Into the Fire

A dear friend of mine recently got married. The morning of the wedding, the bride asked if I had brought my camera (the wedding was out of town), and would I mind taking pictures.

Panic.

The bride had asked her son's girlfriend (college age) to take some pictures. I'm not really sure why she wanted me involved, and if she knew me better she'd know that shooting a wedding ranks right up there on the list of things I probably should not do (demands more patience than I have, lack of control, dealing with bitchy people (not at this wedding, mind you), etc. Really just not my thing). But the groom is such good friend (and we dig his wife, too). You know, the friend that you could call from jail in Mississippi in the middle of the night and by morning he'd be there with your bond money. Yes, I brought my camera, and yes I'll shoot some pictures at your wedding. I'd be happy to.

Panic.

I have a small library of photography books. Books about exposure. Books about portraiture. Books about lighting. Tons of books on landscape and nature photography (which is what I think I really like). I have nothing on weddings. There was no rehearsal. (Wedding was in the couple's newly remodeled house. Old house. Like, turn of the century old. Has its own name old. Survived The Flood old. You get the picture.) I had no idea what was going on during the ceremony. No checklist. No roadmap.

Panic.

We were over at the house a few hours prior to the wedding, helping to clean up and get things ready. I had my camera bag. The cake was out, decorations were set. People had scattered and it was sort of quiet. I managed to get a few shots where I actually could think about lighting and exposure. When you're called on to shoot something out of your comfort zone, remember the basics of what makes a good photograph--patterns, leading lines and repeating elements. Pay attention to composition. Pay attention to the light. I like the simplicity of this photograph of wedding programs in a basket. It has all the basics, and has the gold bands (not unlike wedding bands) as the focal point in the middle of the lines and repeating pattern of the programs.

EXIF data is a little disturbing:

Nikon D80; Nikkor 18-135 lens at 66mm; shutter priority mode; f5.3; 1/200; ISO 200.

This photograph has had some major lighting fixes in Photoshop. It was side lit with tons of natural light and I used a fill flash. Straight out of the camera, this picture was much darker and much more out of balance that what it should have been. The good is that I had a lot of available contrast. The bad is that the ambient light got smashed. I can't remember if I had the flash set for rear sync or not (which is one of my fall backs to balance ambient light). One trick to correct this is to "drag the shutter" by taking the shutter speed the meter tells you is correct, and then slowing down a stop or two. I should have done that here. 1/200 is way too slow for a stationary indoor shot. This would have been a perfect shot for manual mode.

Speaking of basics, it's still about the triangle of ISO, aperture and shutter speed. Remember that, too. A well-composed shot that is not properly exposed is a bad shot, and most times you can't save it. I got lucky here.