My First Wedding Gig

Dan preformed his first wedding ceremony on June 30th. I was asked by the bride’s mother to take the pictures. I was honored by this, yet very nervous. I know how upset I got at my photographer. Dan wanted me to nicely reject the offer, also remembering how upset I got at mine and not wanting the church folk upset with me.

However, I didn’t. I talked the bride about what pictures she might be interested in, but she really didn’t know. I guess it is hard to make some one upset if they don’t know what they want.

Well the day of the very small wedding came and I had borrowed someone’s camera from the church. I would have used the one that we have, but it is older and the card only holds 40 shots. I have used the borrowed camera before and took some lovely shots with it, so I felt comfortable with it.

But then I remembered that the camera likes to throw heavy shadows so I borrowed a flash from someone else. I don’t know if the camera and the flash weren’t “talking” well together but the day of the wedding I had a terrible time.

Either the flash would work or it wouldn’t. If it did it was either too bright or not bright enough. I don’t think I was helped that the bride was white wearing a white dress and the groom is Hispanic wearing a black suit and all the decorations were white. The flash wanted to bounce off the bride and absorb into the groom.

It also didn’t help me that there were 4-5 other people with their cameras taking pictures as well. I couldn’t get in were I needed to me and sometimes their flash would bother my shot. I was asked to be the wedding photographer and the others needed to let me in. I guess I’m just not forceful enough to make them.

Another hindrance to me is that the bride was so shy and nervous it was had to get a natural look.

I took over 400 shots and then I had to go through them and sort them out. The wedding itself was very small. There was only the bride and groom and only family and a few friends witnessed the ceremony. After the wedding there was big reception and I took several shots of the people who were there milling around. After the reception, I did get the couple to stand and do some poses for me. I wanted to take photos before the wedding, but they didn’t desire to.

Wanting the couple to have some special pictures to choose from, I did some playing around with some of them. The ones I really like are the ones with the photos and the words on the backgrounds.

Well, all that said, I’ll post some of my shots for you to take a peek at. If there is one you want to see, just click on it.