----- Original Message ----- From: "Jerome" Subject: Re: Shots from 1st wedding
>> To shoot more than that >> makes the photographer into a pest, >> and removes what little pleasure the >> bride and groom can >> hope to have during the day. > > Then I guess I was one hell of a pest! Sorry, no insult intended. The wee gallery you posted does have some very good work in it. > > But as you alluded to, most of my volume was from two things: shooting > digital and being a novice. Between the two, I took tons of shots that > were redundant just to make sure I would have *something* that worked out. > As my confidence grows, this will become less necessary. I still serve as > an occasional "wedding caddie" for a seasoned pro, so I'll get to be > reminded this weekend of the right and wrongs of "shooting with style". And that's fair enough. As you gain confidence, you will stop shooting so many shots, and especially, you will figure out what is important to the people and what isn't. A good learning experience is to sit down with the couple and go through the album you have made, and take notice of what they spend their time looking at. The stuff they glance at quickly and move on isn't where you should be concentrating your photographic efforts. The bride's mother is also a good person to be with when she views the album, as she is the real customer. As an example, one of the must have series of pictures is signing the register. However, it is pointless to shoot more than a couple of shots of each person, it just doesn't matter to them. It will matter if you miss those shots entirely, but as long as you have someting there from that part of the day, your all god, and you haven't annoyed anyone. > > Also, so many of my shots were from across the room, non-posed and/or > inaminate objects (80 of the make-up application, 28 of the cake, 20 of > the dress, a couple hundred of stupid details like church stainglass just > because I had nothing better to do at the moment, etc.) that I'm not sure > if the bride would've noticed the difference between 300 shots and 1000. > Again, I guess that's a virtue of shooting digitally. Ah, an ADHD photographer :-) I've always resisted the urge to shoot architectural details of the church. For me, my job is to follow the bride around like a puppy. I've never shot the bride while preparing for the day, and would never shoot more than a half dozen pictures of the cake. It'a another of those things that while you must have the shots in the album, more than a few is too many. > > Then again, there were those two times during the ceremony that she told > me to get the heck out of her face with my big stupid camera. Just > kidding. A few of the couples I've talked to at the studio who were dissapointed with their choice of photographer (by not choosing us) were very tempted to say that very thing because the photographer was getting in the way. I guess one of my points is that if you are shooting too quickly, you aren't planning your shots as well, and may not be getting the best pictures you could be. This is especially true of the portraits, where everything is in the details, and it is far better to get four or five excellent pictures that need little post processing to clone out nut-ups than to get fourty or fifty mediocre pictures, none of which are slavagable without vast amounts of post work. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
