Event Photography: Jumping Right Into a Wedding

So I am now, eleven months (almost to the day), of when I started to look into selling my photos and services to pay for my photography addiction. With a lot of research, lots of pricing comparison, and getting a feel to my style of photography, I have finally reached a comfortable zone to start doing events! I was hoping to get a few other events in before I did a wedding, but a friend decided to come to me to do record her wedding.

When she messaged me I was actually pretty excited, I mean someone actually reached out for me and asking me to do something as important as recording one of her most important days in her life; her wedding. I actually ended up saying no to her a few times and explained that I really only did landscape and nature photography. She said she understood that this would be something new for me but she really did like my photography and would really like me to shoot her wedding. After clarifying this, and understanding I would also do this as an official business transaction, I finally agreed to do it!

She actually had asked me back in February, and it gave me a lot of time to hone my indoor photography as well as research wedding photography. I was amazed on how much was out there for free! Youtube became a great learning pool of video after video, actually able to see how other photographers prepped and shot for a wedding. I then realized it wasn't much different than nature photography! When I shoot nature, I actually setup my composition for a landscape. I then wait for an animal to jump into it making a great story out of the picture. Otherwise, they were just candid photos of the birds flying or the animal running around. That isn't to different than a wedding if you look at it closely. The only difference: light, time, and space.

Light in the church, or at high hours of the day, or weather can all affect how you can shoot. How fast your shutter speed is and location become the biggest puzzle of this event. How fast can your shutter get in this low light while keeping your ISO low enough to get the best quality photo? How do you fit everyone into the photo? Where can you fit everyone into the photo? How much time do you have in the church after the wedding happens?

I only saw a few photographers recommend checking out the location before the wedding day if possible. This allows you to feel the area, take your time, and work with those in charger of the church prior to the wedding. This actually worked for me, as I went a week before the wedding and took a look around with the couple (which happened to already be there when I went). We were able to point out a few spots to take photos after the wedding, point out where people where going to be, and I was able to get some sample shots to determine what the light would be.

Exposure +.5 (ISO 800, 1/80, f / 2.8)
No other edits were done. Lens correction would fix the "everything falling away" feeling

I set up in the back of the church, put it into aperture priority and set my camera to be wide open at 2.8 (didn't worry about composition). From this point I adjusted my ISO (I do not use auto-ISO) until I got to a shutters peed of 1/80.  I then took a look at the histogram and saw it was a tad bit underexposed and put it up a half step and it was spot on. As you can see in this picture, the lights were not on so if it is cloudy the day of the wedding it should be close to this with the lights on and no light coming in from the windows. One challenge I have: available light only. Meaning, I cannot use flash inside the church. This was important me to find out before the wedding in case I needed to rent a different camera body than what I already own. I do not as I have a Nikon D7000 and I can take great photos up to 1600 and grain/noise just starts to appear here. If I go black and white photos I can bump the ISO up to 3200 with no problem. So I am very comfortable with my equipment at this point. 

Beyond the posed shots after the wedding the rest of the event are candid and detail shots which I love to do. I have already set up their online gallery on my Smugmug site, password protected it, and I printed off 50 business cards that have their URL to their gallery and password for them to hand out at their wedding/reception. One other thing I did to prep for this event, is I made a photo checklist to help me get all desired photos. They are not promises, but I will be looking at this checklist to make sure I can get as many as possible. So when we are doing posed shots, I can get a few shots off and if we are wondering what is next I can pop the list out and keep the flow rolling. I also had the bride and groom enter in some of their own items to the list as well. Such as key names and shots they would like that I wouldn't have normally done. Example: They would like all couples in one photo that have been married at this church. I would have never of thought of recommending that one!

One of the last things I did, is I looked at photography insurance. This is something I would recommend anyone who could not afford replacing their camera if it was damaged. Mine is about 500 a year, and covers just about everything with a 500 deductible. No matter what of my camera equipment is broke, it's cheaper for the deductible than to buy the equipment again.

Keep an eye on my blog as I will follow up with this Sunday if I have time, or early next week. The wedding is this Saturday (only two days!). Let me know if you have any questions. Comment here or on my FB page: https://www.facebook.com/StevenSantamourPhotography