of the guests outside, and had the family pose for a big group shot in the garden. I walking back in the church to pick up the rest of my equipment to take to the reception area a couple of miles away. The Verger was in the Church when her phone rang. She fumbled with the handset and pressed the wrong button
“Sorry about that, I pressed the wrong button, it was the photographer’s fault!”
I shit you not..
Before I walked out, I turned to her and asked her if I was as bad as she assumed I’d be.
“I will admit, you were a lot better than the photographer yesterday”
A small victory.
“My camera isn’t as loud as your phone”, was the only mean thing I could think of saying. She was a nice lady really, we had a bit of a chat afterwards, and parted with smiles.
I don’t like shooting weddings, there’s too many unknowns. Too many ways to mess things up.
I make it sound like I didn’t have a good time, but I did. I really, really did. The couple who I watched get married are wonderful. You know, I mean seriously know, that they will be together forever. Both of them are lovely people, and I’m sure I’ll be seeing them for a drink in the future. It was a pleasure to see them wed, and an honour to be charged with documenting it. Also, I don’t think they read this blog, so none of this counts as sycophancy.
Ta Ta femmés!
Oh, and the shot from above is the last final shoot from the shoot with Marcus White, pictures twice below. New stuff to come.
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In Portrait • Tags: Church, Client, Commercial, Dance Music, DJ, Guildford, Hyper Realistic, Male, Marcus White, Model, Producer, Trance, Wedding, Wedding Photography
1 Responses.
Nice blog John, i think you’ve captured how i feel about shooting weddings in a church perfectly, a royal pain in the rectum.
ive got a couple of weddings coming up but as they are friends its super difficult to say no, but the pressure is still there, you cant help but put tonnes of pressure on yourself.
Then when its time for the “formal” shots you get every one of the guests with all their piont and shoots/ mobile phones trying to take all the photos from over your shoulder and theres always one (mainly the mother/grandmother) looking into the wrong camera, no matter how hard you try to get every ones attention.
Holding the attention of a group of people for a few shots while you “play about with settings” and take a few more shots to make sure, light is right, everyone is looking the right way, no one has their eyes closed, composed correctly etc is quite a difficult job.
Also the rounding up of all the guests you dont know, when the best man is propping up the bar with the photo list in his pocket and clearly not helping me sort people out, and all your thinking is come on! ive got 45 minutes to get all this done, we are 20 mins in and ive only setup 2 shots! oh and damn its started to rain and everyone has legged it inside, now for plan B! damn ive sold my 10-20mm lens so wont be able to fit everone in on the tight stairwell!…