Prime Time
A Prime Day With a Prime Camera
Recently we had a good opportunity to shoot a wedding. It was a very long day at 14 hours, but we loved every second of it. Even with rain, issues with vendors and the venue, the day still ended with a couple of people saying "I Do" and lots of food, fun, friends, and family. For shooting a wedding, there are many aspects that need to be planned for. Luckily Alex is amazing at that and even on short notice, she planned our day as photographers so well that she knew the schedule better than most of the wedding party. Other aspects include everything from transportation, timing, lighting, weather, venues and events that might be where you want to shoot outside the wedding venue, camera equipment, snacks, water, sunscreen, and a million other things. Alex had it all covered, making me realize that I would never be able to run this business without her. Even though I have the ability to help out with more aspects of planning than I do, Alex and I agree that we want it done right, so she does most of it, haha. One of the aspects of planning that I'm halfway useful for is figuring out what camera equipment to use.
For the wedding we shot, we planned to shoot in a dimly lit basement, bright outdoor settings, possibly rain, indoors under poor lighting conditions and dim lighting to darkness, and even from a rooftop. We decided to use some of our recent revenue and invest in a "new" camera. We upgraded to a Sony alpha a77ii. It's the top-dog in the Sony minolta/a-mount line of DSLRs. If that doesn't make sense to you, don't worry. Just think of it as being a good camera. The a77ii is a couple steps up from what we had been using and was able to handle every situation we could throw at it without issues, so we were happy to upgrade. In fact we were lucky and had the opportunity with a couple last-second buys to get an amazingly great price on TWO of these cameras. Identical cameras makes our lives easy. We don't have to worry about needing to change settings differently or remember different features and dials as we would with two different cameras. When we are both shooting as we did at the wedding, we know exactly what the other one is shooting with, so if we need help or advice from one another, it's easy to give it. And when we have a shoot with only one shooter, we can have the second camera ready with a different lens on it so there is no need to risk having the sensors/mirrors exposed when changing lenses.
A Prime Day Without a Prime Lens
We are very happy to have learned many of our photography skills and techniques before starting the business and booking a wedding. That's because if you search the web for "How to photograph a wedding," "Photography ideas for weddings," How can I shoot a wedding like a professional photographer even though I only have a cell phone," or anything in between (I actually saw that last one as a search result in google, hahahahaha!!!) you will see literally thousands of results where different people give advice and tutorials on the "best" and "right" way to do things. If you were trying to learn it all from those, you would be overwhelmed. Luckily we were able to use the information we found about things we didn't already know (I'll admit that I am not an expert on shooting weddings yet) to refine our skills and to give the bride and groom the best pictures possible.
One of the pieces of advice that the residents of the internet could not seem to come to a consensus on is what type of camera lens to use to photograph a wedding. Some people said to use the highest quality lens you own, no matter what it was designed for. Others said to worry a little less about the initial quality being perfect and focus on the versatility of the lens. Variable zoom lenses allow you to take pictures of close subjects and zoom quickly to catch things a little further away or zoom in on the closer subject. Fixed focal length lenses (PRIME Lenses) are usually a little bit higher image quality, but don't allow the photographer to zoom in or out. They can either be focused for closer subjects or farther ones. For me, the idea of being close to someone and having a lens that was so zoomed in that I could only get half of their face in the frame was terrifying. The same goes for having a lens that was so zoomed out and coming across a situation at a distance that I wouldn't be able to capture. As you could probably tell form the header, We decided to forego all prime lenses and use variable zoom lenses.
Prime Day after a Prime Day
In the end, Alex and I used almost exclusively a 16mm-50mm and an 18mm-135mm lens on our cameras. They gave us the flexibility to capture 20+ people for family and wedding party pictures, as well as zooming to capture the emotion of the bride's face when she and her new husband said "I do." We're both very happy we put a lot of planning into the day (It was mostly Alex, let's be honest). Due to the planning, the entire day went off mostly without a hitch. The only real hitch was the bride and groom getting hitched, which is the only kind of hitch I'm ok running into.
Once the wedding day was over, the next day consisted of a "photographer's hangover" (look it up, it's a thing), visiting family, and some much needed sleep. The following week included Amazon.com's biggest sale of the year. It's bigger than black friday and Cyber Monday and all the days in between too. It's called "Prime Day" and some of the sales are amazing. The wedding gave us some great information in addition to being fun. We learned a lot about what to do and not to do for our own wedding coming up in a couple months, and we learned some things in our photography to do and not do, as well as things that we could use for equipment, etc that we didn't have. On Prime day, we were able to get a few items that we didn't have before, or were able to upgrade.
The moral of the story is that even crazy 14-hour shooting days can be much more than tiring and that we are not perfect, but we sometimes surprise ourselves too. What's that? I didn't talk about some of the stuff I just mentioned as being the moral of the story? Well I guess you'll just have to read our future blogs to catch up on the rest of our adventures.
Tonight we have another shoot for Spinning Wheels Designs and this time we're going to go to the iconic Falls Park. I know it might not be a unique shooting location, but that's for good reason. It's beautiful. And I really hope you tune in for any blogs about it because we are going to have an especially cute special guest at this shoot. Stay tuned and let me know if you have any questions about the wedding we shot. See you all soon!