The Wiggles and The Wedding

So this week has been super crazy since I was getting ready for my second wedding to shoot (that I have done by myself) and getting my daughter ready to see The Wiggles Live. The wedding and The Wiggles were on the same day so my husband and my mom took her to the show and sent me videos throughout the night. She had such a good time and it wore her out. Now she is in bed asleep FINALLY. She is cutting two back teeth at once (her teeth always seem to come in two at a time) and she broke out in some funky rash on her face. She is not running a fever and after some antibiotic cream on her face, the rash is gone.

On a good note, I had two friends of mine stop by and say hello. She is a fellow photographer that I have known for nine years.......Has it really be nine years!!! Time flies by. Anyways, she finally got to meet my daughter and we had about an hour to catch up on things. Then, to add to my photography mingling for the night, I spoke to another photography friend, she is really more like a big sister to me, and we chit chatted about my wedding shoot. I love getting advice and from them and just having some adult time. The great thing about these gal photog friends (yes I am from Texas and I say gals lol) is that we all help each other out. If we need advice, criticism or support we all are there to give it. For example, one of the gals thinks I charge too much for a new wedding photographer. I know she is probably right, but my work takes so much time away from my family that if I had to put a number on it to be worth my time, that was it. It takes so much time to get ready for a shoot, shoot the event, edit all of the 800 - 1,000 images, set up the meetings, driving time and so on. I am not complaining, but I have to be honest with myself. If I have to spend all of those hours away from my daughter and husband (and miss stuff like her first concert with The Wiggles) then I want it to be worth it in the sense that it will help my family in the long run. Anyways, back to my point. I find it hard to make photog friends that will KIR (keep it real) with you. There are so many great photographers in my area and we could all learn so much from each other, but I find most photographers are very secretive about their business, equipment and price list. I am very open about all of that and so are these gals. I get random emails every now and then asking me questions and I am very forth coming about it all. The last one I received was asking how I got my own business started. This particular photographer is only 20 mins from me but our styles are so different. Her style is the cool, funky urban thing and I am not sure what you call my style lol. But we are different; even if we were similar I would still help her. We all have to start somewhere and why not help each other out. In my area we have over four million people here and there are plenty of clients to go around. I know I am rambling, but I just feel like all photographers should help each other out. I am not saying we should hand out all of our knowledge that we had to research and study but point the people asking in the right direction. It's all about good karma people and paying it forward.

So, the wedding went well and I am very pleased with the pictures. I feel they are 10 times better than my last wedding (I can say that since my BFF is the wedding I shot and she still loves her pictures). This is part due to a different lighting situation and part because of experience and research. One thing about me is I will NEVER stop doing the research and taking classes. Technology moves way too fast, so I feel I need to stay on top of it. This wedding had it's challenging lighting situations. The room where the girls were getting dressed was a school room. There was a chalk board, flags, metal chairs, tables and green curtains. The green curtains played to my advantage to diffuse the harsh light coming in through the windows and actually gave me pretty decent light. I moved some of the tables and chairs to put the girls in better light and to get the eye sores out of my way. Other than that I just made sure to try to double check the background before taking pictures. There is one picture where the bride is getting her jewelry on and she is in front of a chalk board. Instead of ruining the moment and asking her to move, I just shot it the way it was and worked it into the scene. After all, this is where she is getting dressed and it is a part of her day. Luckily, the church allowed me to use my flash and get very close to the bride and groom. I opened my lens all the way up, cranked up the ISO, and bounced my flash off of where the priest stands. It was all white marble. There will still be a little noise in the pictures but not enough to draw attention to it. I did take it into light room and added a tad bit of warmth and reduced the noise just a bit. One piece of advice Jasmine Star said was to shoot the difficult weddings like the easy weddings. Not all brides have the funds to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on her wedding. Not to mention EVERY wedding has their fair share of challenges. However, I can still take pictures that make the wedding look like it should be in a magazine. After all, every bride deserves that.

Here are a few pictures that I took. They have only been put into light room and I pulled some of the warmth out of the pictures due to the very yellow light I was getting. I haven't pulled them into PS yet.