I will preface this story with "I don't shoot weddings at all; no interest, nothing" - actually the idea of herding cats seems more appealing. People seem to have inflated expectations around wedding photography and I don't like that sort of boxed in shooting style at all.
My younger sister got married a couple of years back and my father had asked if I would be the photographer - my answer was very resounding "no". I would take photos for her from an ad hoc documentary style but in no way would accept the role of the primary photographer. People expect to see certain shots in amongst those contact sheets and its highly likely you wouldn't find them in my work. So at least I'm considerate enough of "your" big day to not attempt to ruin it...
But then again, life isn't always so simple. A couple of weeks ago I went back to Indonesia with my wife and two young kids for her brother's wedding. As always, I'm never one to miss a photographic opportunity so I did bring some hardware. Once there, it turned out that no one had engaged a professional photographer for the event and there was a growing expectation that I would fill that gap. Hmmm... I didn't really have the right equipment nor film type nor even enough film, and furthermore, the first time I got to see the venue, it was show time.
I ran around making a taking a few light readings and found that where the ceremony was to be held I could only achieve 1/30th sec at f/1.4 with my 35mm Leica Summilux using the new Kodak Portra 400 i had, and that was only if they turned things around so that the couple faced a window providing some shaded light.
Some of the initial work was pretty easy. It was either outside or in some nice shaded lighting. Good to get some people shots and capture the intricate design of the bride's dress and henna work on her hands.
Even though I'm supposed to be shooting this wedding, I cant help myself to grab some, pretty much unrelated but interesting people shots along the way. This girl kept following me around yet would run away whenever I looked at her. Eventually I grabbed a shot of her.
The above three shots are from the ceremony; that one with the bad lighting. Everything here is only from natural subdued light coming in from a window behind me covered with a day curtain. Furthermore, the space was extremely limited and crowded. So crowded in fact that I could only shoot from this one position and was not even able to access my bag that was some 2 mtrs away. That caused a little issue as I only had the roll of film in the camera on me. I did manage to get someone to open the bag and had me a second body already loaded with film. For me, the results of the ceremony were good for the conditions I was shooting under - manual focus, very low DoF, poor lighting and stuck in one position - but very pedestrian for what I would have like to achieve. Oh well, that's life!
So I assume by now people have worked out that this was a Muslim wedding. On aspect of a Muslim wedding proceeding the ceremony is a behaviour called Sungkeman. This is where the newly married couple move from family member to family member hugging, thanking them for everything they have provided in their life and apologising for the difficult times. Overall, Sungkeman tends to be a very emotional activity.
Well, as with most weddings, people wanted some nicely posed images. I thought ok, time to break out the Mamiya 7II and load it with some Fuji 160s I had. The groom seemed to have already decided that he wanted to go to dam (big enough to be a large lake) some hour and a half drive away. It sounded all ok execpt first, it involved "everyone" coming along, I had never been to this location previously and as the wedding was late morning, people though that we should go and shoot this early afternoon while the light was good (burn your eyes out bright, good). It took a little convincing but I managed to get agreement that around 3.30 to 4.00 would be a better time to arrive there, as I had noticed the quality of the light and time of day a few days earlier when I flew in.
All set I thought... as we arrived at the dam, I immediately saw problems number #2 and #3. This dam was huge and we were on the eastern side with the sun behind us - that wasn't going to work - and secondly, this was a family gathering area; hundreds of people picnicking, playing, flying kites, swimming - everything one wants in the background of their wedding portraits.
Finally, the bride's father suggested we all go to their family villa about 30 minutes drive away. So off we go but by now Im getting concerned because as much as the light is now getting good, it won't be long before its disappearing fast. Finally we got to the family villa and set about making some formal portrait shots.
Not a perfect location but great light and with the use of a single reflector I managed to get some nice shots over 2 rolls of film (just 20 shots). Nice but not overly creative as weddings and making people pose is not my thing. However, given where the day was heading I feel it turned out ok.
Once I had the film developed and was beginning to scan the images, my wife asked "so how are you going to give these photos to my brother?" This got me thinking about the need to produce some kind of wedding album; not something I've done before. I had used "PhotobookWorldwide" previously to produce some of my personal work and had been reasonably impressed by their quality so I chose them again.
What I hadn't given much thought to was the time and effort required to convert straight images into an "album". It was a lot of work with planning layouts, designing and executing. The image above is one example of an 11" x 15" two page spread created for the album around the Sungkeman activities. Something I was happy with in the end given the lack of planning, time and proper equipment, etc. However, the production part has just reconfirmed my lack of interest in wedding photography.
Im glad I could get this done for my brother-in-law but would certainly hesitate and doing it again. Im also sure that it must have been one of the most economical wedding shoots ever as it finally ended up being 26 pages completed on 3 rolls of 135-36 Portra 400 and 2 rolls of Fuji 160S at 6x7. Then again, you just have to use what you have...
