My first wedding, presenting the results...

Bennp2000

Bennp2000

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Paul
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So, a while ago (> 6 months) two of my better friends got engaged and asked me if I'd mind shooting their wedding.

Having read of the pitfalls of such ventures I tried my best to decline but failed. Fast forward 5 1/2 months and I'd got a 'real' job and hardly had chance to pick up the camera since I started; not ideal. The day came around far too fast but yet with the support of my wife, and a generous friend who has 10-20 weddings under his belt (he's keeping quiet on the exact figure) I managed to get through the day and hopefully I've got the shots that'll make the bride and groom (and mother in law) happy.

The things is, once edited, I'm not sure how best to present the photos to them.

I guess it'd be lovely to give them something printed (and I'd contemplated asking the best man [who works as a graphic designer] to pull together a printed album), but then again this has all been as a gift and I'm running out of time to spend on it (and reluctant to be any more out of pocket), yet dumping them into a Flickr album just doesn't seem write.

Do any wedding photographers have any novel suggestions?

I'll add the photographs (or links to the flickr album ;) ) when they're finalised.

Many thanks,
Paul

ps - Is it worrying that I enjoyed it far far more than my day job?
 
I'd present them with two copies, a high res and a low res version on printed DVD. Maybe add a slideshow of the best bits to that. If you wanted something reasonably priced but very good looking I' also present a set of mounted prints, possibly in a presentation box. It will cost a little but probably around 1/3rd of an album for a reasonable (say 30) number. If you knew the had a frame lying around you could make the mount the correct size for the frame as well. The cash also easily swap whats in the frame if you do that
 
What price would you expect the prints to run to?
Any recommendations for a printed DVD too?
I used loxley for my own wedding album and that's lovely but well outside my budget for this! Thanks for your input.
 
I'm with Hugh on the files, but I'd just go for a set of unmounted prints in a print box (or two, depending on number of prints). We used to do ours with a 5px white stroke round the image, then a black border 10mm or so wide on 7" x 5" matt paper, simply because that size was the smallest off-the-shelf good quality print box we could find. We used DSCL for the print run and the couples loved them.
 
call me a grumpy b*****d , but given you already did it for free and gave them a s***load of time (and saved them several hundred quid minimum) I'd just give them the files on a CD with may be a printed paper cover saying X & Ys wedding over a nice picture.
 
big soft moose said:
call me a grumpy b*****d , but given you already did it for free and gave them a s***load of time (and saved them several hundred quid minimum) I'd just give them the files on a CD with may be a printed paper cover saying X & Ys wedding over a nice picture.
Click to expand...

Ha! That thought had crossed my mind. Post-it note and have done...

I'm kind of entertaining the idea of doing another if asked so having something nice or some experience of presenting the results doesn't seem like a bad plan.
 
OK, I won't leave this up for too long but here are my selects:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/39660023@N03/H81Ze1/

The formals are weak and thee are many where I'm unhappy with certain elements. That said, the test is whether or not the Bride + Groom are happy. General comments are welcome... good, bad, indifferent...

:)

ps - the majority of the B+Ws were shot on a Fuji X100s (first dance etc.)
 
AFAIC those are really good for a first go at it. If you reckon those formals are weak, you obviously haven't spent much time looking at the websites of many established wedding photographers. Formals aside, you've got a nice feel to those snaps and the processing's excellent.

Bennp2000 said:
... the test is whether or not the Bride + Groom are happy.
Click to expand...

I don't agree. They'll be happy because they've got some cracking good snaps without having paid for a snapper. What's more important is what you think of them, what you learned in the taking of them, and what you think you can do better next time - if there is one.
 
Sid, firstly thanks for your comments, they made my day!

I did have a look at the work of some pro's to try and see what people were expecting and as you suggest, the quality is 'variable'.

With regards to not paying, I think they had a great wedding due to the generosity of a number of friends, some could see this as a negative thing but for the most part I think it was fair/right/positive (and made the wedding possible).

What do I think of them?
  • Well, I don't like the formals, they're not strongly posed, everyone isn't engaged and the backdrop isn't wonderful. There's also some extraneous clutter I should've spotted (after my wife carefully removed the first round).
  • I think I missed some key moments and I'd have a more detailed list of everything I expected to shoot (and in what order / time).
  • I'd get some actual macros of the rings and details.
  • I'd have come up with a better wet weather plan for the B+G session. We'd scheduled some evening time but the weather went completely biblical (rain, thunder etc.) and thus I was limited and a bit flustered.
  • Generally I'd shoot with a little more room to spare so that when I didn't quite get the camera level I didn't lose the entire shot.
  • I must try harder to hold the camera straight!

In post processing:
  • hopefully through having a more direct idea of what I wished to shoot I'd cut down on the shutter-gun approach and thus the pick/select workflow.
  • I'd have a better workflow from pick/select through to rating, a personal workflow is very different to being efficient for this.

