Opinion Please - First Wedding - Gallery

kygarden

This is a gallery with a little over 100 photos I picked out of the 400 total that I will be giving to the bride. Can you give me your opinion please? This is the first time I’ve done a wedding…and really, the first time I’ve done any kind of real shoot for anyone. My goal was to get the essential shots, and then get various shots to document the event.

http://nikon-photog.smugmug.com/gallery/2633516#139094804

As I can see it so far, my mistakes are/were…

• I had a hard time making sure I was in the right spot to get the shot. Mainly during the ceremony when things were moving quickly.
• I need better lenses. A 70-200 f/2.8 and a 17-55 f/2.8 would have worked much better for this event, and those would be faster than the 24-120 I used for the ceremony.
• For the reception, I learned my lesson about high iso with shots that do not have the best exposure to start with. I ended up with more noise than I wanted, but I think what noise is there will not be objectionable to the bride. Next time (if I do something like this again) I’ll use more flash and hopefully have faster lenses. For this particular reception, I’m thinking if I had a Sigma 30 f/1.4 I would have been better off.

Thanks for your replies. I’m interested in your overall opinion too…as in, if you were the bride, would you be happy with my photos???

SitterS

I think you did a great job and the bride should be pleased with the photos you selected. Congrats on your first wedding. :ivar

Shane

Swartzy

Kygarden...
You did well...what you did best: you moved around..took shots from different angles, different dof, different heights. The results were shots the Bride & Groom are gonna cherish....believe me.

There are some real nice shots there....I know, I know..but stop beating yourself up....trust you talent.

Flyinggina

OK. I am not a wedding photographer and I know little about what you "should" shoot, but I looked at your gallery and agree that the bride is going to be very happy with the results. Lots and lots of wonderful shots of a happy day. I loved the ones of the children.

Virginia

evoryware

Nice that you got the pre, during, and post shot of the cake smash!



She should be very happy with the results. Considering $100, surprised at the results. You should be pleased because you learned something out of the deal. I would only ask if you considered cropping the picture of them cutting the cake

kygarden

Thanks for the replies. I'm always my worst critic...so it's nice to know what others think...people that have no bias one way or the other. It makes me feel better knowing others would be happy with these.

More practice and some lens additions and I think I'd really be rocking

jay

nothing wrong with that

dancinkate

As a wedding photographer, and former bride , I would be thrilled with those images.....especially with it being your first wedding!
I think it's wonderful that you can pull specific things to work on out of your own images. A lot of photographers aren't able to do that.

kygarden

dancinkate wrote:

As a wedding photographer, and former bride , I would be thrilled with those images.....especially with it being your first wedding!
I think it's wonderful that you can pull specific things to work on out of your own images. A lot of photographers aren't able to do that.

Thanks! Coming from a wedding photographer, that means a lot to me!

Yeah...I usually know what looks bad afterwards and when I think about the situation, I can usually figure out why I had problems. I've read a lot about photography and continue to learn more all the time...so most of the time, when I experience something firsthand, I can usually refer back to something I'd heard about or read about that fits my situation. Troubleshooting is a huge part of my day job, so I think that really helps out...I'm already good an analyzing problems.

One of my biggest challenge (I think) is not being able to accurately look at a scene and best determine camera settings for light in manual settings. That's something I would really love to get good at - manual exposure, setting that on the fly off the top of my head based o nmy observations of the scene.

I guess my other problem is getting good compositions. And getting them in as few photos as possible. I took a LOT of pictures during the wedding and it paid off. I'd like to learn to know how to get the shots I need in fewer attempts. Anyway...I'll keep on learning

Thanks

P.S. I just looked at some of your wedding photos....I've got a lot of catching up to do!! Good work.

schmoo

I think you did a GREAT job for your first time! Reading everything you said so far about this gig was like seeing the thoughts in my own head already typed out in a forum. I may be doing a wedding for the first time this year and I am very nervous but photographers like you give me hope. Of course you're going to be your worst critic but I have seen some professional wedding photographers doing so much worse than the photos in your gallery. You are a STEAL at only $100!

I really do like the shots with the backdrop. Posed photos are not to my taste but the lighting is warm and good and they are spot on with what most people (who are not photographers) are looking for out of family events like weddings.

dancinkate

kygarden wrote:

P.S. I just looked at some of your wedding photos....I've got a lot of catching up to do!! Good work.

Thank you!
BTW, I still take a bazillion shots during weddings. Not for formals so much but there are SO many little moments that happen at weddings when you're not making them pose.

Scott_Quier

I've seen and posted a comment on some of your shots on another forum. As another wedding photog to another, I still think you did a good job on these and I also think your B&G will be quite pleased.

Some comments:

• Is it your intent to allow digital downloads of your originals?
• Many of your B&W conversions lack contrast and are quite dark. If I find some time this evening (and if you leave your originals available :-) ) I'll see if I can't do a bit better, by way of tutorial/help - if you like.
• Weddings are all about the people and their emotional reactions to the event. I think you did a wonderful job of capturing the moment for your B&G. This, I think, is just one of several good examples:

• I don't know if they didn't make it into your top 100, but you might want to think about getting some more detail shots. Example: a lot of thought went into the cake. You have a genral shot of the cake, but from a distance so great that one can not easily appreciate the detail. Such a shot will stand on it's own and is a very good background behind other photos in the album.
• This is another example of a shot I'm sure someone will greatly enjoy, maybe just the mother, but maybe others - it's an example of the celebration:

kygarden

Scott_Quier wrote:

I've seen and posted a comment on some of your shots on another forum. As another wedding photog to another, I still think you did a good job on these and I also think your B&G will be quite pleased.

Some comments:

Thanks for the comments. Honestly, I forgot to get some of the detail shots of things like the cake. For the most part I was going off a list of photos she wanted...and then tried to add more of what I thought she'd like. I could have done better in this area. That's one more thing to add to the list of "things I need to better next time"...along with better exposure/less ness/lower ISO.

I plan on handing over several CD's with full resolution jpg's of every photo I thought was worth keeping. Color and black and white version. I probably would have spent more time on the B&W's and photos overall if I had planned on selling individual copies. I didn't want the responsibility of dealing with photo sales afterwards and worrying about tweaking every photo so it's the best it can be. I tried to edit all of them somewhat, but there are things like noise reduction that I didn't do because of the processing time involved.

If I were to do more of this type of shooting in the future, I'd probably still give the full res photos to the bride but also upload photos to my smugmug site and let them buy copies from my site if they wanted to (maybe for their convenience). I know it may sound like a bad business move to not control the photos afterwards, but when you're not doing this full time, it's so much easier to just give them everything and be done with it. Plus I'm sure it makes them very happy to know they have all the files and can do whatever they want with them.

Oh and SCHMOOO....thanks and good luck if you end up doing a wedding!

kygarden

What do you think about this one? I cropped, coverted to black and white, blurred the whole photo, then removed the blur from just the couple to give it that f/1.4 look I kinda like it.

fmkjr

IMHO overall a good job and the family should be happy
Overall, I think you did a good job and captured plenty of "fun" moments. You already mentioned the need for a faster lens. It would allow you to capture the candle and napkin shot too.

A few shots have some strong shadows... (from a flash?) maybe a difuser would help... (lumiquest or something similar)

Again, you did a nice job and the family should be pleased.

frank