My First...and Last Wedding

Yesterday I shot my first wedding and I'm so glad it's over! Not because the wedding was bad or anything like that, but because it was so stressful for me. Casey's beautiful sister Anna was crazy enough to want to hire me to do her wedding and for several weeks I kept saying, "no, no - I don't DO weddings". Finally I caved to the pressure and agreed. As the day approached I was wondering what the heck I was thinking and spent countless hours reading and studying up on wedding photography.

You might wonder why I was so freaked out to do a wedding - how much different can it be than a regular photoshoot, right? Well, it's TONS different and here's why:

1. The biggest reason is: If you screw it up, there's no do-over, no reset, no "let's try that again". For a lot of the day, you have approximately 4 seconds to get the image and if you don't, well - you've missed that once-in-a-lifetime shot and the bride will hate your guts. Ahem...yeah, no pressure or anything.
2. Secondly, I am a completely self-taught photographer. I've never taken a class or any had any kind of formal training. I know what my camera does, and how to use it, but when it comes to technicalities, well - I can tell you what an f-stop is, and exposure, and about your ISO and shutter speed, etc. etc. but I can't tell you EXACTLY how it all works together or how the lens works when it opens or the mirrors and the angles and all the technical intricacies of a functioning camera. I can DO it, but I'm not good at explaining it or TEACHING it.
The problem? A wedding is tricky TECHNICALLY to photograph. White dress, Black tuxes, variant lighting - correct exposure is difficult. I did a LOT of reading on understanding my camera's histogram.
3. Equipment. To photograph weddings, it's essential to have backup equipment of everything. Backup camera, backup flash, backup lenses. Did I mention that I don't have backup ANYTHING? And it's not like I could rent around here because in small-town-USA the TWO available camera stores in town do NOT rent. So I held my breath all day and prayed to God that Murphy's law would be occupied elsewhere and not attack my camera or flash. I had a moment of panic when my flash wouldn't work - but it turns out it was just a set of dud batteries. Oh, and my Tamron lens quit working throughout the day, but luckily I had my handy 50mm that I just popped on when the Tamron went caputz. Hopefully no one noticed.

Last night when I got home I took a bubble bath and drank some wine and then curled up in bed with "The Sound of Music" - don't know why, but I've been jones'n to see it lately and I found it at the library last week, so....wah-lah. A night of relaxation after a long day.

ANYWAY...if you read all that - you get a sticker. I JUST started sorting through them all, but I HAD to open a few to see what I got, so...here are a few teasers of yesterday's wedding. I couldn't have asked for more good looking people. The bride was gorgeous and the groom was a hottie... Oh, and did I mention that the bride's father is a dentist? So not only was the bride bee-u-teeful, she had a perfect thousand-watt smile to boot.

Here they are....images from my first....and last wedding. :)







Hmm...they look darker on here than in real life....oh well. Turn up the brightness on your monitor.