Sure you've both heard this as well - another wedding dilemma

Been asked to be "official" photog at a wedding next year. This won't be the first time I've done this, but this time is different as rather than being for close friends and/or family, is for a couple we went skiing with two years ago and since then have been little more than Facebook friends.

Not sure if this makes it more, or less stressful - and also not sure if I should do it, or find a polite way of backing out.

Currently trying to work out if they're asking me in a "definitely can't afford a pro, so it's you or no pics" type way, in which case I'll be happier doing it, or a "we're cheapskates and think we can get a bargain from you, but we'll be expecting pro quality" in which case, I'm tempted to run a mile!

Any similar experiences/advice/etc?

Finally finished wedding PP

Usual hit and miss, made a bit more miss due to having to hang onto Sammy for the first half of the day. Some shots I'm pleased with though - and thanks to the miracle of Facebook, bride and groom also saying nice things about them, from Vietnam.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175666&l=e2005&id=850030623

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=175854&l=f284c&id=850030623

More wedding etiquette...

Another wedding dilemma. While processing this pic of the back of the bride, noticed the tiny old lady, in my opinion,  spoiling the shot. As you can see old lady has been edited out in the version I intend to send to the couple, but is this the right thing to do? 

Wedding pro etiquette

You'd never guess I'm twiddling my thumbs with little to do other than wait for my sub to finish laying out the last three pages of the newspaper for proof reading!

Difficult situation presented itself at the wedding on Friday. Couple were married at small room at the back of the Left Bank bar (sure Toby probably knows it) and then posed in what is the carpark behind the building, leaning against a small wall which backed onto the river.

Background for photos was the other side of the river, which in my amatuer opinion wasn't the most picturesque (primarily some flats), but photog didn't have a huge choice of backdrops. However, what I did notice is that right behind the couple's heads (from the angle the photog was taking shots from) was a largish, bright yellow, for sale sign on one of the flats.

Worst thing in the world is some know-it-all sidling up and telling someone how to do their job. However, I know just how easy it is, from painful experience, to miss small details in the chaos of something like a wedding.

I was torn: what was worse, me looking like a patronising idiot but at least checking he'd noticed, or saying nothing, assuming he was either aware and dealing with it with shallow DOF, or not aware, but capable of solving the problem in PP (or even not capable and spoiling the couple's photos)?

What would you have done?

More dark arts

More messing around with the camera in the dark - wedding fireworks. Pro snapper did something very clever where he managed to get a shot of the couple, with fireworks in background, I'd guess he did something similar to what I tried with the dancing, long dragged shutter and flash to expose Mr and Mrs sharply in the foreground. Meanwhile, I was messing around with my tripod and ridiculously cheap but very functional wireless remote gadget, just arrived from Hong Kong. Went for 10 sec exposures, left the camera on the tripod out of everyone's way and returned to the crowd to enjoy and just randomly press the remote release every now and again. If I'd been paying attention and reviewing every shot, I probably would have tried a shorter exposure for a "cleaner" trail, but pretty pleased with result (especially considering I generally only get one chance a year to experiment!).

Again, just converted RAW to JPG and not got around to doing any PP or cropping with this yet.

Dark wedding dances

Often a problem at events, and not just weddings, lots of people, lots of motion, dark room, mixed lighting, high ceilings and nowhere to use bounce flash. Traditional approach is relatively fast shutter speed , perhaps dragging it a little to try and bring up the background (in this case
1/30) and keeping fingers crossed. Personally, I find this gets pretty lacklustre results, flashed out foreground (thanks for unwittingly demonstrating Alice!), dark background and "frozen" motion doesn't tell the story.

Been playing around with a really long dragged shutter (1 or 2 secs) and rear flash for the last few weddings I've been to, to see what effects I can get.


Might just be me, but I prefer the second approach - warmer, more dynamic, goes someway to actually showing what was going on in terms of motion and excitement, but rear flash rescues enough detail so you're not just seeing a mess of blur!

Interested to find out what you guys think.

(I've not touched the images, other than to save as JPGs by the way - I'd crop both tighter and I'm sure playing with D-lighting or similar on the first could help it)