Once more about shooting the wedding (what the teachers don't tell)

Let me start with the disclaimer first. This post is not a rant. On contrary, let me start with saying couple of nice words about people who shared their knowledge about wedding photography online and this way teached me how to start. Cliff Mautner, Jerry Ghionis, David Ziser, Frank Salas are photographers whom I follow via KelbyOne, their blogs and other stuff on Internet. All of them are great teachers and I am sure they are 100% integer. After watching their courses and reading what they publish one can know how they shoot photos they have in their portfolio. They reveal all photographic knowlegde, tips and tricks. So my great thanks to you, guys.

The thing is that they teach about photography. Which is perfectly fine and this is what aspiring photographers (like me) want. A wedding is means not only shooting photos for a couple of hours. It is an enterprise taking 10-14 hours of time on location. So there are couple more things next to photography to think about.

Nutrition

Sounds simple, but it is better to plan the meals during the day. During my assignment I had a luxury having my lovely wife at my side who took care of this aspect. So even if I was busy, she ensured that during short breaks I had a right stuff on my plate. Since I was also a guest of the bride and groom during the wedding, it was quite easy to arrange that. But in general I think it is better to organize things upfront and be prepared. Depending on the place and the local customs I can imagine that it even could require some contractural agreements with the bride and groom.

A place for the gear

Even if I planned my equipment for the wedding to be as lightweight as possible, I needed a safe place to store some stuff that I didn't need at the moment. Again, my situation was comfortable since I had a hotel room just next to the place where ceremony was organized. But in general - it is a good idea to think about it in advance. 

So, why it is not mentioned during the classes about wedding photography?

I think the reason is simple: for the instructors - all being practitioners for tens of years - it is like breathing for all of us. So it is probably just so obvious that it is not worth mentioning. And strictly speaking it is not about photography. 

 

Gearing up for a shooting day - a checklist

Tomorrow I will be shooting photos at the "Sinterklaas" day, organized each year at the school of my wife. As usual there is a lot of things planned for this day, happening at several locations during the day. And as usual I try to capture most of the day with my camera and make nice pictures.
This year there are four events planned: sport games for the youngest children, a meeting with book writer, information fairs for the Polish parents living in the Netherlands, a buffet serving specialties of the Polish cuisine. All in the timeframe of 3 hours.
Next to that I got an assignment to make portraits of parents that actively support organization of such events. Usually there are 6-8 people to capture. And not to forget the "Sinterklaas" walking from one class to another.
From experience I know that coming with a camera and just shooting does not deliver the best possible results. So I prepared a checklist of things that help me to organize myself for such day.

Choose the gear

Since the day will be filled with quite dynamic events, some of them organized in the places with not so great light, I choose in this case for fast, light lenses. It will be more gear to carry, but the alternative would be an universal 18-200mm, f/3.5-5.6 lens which might not work well in all situations. Next to that I will most probably shooting with 2 cameras (I will take 2 and make the final decision on location) 

Prepare lighting equipment

Normally I would just take one speedlight with me, just in case. However, to make nice portraits I will also take a softbox on a stand which should give me together with off-camera flash a nice light source. I will take the backup speedlight as well just to have a backup

Arrange enough backup for the photos

This is something I always consider before the assignment. Will it be enough to take just spare memory cards? Should I take a laptop to dump the pictures during the day? For tomorrow I will go for an option with the laptop. The reason is simple: since the sport event will be photographed, it implies a lot of shots. 

Know the agenda of the day

To move efficiently and be on time during most important moments I have noted the agenda of the day. I put everything in my smartphone so I am sure I will get notified on time about next important event.

Scout the location in advance

This is again about efficiency. For the location of tomorrow's shoot I don't need actually to do it since I know the place very well. But in all other cases I would be on location before the actual event starts to orient myself.

Take some sandwiches and water

It is not directly related to photography, but during such intensive day some nutrition is needed to keep the body energized. 

