I have already completed several briefs for a friend of mine who runs a photography business called 'Tate Studio'. We often shoot weddings together and on Friday we undertook our first wedding of the year.
The booking for the wedding came through the Tate Studio website and Adam who runs it offered me the job a few months ago and so it has been arranged for quite some time however it's very fitting with this brief so I'll now go on to write a report about the day, my experiences, what I learnt and the overall experience of working as a photographer.
Report – Matt Smith
Tate Studio work experience
For my work experience section of this
project I was luckily enough to be asked to assist at a wedding. Adam at Tate
studio was kind enough to let me come along for the day and be his second
shooter/assistant.
I had been involved from the start and CC’d
into all the emails with the clients Paul & Carol. This was a great thing
as I got to experience the work that goes into booking, organising and ensuring
the clients were confident of their choice. After getting details for the day –
Date, time, location etc Adam sent a shot list over to the clients. This was an
in-depth shot list containing the typical ‘wedding photographs’ ranging from
photos of the dress right through to the formal family photographs. The clients
then chose which of the pictures they wanted and also this was their change to
include any specific images they wanted. As for Paul & Carol they were keen
to have the children photographed as much as possible so we had to bear this in
mind throughout the day.
Unfortunately I had not been able to meet
either of them before the day, which is bad practice for a wedding
photographer. An initial meeting allows a relationship between a photographer
and a client and helps calm nerves on the day.
At the start of the day I met up with Adam
and we ran through the gear to check we had the right stuff for the day. I was
tasked with loading and cataloguing the gear so we knew exactly what we had so
that nothing went missing. Once this was sorted we headed off to the location.
Once there we had a good look around at the ceremony room to get an idea of the
equipment we would need and general layout. Once this was done we decided that
he would stay on location and photograph the bridal party getting ready and I
would travel to the grooms house and photograph him getting ready.
When I arrived at Pauls house I was greeted
by his father and I introduced myself and was then introduced to Paul and other
key members of the wedding such as the best man. I spent a few minutes talking
to Paul about what he wanted from his photographs and then we set to work
capturing him getting ready and generally enjoying time with his best man,
brothers and other family. I spent around an hour shooting with Paul before I
headed back to the location to meet with Adam and await Pauls arrival. After
shooting with Paul I was much more confident and in the short time with him I
had built up enough of a relationship for him to trust me. The biggest
challenged we faced on the day was poor lighting conditions in the reception of
the location. This was where the guests were arriving and drinks were held
before the ceremony began. To combat poor lighting conditions I used an
external speedlight (Canon 580 EXII) and bounced the flash off the roof/wall
where possible to diffuse the light and give a much softer light to the
photographs. This managed to save a lot of the photographs that would have
otherwise been unsuitable without flash.
Since I had photographed the groom
beforehand we decided it was best to stick with this format and I was tasked with
going into the ceremony with him and the guests and photographing the
atmosphere before the bride arrived. I achieved this by using a long 70-200mm
lens, which allowed me to get some great candid shots of the guests and Paul.
One key shot for every wedding is the groom waiting at the end of the aisle for
the bridge and I was keen to get this shot right so I stuck with the 70-200mm
and pre focused and composed my shot ready for Carol to make her entrance.
The ceremony went without a hitch and Adam
was happy with the shots I was getting when we had a brief meeting after the
ceremony. We were then tasked to do the formal photographs and Adam had asked
me to photograph them so that he could organise the wedding party. We decided
to do this outside as the space inside was small and had tungsten lighting. The
outside space allowed us to use natural light and fit the entire party into one
shot. At this point we were going through the shot list and ticking off the
shots the clients had selected to ensure we covered everything. We then gave
them chance to get any photographs with people who weren’t on the shot list. I
was shooting on a Canon 5D Mk3 with a 17-40mm lens, which gives a really wide
field of view but can distort really easily if you aren’t careful. I had to be
mindful of this as I didn’t want to distort anyone in the photographs so to
ensure this didn’t happen I tried to stay around 20mm.
I was happy to be entrusted to shoot what
some people would call the most important photographs of a wedding. There was
an element of pressure but with Adam organising the shots all I had to do was
compose, focus and ensure the exposure was correct. One thing I learnt as I
went along was that even if the shot was perfect it was good to shoot an extra
5 or so frames to make sure no one has their eyes closed or hair covered their
face etc.
Throughout the day I was shooting RAW, this
was a tip from Adam as it provides the most editing capabilities but there is a
trade off in file size. RAW files are much larger than JPEG however the
benefits of shooting RAW far outweigh the drawback of file size.
After the formal shots we had some downtime
in which we dumped all of the photographs to a Macbook to ensure we had a
backup copy should anything go wrong with the cards. This also gave us a chance
to reflect and gave me a chance to get some feedback from Adam. He was very
happy with my performance so far and how I presented myself to the clients. I
quickly discovered that wedding photography isn’t like many other areas of commercial
photography. You have to remain professional at all times but use humor and
other traits to help keep people calm in the chaos of the day. Luckily I got on
really well with Paul & Carol and they were very accommodating towards us
as photographers. After having a look through my images I was very happy with
the results as was Adam.
We were booked for the entire day start to
finish which is a very long day to be hauling camera gear around so we were
glad of the intermission between the ceremony and evening. Once the evening
kicked off we were asked to take some candid shots of the guests, as there were
many new arrivals that didn’t make the ceremony. We were again faced with very
low light and the use of flash was needed. These low light conditions also
meant that any lens above f/2 wasn’t really suitable without using very high
ISO which introduces grain into the photograph. Luckily we had a 70-200mm f2.8,
50mm f1.4 and a few other low light lenses. We spent the evening very much in
the background with the longer lenses photographing guests relaxing and having
fun. Every now and then a guest would grab one of us an asked for a posed
photograph, which meant I had to use my people skills to get them into the
right position and pose.
Overall it was a fantastic experience. I
shot around 1200 images on the day and Adam shot around the same. I was then
involved with the editing and cataloguing of these images which was a good
experience as I got to show Adam how I worked and we both learnt a few things
from each other in this process. I used Adobe Lightroom to batch edit the
photographs and we ended up with a final export of about 800 between us.
I found the day a very positive experience
both as a photographer and a person. It was nice to build a relationship with a
client in a short space of time and put them at ease when things got hectic. It
was very rewarding to show them a few shots throughout the day and see their excitement;
this made the long hours worth it. I was also grateful to be given a lead roll during
the day and get thrown in the deep end of wedding photography. I faced my own challenges
both photographically and as a professional. It was a great experience and I feel
I have impressed Adam and that on the day I was an asset rather than a burden.
I enjoyed the technical challenges that
came with the day and the fast paced atmosphere was really exciting. I have
benefited greatly from the experience and it’s a new avenue of photography I
had never really considered but I have now proven to myself I am capable of
being a wedding photographer and may consider further work in this area in the
future!
