Unusually though the alarm bells which would usually alert me when asked a request such as this didn't go off and so I replied with a yes.
Now it did help that A) my friend is also a photographer and B) the client was a friend and knew not to expect miracles or anything close to a professional wedding photographers portfolio.
I was kindly offered the loan of my friends Canon eos 7D with a nice zoom lens to use along with my nikon D60 and the standard lens , a 16gb memory card was ordered as payment (along with travel costs paid) and all was ready for the big day.
I had several discussions with the groom before the day and he told me the basics of the kind of shots he was wanting, simple enough or at least so I thought.
Planning is the key ingredient in wedding photography and despite knowing this I left it till the last moment to do more research, there were a few mistakes I made throughout the days shoot some of which with more careful research and planning I could have avoided I hope that this blog serves to refrain any of you from making the same mistakes I did.
With a bit of technical skill and a lot of luck I was able to get the majority of the shots I was asked and only missed one of the ones requested and could have taken a better shot of another, I will go into more detail about what the mistakes were in a moment.
My first mistake as I mentioned before, was lack of planning, the wedding took place in the small historic town of Matlock in Derbyshire, a place I have visited on many an occasion in my biking days, and with this knowledge of the area I presumed (wrongly) that I would have no trouble finding the venue.
I looked the venue up on google earth and studied the area around it for locations to shoot the bride and groom, when we did turn up in Matlock it took us 20 minutes to find the correct venue this could have been avoided.
As a result of this we arrived later than expected but still early for the ceremony, this was where I missed the shot of the bride arriving as she was already at the venue in a separate room to the groom, after a quick chat with the groom and the registrar I took up my cameras and began shooting, flitting between each room and capturing images of the guests arriving, the groom looking nervous and the bride and bridesmaids looking radiant.
through out the day I kept snapping and captured the ceremony without any problems, then came the moment I had to step up and take charge, this has never been an easy task for me I am fairly quietly spoken and gaining peoples attention is not my strong point, and so came the next mistake, the group shots.
If I had visited the venue before hand I would have known there was a nice expanse of grass with cherry blossomed trees below the venue, however because of the lack of planning I took the shots on some steps, this resulted in them looking messy, some people could not be seen, kids were all looking in opposite directions, I wasn't happy with the results of these few shots myself and can only imagine that the bride and groom dismissed them as "snapshots".
Other than a mis-hap with the laptop battery dying on me and not having the lead the rest of the wedding shoot went very well and I am happy to say that the bride and groom were overjoyed with the results and although I had to sit down many times throughout the day and rest I actually really enjoyed it.
So my advice now I have experienced wedding photography for itself is:
1) have a spare camera with a different lens it saves time swapping lenses.
2) preparation
3) research
4) pre-visit the venue
5) make sure you have plenty of memory card space and a fully charged laptop with lead to transfer images to
6) arrive early
7) be polite and friendly and smile at people, it softens the defenses of those who dislike their photograph been taken.
8) keep shooting
9) discuss what the couple want in terms of poses, shots etc
10) take a lot of candid shots, couples like to reflect on their big day and see people enjoying themselves.
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