My younger sister got married a couple of years back and my father had asked if I would be the photographer - my answer was very resounding "no". I would take photos for her from an ad hoc documentary style but in no way would accept the role of the primary photographer. People expect to see certain shots in amongst those contact sheets and its highly likely you wouldn't find them in my work. So at least I'm considerate enough of "your" big day to not attempt to ruin it...
But then again, life isn't always so simple. A couple of weeks ago I went back to Indonesia with my wife and two young kids for her brother's wedding. As always, I'm never one to miss a photographic opportunity so I did bring some hardware. Once there, it turned out that no one had engaged a professional photographer for the event and there was a growing expectation that I would fill that gap. Hmmm... I didn't really have the right equipment nor film type nor even enough film, and furthermore, the first time I got to see the venue, it was show time.
I ran around making a taking a few light readings and found that where the ceremony was to be held I could only achieve 1/30th sec at f/1.4 with my 35mm Leica Summilux using the new Kodak Portra 400 i had, and that was only if they turned things around so that the couple faced a window providing some shaded light.
Some of the initial work was pretty easy. It was either outside or in some nice shaded lighting. Good to get some people shots and capture the intricate design of the bride's dress and henna work on her hands.
Even though I'm supposed to be shooting this wedding, I cant help myself to grab some, pretty much unrelated but interesting people shots along the way. This girl kept following me around yet would run away whenever I looked at her. Eventually I grabbed a shot of her.
The above three shots are from the ceremony; that one with the bad lighting. Everything here is only from natural subdued light coming in from a window behind me covered with a day curtain. Furthermore, the space was extremely limited and crowded. So crowded in fact that I could only shoot from this one position and was not even able to access my bag that was some 2 mtrs away. That caused a little issue as I only had the roll of film in the camera on me. I did manage to get someone to open the bag and had me a second body already loaded with film. For me, the results of the ceremony were good for the conditions I was shooting under - manual focus, very low DoF, poor lighting and stuck in one position - but very pedestrian for what I would have like to achieve. Oh well, that's life!
So I assume by now people have worked out that this was a Muslim wedding. On aspect of a Muslim wedding proceeding the ceremony is a behaviour called Sungkeman. This is where the newly married couple move from family member to family member hugging, thanking them for everything they have provided in their life and apologising for the difficult times. Overall, Sungkeman tends to be a very emotional activity.
Well, as with most weddings, people wanted some nicely posed images. I thought ok, time to break out the Mamiya 7II and load it with some Fuji 160s I had. The groom seemed to have already decided that he wanted to go to dam (big enough to be a large lake) some hour and a half drive away. It sounded all ok execpt first, it involved "everyone" coming along, I had never been to this location previously and as the wedding was late morning, people though that we should go and shoot this early afternoon while the light was good (burn your eyes out bright, good). It took a little convincing but I managed to get agreement that around 3.30 to 4.00 would be a better time to arrive there, as I had noticed the quality of the light and time of day a few days earlier when I flew in.
All set I thought... as we arrived at the dam, I immediately saw problems number #2 and #3. This dam was huge and we were on the eastern side with the sun behind us - that wasn't going to work - and secondly, this was a family gathering area; hundreds of people picnicking, playing, flying kites, swimming - everything one wants in the background of their wedding portraits.
Finally, the bride's father suggested we all go to their family villa about 30 minutes drive away. So off we go but by now Im getting concerned because as much as the light is now getting good, it won't be long before its disappearing fast. Finally we got to the family villa and set about making some formal portrait shots.
Not a perfect location but great light and with the use of a single reflector I managed to get some nice shots over 2 rolls of film (just 20 shots). Nice but not overly creative as weddings and making people pose is not my thing. However, given where the day was heading I feel it turned out ok.
Once I had the film developed and was beginning to scan the images, my wife asked "so how are you going to give these photos to my brother?" This got me thinking about the need to produce some kind of wedding album; not something I've done before. I had used "PhotobookWorldwide" previously to produce some of my personal work and had been reasonably impressed by their quality so I chose them again.
What I hadn't given much thought to was the time and effort required to convert straight images into an "album". It was a lot of work with planning layouts, designing and executing. The image above is one example of an 11" x 15" two page spread created for the album around the Sungkeman activities. Something I was happy with in the end given the lack of planning, time and proper equipment, etc. However, the production part has just reconfirmed my lack of interest in wedding photography.
Album Cover Shot (cropped from the third image above)
Im glad I could get this done for my brother-in-law but would certainly hesitate and doing it again. Im also sure that it must have been one of the most economical wedding shoots ever as it finally ended up being 26 pages completed on 3 rolls of 135-36 Portra 400 and 2 rolls of Fuji 160S at 6x7. Then again, you just have to use what you have...
