Interesting Wedding Shot (my first wedding)

binghott

first of all, i know i haven't been too active lately, but i'm working long hours during the day and work on pictures at night. plus, it's the summer, so i have lots of partying and stuff to do too. oh yeah, and i've been constantly playing with my new FERRARI (laptop).

anyway, i shot one wedding before this one, but i'm not counting it because it was for family and it was in their house and very unconventional, so this is my first real wedding.

i was the second photographer, hired seperately from the first photographer. his name is carlos and he was (surprisingly) very helpful, like i was working independent of him, but he would advise me on some shots. anyway, by the time the night was over i had snapped off 1600+ pictures. i got a bunch that i'm really happy about, but i wanted to know what you guys thought about this shot and which version is the best. rip it apart if you'd like, i love criticism.
(shot digital rebel, tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 @ 28mm, f/3.5, iso 200, not touched in ps)

Yuri Pautov

Barry
Dont know how to say this... Well, honestly...
I dont like these ... tall wine glasses in a vase ...
I think that they separate this nice pair ... while the aim of such photos is ... unity... A very destructive object ...
I also dont like the shadows...

I understand your expectancies with this focus - well done. Also the colors are great...

Thats my thoughts...
Spasibo,
Yuri

photocat

The glasses are distracting... I can see you are trying to think outside the box, but the glassbox does not work.
The flowers are not really working with you here because they are so overwhelming and big heaps. I think if you would focus on some of the flowers, or the glasses with shallow DOF, that the shots would be more successful.
My guess is that you want to get too much in the picture, and it looks crammed in. I would zoom in closer to come to one focus point instead of the whole picture being a cluttered environment.
I think you have potential, but I also find that you need to work on getting your pics uncluttered...

For myself, I don't do weddings because I find this to be a very dangerous field, and if I would ruin it, I would never forgive myself. After all, the couples only have one day, it is not like you can reshoot the day after.

Annabel Williams has a wedding book that is interesting to look at and to give you some ideas about how to tackle it,
http://www.theweddingphotographer.co.za is a guy who makes some very good points

And here is a link to a splendid wedding photographer.
http://www.jeffascough.com/main.htm

binghott

photocat wrote:

I would zoom in closer to come to one focus point instead of the whole picture being a cluttered environment.

For myself, I don't do weddings because I find this to be a very dangerous field, and if I would ruin it, I would never forgive myself. After all, the couples only have one day, it is not like you can reshoot the day after.

first, i completely agree, cluttered would be an excellent word to describe it. i think i just liked the colors in the picture, as yuri noted. i never said this was my best picture of the night, i just thought it was an interesting shot. also, i didn't put anything on the table, i just took the shot with what was there, so i tried to do my best with those glasses there. i'll post some more when i get a chance.

thanks for the comments!

photocat

binghott wrote:

first, i completely agree, cluttered would be an excellent word to describe it. i think i just liked the colors in the picture, as yuri noted. i never said this was my best picture of the night, i just thought it was an interesting shot. also, i didn't put anything on the table, i just took the shot with what was there, so i tried to do my best with those glasses there. i'll post some more when i get a chance.

thanks for the comments!

I will be looking forward to some more of your work. Keep up the good work.

DeeLib

I'm no pro by any stretch of the imagination BUT I had a horrible photographer for my wedding so I am always looking at wedding pictures with envy. I actually like the first one. I have no pictures of my flowers...I have pictures of my shoes and my mothers purse and our wedding rings though. I like the way the couple is the background just doing their thing but the actual picture is of the flowers. It's a nice picture for an album to kind of break up all the pictures of the people. The other pictures? Not so much. I just want to grab the champagne flutes and move them to the side. BUT since you were the secondary photographer I can see why you didn't. Stepping on toes at your first wedding isn't a good idea!

ian408

The first one is a nice idea as the couple are OOF and not the primary
subjects. That said, the flash needs to be toned down a bit as the flowers
look over-lit.

The idea is a good one but the table setup/glassware really don't help you
out at all.


ian

wholenewlight

Interesting concept but I'm not sure it really works. The first and third shots - the out of focus shots - are better but the others look somewhat cluttered to me.

binghott

DeeLib wrote:

I'm no pro by any stretch of the imagination BUT I had a horrible photographer for my wedding so I am always looking at wedding pictures with envy. I actually like the first one. I have no pictures of my flowers...I have pictures of my shoes and my mothers purse and our wedding rings though. I like the way the couple is the background just doing their thing but the actual picture is of the flowers. It's a nice picture for an album to kind of break up all the pictures of the people. The other pictures? Not so much. I just want to grab the champagne flutes and move them to the side. BUT since you were the secondary photographer I can see why you didn't. Stepping on toes at your first wedding isn't a good idea!

i think that nailed exactly how i feel.

thank you everyone else for your comments, i really appreciate it. so, the point is that it's not a great picture, but it's not bad, and i think i'm on the right path, but definitely can do much better. once again i'll show some more soon.