Here Comes The Photographer

A few weeks ago I took my second tentative step into the big bad world of professional photography. With a solitary maternity shoot as my only paid work to date (not including a free trip around Ireland for some promotion snaps this time last year) I took on the challenge of recording photographically the most important day in the young lives of a very trusting couple as their “official wedding photographer”.

It’s fair to say I had a few restless nights in the lead up.

I think there’s a view around most of the population that wedding photography is a licence to print money, you rock up for half a day, take a few photos then send the bill for a couple of thou (for the record my fee was no where this amount!). I knew that this wasn’t the case, but I didn’t really know just how much work is involved, especially when it’s your first and you need to learn things for the first time.

Something I learned is that the more work you do before the day the less trouble you have on the day, the problem was that most of the work I was doing before the day was making sure I had enough memory cards, enough spare batteries, another body in case the main body malfunctioned, the right lenses and also that I had the technical know-how to complete the job to a professional standard. This involved reading books on wedding photography, doing research on nightclub photography (while the reception wasn’t at a nightclub I knew there would be dancing shots in low light and I wanted to know the techniques available to create different images), learning how my flash works inside out (learning how to use a flash properly is far more technical than learning how to use a camera properly) and generally looking through hundreds of wedding images online to get inspiration and ideas for poses and angles.

What I should have been doing before the day was building rapport with the couple to make sure they were comfortable around me and the camera, going to the venue to scout out locations, getting a running schedule for the day, working out where photography was fitting in, and communicating with the couple about expectations. The way it turned out we basically did things on the fly on the day, but within the scope of what I had broadly planned, and realistically this is probably how the vast majority of weddings will run, if the bride turns up half an hour late this could throw a strictly regimented day into chaos so the photographer’s role is to roll with the punches, remain calm and get on with the job.

The couple didn’t want any photos of them getting ready so I met the groom at the church. I arrived an hour before the ceremony to meet the priest, have a chat about where I could stand, whether I could use flash, those sorts of things, and generally scope out the place for any good ops. As luck would have it the church was beautiful and ideal for photos. Soon enough the groom arrived, as did the groomsmen, guests, bridesmaids and finally the bride. I took this photo of the bride walking down the aisle, I think it shows off the beauty of the church and has a really nice symmetry about it, I also love how the white of the dress is in stark contrast to the darkness around it.



My favourite part of the day was shooting during the ceremony. It was slower, more predicable, people didn’t move much and there was plenty of time to compose the shots exactly as I wanted them. I moved around a little bit through the ceremony as the next 3 shots show, the place I took the final shot from was excellent, as I was obscured from most of the congregation so as to remain unobtrusive, but I was in the perfect place to get shots of the couple’s faces and provide a view that none of the guests had. The lack of flash during the ceremony made my decision last year to get the f/2.8 stabilised version of my 70-200 lens totally justified, likewise my decision to invest in a monopod a few days before the big event.








I was quite keen to take a nice group shot at some stage during the day, later on at the reception I managed to get up high and shoot down on everyone which was quite effective, but right after the ceremony, while everyone was out the front of the church, I switched to my Sigma 10-20 ultra wide angle and got a shot of the whole scene which I think worked quite nicely. Just looking at it now I’ve noticed something in the shot that annoys me – your challenge, dear reader, is to find this annoyance and leave a comment telling me what it is! First one to find it gets a high from me when we next meet.



While I’m here this is the group shot I took later on, I’ve since cropped it tighter to make the people bigger, it’s really a shot that needs to be printed as big as possible.



Ok, I think I might actually leave this wedding here, half way through, and return for the 2nd half next week (or will it be later this week? You’ll have to keep checking to find out). I will say that I gave the couple a viewing on Friday night and they were thrilled with the photos, and at the risk of getting big headed the words “I’m so glad we chose you and not the other photographer we were looking at” did come out of the groom’s mouth, although perhaps that was the rum they procured on their Cuban honeymoon talking (which was muchos tasty gracias). Until next time…

The Greatest Of All Time

First up apologies for not updating this thing for a month, I had the folks over for a week and didn't update it then, after that there was some other reason I didn't do it, next thing I knew a full month had passed. It's it's not through lack of photos either, I've been pretty busy snapping away this last month.