Equipment:
  • Well, I had the pool of gear belonging to myself and a friend. If I were to do it again I'd invest in a second body (I borrowed a 7D) and the 17-55 2.8 I used. I liked this combination a lot.
  • I used one TTL flash mainly using FEC. This worked well.
  • I usually don't like zooms, however, in this case zooms were wonderful. I didn't change lenses much all day.
  • I remembered the RAM in my PC is flakey. It randomly turned off a lot during PP. This was a pain.
Obviously you could go nuts on dream gear but if I were thinking of doing this again, I doubt I'd 'need' to invest in too much extra kit.

Care to add any thoughts?
 
Well, since you asked ...

Ref formals, beware unrealistic expectations. Very rarely do you get an ideal background devoid of clutter, and most of the time, most of the people in the shot would rather be getting p***ed. Plus they think it's your idea to do the group shots, not the couple's, so you'll be very lucky indeed to get 100% engagement until you have more experience.

Ref a shot list, I've never used one, but if you approach a wedding with a certain mindset, I can see that it might be useful - as long as it's not one of those insane lists of "must have shots" which the bride's got the idea for from a wedding comic. Obviously a (short) list of group shots is mandatory though.

In my experience, amateur photographers and newbie wedding snappers tend to be far keener on macro shots of rings and details than most brides do.

Always assume that you will have rubbish weather on the day, and have a Plan C and well as Plan B. I've actually done couple shots in the gents bogs of the venue (a rather cool hotel) before now because we couldn't go outside and it was the only place that had an interesting back ground and good light.

Good plan to leave a little bit of slack in your framing, but have you checked the actual coverage of your viewfinder against the sensor (whilst wearing glasses if you shoot wearing them)? Whatever, it might amuse you to note that back in the days of weddings shot on fillum, a pal of mine was so dismayed by his apparent inability to hand-hold his Hasselblad level at a gig that he bought, at great expense, the grid viewfinder screen for it i.e the one marked with both vertical and horizontal lines. It made no difference whatsoever ... :rolleyes:

One TTL flash and FEC is all I ever used. There's a lot to be said for keeping things as simple as possible for a wedding.

I can't be doing with debates about zooms or primes for weddings. All I'm saying on the subject is that AFAIC, until you've shot enough weddings to know precisely what you're doing, shooting one on primes is making it harder work than it need be and it may well bite you in the bum.
 
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Regarding unrealistic expectations I had a walk-around with someone from the venue a week or so beforehand (meant to be earlier but life got in the way) and nearly had a panic attack at their backup suggestions; Oak clad rooms which were a tad tight.

I found it very annoying on the 5dII that the FEC only went +-2 wheras on the 7d it was +-3.... And No, I haven't checked coverage, the figure for the 5dII is 90% I think?

Primes are lovely things and for my personal stuff I'll likely always use them but I'm glad of my decision in this scenario.
 
I was going to post this as a separate thread but can't work out how via the app:

Recently I shot a friend's wedding and uploaded the images to Flickr to show to a few photographers (a thread on here, a few friends etc.).


Last night when I went to output the final images to upload I noticed that they looked significantly less sharp than on Flickr. Initially I thought that I'd just missed the output sharpening option in LR4 but I hadn't and a bit of further investigation showed I needed to push the sharpening from 35 to up near 100 to achieve the same look (which actually improves the images).


However, in LR seemed to have some ugly side effects and thus I tried a high pass technique in PS. With a radius of about 7.5px the result was similar.


Has anyone else noticed this?


I'd like to get the images finished tonight and opening up ~130 in LR>PS>LR to do a high pass seems insane.


Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do instead? They definitely benefit from some additional sharpness.


Thanks in advance,

Paul
 
Great gallery :) it's a strong starting position if you want to go into this line of work.

I got into weddings by shooting one for free for a friend as they couldn't afford one.. What I realised looking back is that they'd paid a lot on a dress, cake, food, flowers and pretty much everything else..

However the images served as a portfolio to get me started :)
 
Bennp2000 said:
I was going to post this as a separate thread but can't work out how via the app:

Recently I shot a friend's wedding and uploaded the images to Flickr to show to a few photographers (a thread on here, a few friends etc.).


Last night when I went to output the final images to upload I noticed that they looked significantly less sharp than on Flickr. Initially I thought that I'd just missed the output sharpening option in LR4 but I hadn't and a bit of further investigation showed I needed to push the sharpening from 35 to up near 100 to achieve the same look (which actually improves the images).


However, in LR seemed to have some ugly side effects and thus I tried a high pass technique in PS. With a radius of about 7.5px the result was similar.


Has anyone else noticed this?


I'd like to get the images finished tonight and opening up ~130 in LR>PS>LR to do a high pass seems insane.


Does anyone have any suggestions on what I could do instead? They definitely benefit from some additional sharpness.


Thanks in advance,

Paul
Click to expand...

Silly question, but have you printed the photos to check the sharpness? Obviously there's a big difference between pixel-peeping at 100% on screen and the finished product on the right kind of paper?

Fab photos by the way - compared to our wedding photos (2006) I think your stand up exceptionally well - a few that you've caught are easily better than our equivalents which we are still pretty happy with and used a local pro for.

Very well done!
 
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