Min DOF Photography

I shot a wedding yesterday, that took place at Kendov Dvorec in Spodnja Idrija. The schedule was tight, by far the tightest I’ve ever had. I arrived at Kendov Dvorec 40 minutes earlier, to check the place out, to find a few nice spots to shoot. And I was limited to indoor spaces, since it was way too cold to shoot outside. To my great disappointment the place had only a couple of places, a room and a corridor, which were barely suitable for shooting romantic shots (after the ceremony). Why barely suitable? Because there were no large windows so that I could shoot without the use of a flash unit, the place was barely lit (I guess that adds to the mood) besides that the spaces were really small, so I had to shoot with the standard zoom lens, 85 mm was way too long. That means great depth of field etc, I had to shoot really differently, since my style of photography (natural light, min dof etc) was totally out of the question in there. The bride had to get dressed before the ceremony, so I couldn’t shoot romantic photos before the ceremony. The ceremony with all the congratulations, group shooting and rice throwing, ended at approximately 12.45 and we had to get to the church at 13.00. In the mean time I snapped (yeah snapped, no time for realxing the models, for working out the poses, face expressions etc) 5 different shots indoors and a few shots outside. I had around 6-7 minutes to do the complete romantic series. The Shot style, if you ask me (but at least they get to shoot pro models). After that, shooting the church ceremony went pretty smoothly, since there was plenty of time. We returned back to Kendov Dvorec, for the “lunch” which officially started at the moment we arrived (14.00). There was time to make a few more outdoor shots, but anyway, I couldn’t do more outside shots (even if I had the time) of the bride, she’d freeze at -7C.

On my way home I thought I blew it. That I didn’t make enough good shots (although bride&groom really wanted just a few romantic shots). Besides that, I wasn’t really sure that the “rice throwing” shots came out good, since I had quite a lot of flash problems (I really miss Nikon’s flash systems for weddings). Is it possible for the TTL to act somewhat differently, less accurate if you use a different lens (I used Sigma 18-50 2.8, which worked fine with my 430 ex on a couple of previous occasions)? Anyway, seeing the photos on my computer monitor was a relief, all in all, they came out pretty good.

I didn’t ask the newlyweds for permission to post photos, so I’m just going to post this one. This time the “spot” window light came in handy, otherwise it was just “burning” the snow-white bride’s dress and messing up the light metering.

Oh yeah, I forgot to write down what I’ve learned yesterday, or better said, I got my assumptions that when one’s pressed with time and works in really hard environment (tight spaces, bad lighting, freezing temperatures outside…) it’s really even worse than what you expect. Pressure is building up, when you see most or none of the things you planned aren’t going according to plan. I did good with some shots, messed up some, but when I look at the selected photos, I’m satisfied with the results (regarding the circumstances). But enough of the excuses (which of course are not really excuses, I just wanted to share my experiences with you), all that the clients are always really interested in, is the end result.