Tag Archives: wedding

Photography

Irish Wedding

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This was the first wedding that I’ve been to in a while where I have not been the photographer in some capacity. It was nice to avoid the pressure! The disadvantage of course is that I was not always — not often — in the right place for the best shot.

Carol and Stephen get married

It still didn’t stop my trying.

Carol and Stephen get married

Over the last few years I have been to an Anglican church wedding, a civil partnership, a couple of registry office weddings, a Jewish wedding but never a Catholic one.

Carol and Stephen get married

As anyone who knows me will realise, I’m not a man of faith, but it’s always interesting to see the differences.

The memorable feature of this wedding (in terms of the wedding service rather than what it meant to me to see a good friend get married!) was its obsession with the creation of new offsprings. Little mention was made of their one year old daughter…

Carol and Stephen get married

As you might imagine of an Irish wedding, the service was only the start. The reception went on for… well, longer that I stayed awake in any case. All I can say is that at midnight, only a couple of hours after a huge meal, they were bringing out burgers for a snack.

Carol and Stephen get married

One last thing that I wanted to mention, though it’s not strictly about the wedding. I got back to the hotel in the early hours of the morning and didn’t rush up the next day. It got to nearly ten and I realised that I had missed the breakfast. I wasn’t too concerned, since Tipperary town was only a five minute drive away, and continued to lay in bed for a little longer.

Just before ten thirty, the phone rang. Would I like breakfast? She wouldn’t take no for an answer. I love service in Ireland…

Photography

More wedding pictures

The Bride and Groom with confetti

I’ve photographed a few weddings before, but this one was different. The others have all been for friends. This one was for a friend of a friend, someone I’d never met before. In the end I don’t think that made any difference, but I was much more conscious that I mustn’t get in the way.

Overall it was probably the best of those that I’ve done, though not without a few “misses.” I was badly placed when the bride first arrived and only got a few unusable extreme close-ups of her and the bridesmaids. The registry office was very bright so it was difficult to get a good “angle” without also getting in the way. And when I wasn’t in the way the backgrounds were fussy or included people I didn’t necessarily want to include.

Once outside the registry office itself, where I could choose where the light came from and where there was more space, everything went to plan. I picked “machine-gun mode” when the bride and groom first went outside, capturing their expressions as they were bombarded with confetti. All the “formal” family and friends shots went quickly and effectively. I managed to get at least once picture of each where no-one was blinking or looking the wrong way.

It was a beautiful day, windy but not cold, which I think helped a lot. Last time I was keen to finish quickly, before everyone froze to death.

I’m getting better at the post-processing, too. I had some of my favourite images up on Flickr after less than an hour. Applications like Aperture really make event photography so much easier.

It was fun going in and shooting just the wedding. I’m not sure I’d want to do this for a living (or even for money necessarily) but I thought it worked out well. I hope the bride and groom like them too.

Photography

White Wedding

Wedding rings and the wedding register

The short version of this post is: congratulation to the happy couple! Enjoy your honeymoon and see you when you get back. The longer version follows…

A month ago I drove up to the midlands for a wedding where I had been asked to be the photographer. It’s not the first time that this has happened but it is the first time that I’ve been the “official” photographer and it’s also the first time where the wedding has been in a church, white dress, limo and all.

It may have been more formal but I was also more prepared. I asked a question on a StackExchange site. There were going to be more people, so I got a list of pictures that the bride and groom wanted in advance. Last time I didn’t have an external flash and ended up spending a lot of time in Photoshop fixing up the flaws. This time I hired a flash.

Or at least, that was the plan. I waited until noon for the flash (and a nice L-series lens that I thought I’d try out) but it didn’t turn up. The courier said they couldn’t make it because of the snow, but in the rest of the weekend I didn’t see any of the white stuff.

I ended up picking up a a flash at the local Jessops, which was an unexpected expense but it worked out in the end.

On the day things went pretty well. The Chauffeur had clearly done this a lot before and helped out for the pictures by the car. A helpful uncle corralled the troops, ticking off most of the pictures on my list pretty quickly. Which was great as it was… well, the middle of December and we were outside. Some of the smiles may actually be people shivering.

Looking back over the images I have mainly the expected problems: people blinking or looking in the wrong direction, some minor under or over exposure. I took plenty of pictures so, mostly, the blinking wasn’t a problem. And the technical issues were not significant as I shot in RAW and it’s possible to recover the best part of two stops of exposure in Aperture.

I did, however, miss a couple of important shots. The brides sister was under represented and four shots of the grooms family all came out badly. Disappointing but not the end of the world.

Ultimately it’s not me that needs to be happy with them though. As I write this I am about to send off the book of the wedding for printing. I hope the recipients are happy with it!