I decided some shots I took this time last week were probably an excellent place to start. I managed to procure myself a ticket to the men's final at Wimbledon, which turned out to be in the 2nd row and close enough that both players could hear me shouting "COME ON ROG". To say it was a good day is perhaps the understatement of the year, from start to finish - including breaks - it went for about 7 hours, and I wasn't getting sick of it at all. If it wasn't almost pitch black at the end I could happily have sat through several more hours. The quality of the tennis was absolutely breathtaking, at least once every game through all five sets I made a comment along the lines of "What? That's not possible" after one of the warriors blasted an impossible winner off a shot that would have been a winner against anyone else on tour. 5 hours of play hadn't desensitised me at all to this genius, I've seen a fair bit of top level tennis in my time and these guys were so far ahead of anything I'd seen it was ridiculous.

So, on to the photography. I managed to get my 40D and 70-200L f/2.8 into the ground which was pleasing, the conditions on the ticket say photography is allowed but you can't use the images for commercial gain but you never know the reaction of an overzealous security guard when you try and bring in a huge white lens. Fortunately they were more concerned about the 4 x 250ml cans of Pimms I attempted to bring in, you were only allowed 2 cans and my argument that these cans are half the size of regular cans fell on deaf ears. Rules is rules. If you want to know where I was sitting it was the corner that Nadal ran to after the match to get into his coaches box, I could have patted him on the shoulder but I was too busy trying to take his photo, you know you're close to the action when the athlete is too close for the camera to focus on. These shots give you an idea of our position (I went with my flatmate Dave who wore a bright pink shirt which was a master stoke of being identified on tv), and how close we were to the pro photographers (well, one group of them anyway).







(just as a side note that guy on the far left looking at me taking his photo is the chief sports photographer for the times and wrote this article about the final)

So, now you're sufficiently jealous of my positioning it's time to hit you with some action shots. I took over 1100 photos on the day, which is a lot, but sports photography is a game of hit and miss to an extent, the more you take the more chance you have of getting that killer shot with the ball right on the strings, or that split second facial expression, a prime example of one of these shots is this one. It was a combination of new balls, back lighting on the fluff and a bit luck, but they all come together for a cool shot.



Of the 1100 photos I'd say close to 70% were of Nadal. There are several reasons for this.
a) He's more photogenic, ie better facial expressions when he hits the ball, ridiculous arms that translate well to photos, etc
b) At my end I could only get shots of Feds face when he hit forehands, and Rafa was really pumping it to Feds backhand so I didn't bother taking too many photos of his back
c) When Rafa hit his backhands he was facing me, and a backhand is a more photogenic shot than a forehand which often tend to look a bit awkward when frozen in time
d) Rafa won and I reeled off close to 300 after the match of his celebrations, crowd invasions, trophy acceptance and what not.

Here are some of my favourite action shots from the day.








I was looking in the paper and internet before the final this year and realised that most shots that got published were not action shots but shots of players fist pumping or somehow showing emotion. It's so tempting to put the camera down once the point is finished but the trick to capturing great shots is the know the feel of the game, understand the massive points and the likely reactions of the players and make sure your lens is pointed in their direction if they win those massive points. For this reason I pretty much missed the epic 4th set tie break as I was glued to Nadal to get his reaction when he won (which everyone thought he'd do when he was up 5-2). Still though, small price to pay as I managed to watch LOADS of tennis with the camera safely stowed in my backpack.















So there you have it, memories and photos that will last a lifetime.

Oh, other exciting news, I photographed my first wedding last weekend as well, it went really well and I'll put some shots up here in my next posting. Take it easy.