Landscape photography - my approach to increase the chances for a successful session

In the previous post I have written about my not so successful approach to photograph a specific landscape. It gave me some food for thoughts about the more systematic approach to the landscape photography that would increase my chances of taking a good picture (or pictures) during the session.
Here some of my findings so far, that have worked during my last two sessions and I will keep using them in the future.

Choose the theme, scout for a location

I found out that pre-selecting the theme in advance helps a lot to keep on focused during the whole process. For instance, for my last two sessions I took the river as a main theme. It limited my location scouting area to the banks of the rivers I wanted to photograph. But why is the scouting important at all? Isn't it just enough to select a point on a map, go there and try to take a shot? In my opinion, it does not work because it introduces too many uncertain factors during the actual shooting resulting in less time spent on actual photographing and composing the pictures.

I start scouting by determining a time of the day of the session. For instance, knowing it will be in the early morning I can start looking for a right place being in a radius of, say, 1 hour car driving. Once I know the approximate location, I start studying the maps of the area to determine the following aspects:

- is the terrain accessible for walking?

- how far from the location can I park the car?

- what would be a location of the sun at the location?

While first two questions are more technical, the third one requires some kind of pre-visualisation of the scenery I'd like to photograph. I wanted to take some photos where the sun would be directly visible on the picture, together with a river and its banks and a deep perspective. And I wanted to take photos at dawn. It determined the orientation of the river in the approximate direction of  east-west. 

To make it more accurate, I also checked the azimuth of the rising sun at the planned day of the session. To determine the azimuth of sun I use a smartphone application called Astroid which is simple to use and accurate (other applications, like Sundroid would also do the job). 

Having all those factors in mind I started studying the maps (by using Google Maps) looking for the proper location:

Don't forget to check if the Street View mode is available for a given location. It can give you a lot of information about the terrain.

Be on time, have a reserve location (plan "B")

It doesn't matter how well one prepares the location, the actual situation can be unattractive and disappointing for shooting. So it was in this case. On location I have found really flat, boring landscape:

Since I have planned my trip to be on location about 45 minutes before dawn, I had some time to take a corrective action. I knew by studying the maps that a few kilometers further there is another place with different landscape. So I took a quick decision to get into my car and go there. And there I have found the good spot:

Look around, think about future sessions

After the main shooting was done, I have taken a small round-trip ride in the neighbourhood of the location looking for the interesting places. And I have found enough places to plan another assignment:

Take notes after shooting

After successful session I take notes describing the places photographed, conditions on location, conditions in which a photo has been taken. I do it on the day of shooting, after coming home, while the memory is fresh and full of details.

Sometimes ideas just don't work. Or: good landscape photo starts with a good landscape

Every now and then I give a small photo assignments to myself, just to practice the technique or explore new areas of photography. One of my latest "challenges" was to photograph a lonely tree that would be good enough to be added to my portfolio. Why such theme? Well, it is a nice and can be used in practice, for instance to create a postcard.

Since I didn't have much time to do extensive preparations, I took a walk in my neighbourhood to find a candidate scene. It looked good enough to give it a try.

Few days later I organized a small session. The general scenery looked like on the photo below:

 

There were at least few problems with this photo: first of all the tree wasn't 'lonely'. Second, there is a lot of unnecessary noise in the background (like power lines). To make it more interesting I've first tried to incorporate more sky, making it more dramatic by using a polarizing filter.

Was it better? Not really. Now I have even less interesting picture than before. Last try was to go back to the first idea but take the photo from a bit lower angle of view:

Mhmm. Slightly better, but not something that I really wanted.

Then the moment of reflection came: It does not really matter what I would do, the scene I was trying to achieve was not the scene I envisioned: the tree was not 'lonely enough' to compose the picture.

So I packed my gear and went home. 

Disappointing, but one the other hand I took important lesson: good (great) landscape picture starts with the great landscape.