Wedding Photography and primes

I went to a friends wedding a few months ago and I was surprised that my photographer friend was now using primes in covering a wedding. His setup is two Nikon D700's and 35mm, 50mm and 85mm nikkors. Most of the time its the 50mm and the 85mm. I just have to check the exif of some of his photos that I got. With this in mind I got a wee bit excited since a friend will also get married at the end of May, I decided to shoot a few pictures in his wedding with a prime, print one 8 x 10 and 4 5r's and give it to the couple as a gift.

Being a non-pro, the wedding starts at 4 in the afternoon so I expected low-light from the wedding towards the reception afterwards so I decided to bring my canon 580EXII flash with me. At the church I took pictures of the couple without flash and to be honest I did find a hard time getting decent images. I got alot of out of focus images since I wanted to shoot near wide open. Canon 7d is quite known for being "unforgiving" in terms of focusing and couple it with shallow depth of field of the 50mm 1.4.

Anyway here are the shots in the church that I printed and framed for the couple as a gift.

edit: click the pictures to view it in bigger sizes, web resizing loses details. In print all of this pictures looked really awesome and sharp.

Printed this on 8r
Exif: ISO 800, f/2. 1/125sec

Printed this on 5r
Exif: ISO 1600, f/2.8 1/125sec

Printed this on 5r
Exif: ISO 1600, f/2.8 1/125sec

And the shots during the reception. (I used the external flash bounced and on ETTL)

Printed this on 5r
Exif: ISO 800, f/2 1/100sec

Printed this on 5r
Exif: ISO 800, f/2.8 1/60sec

Lessons I learned in this shoot. I need to be better with my handholding techniques, improve on my composition. Also I need to improve on my skills in post processing, I need to aim to atleast have uniform skin tones on the pics that I take. Still have soooo much to learn!

As an aside I shot this all in large RAW so that I have the freedom to crop.

Cheers!

Things to do for this blog

I have been out for awhile. I'm working for a new company now and had to do alot of things before that. I failed to update this blog. And i'm sorry for that. So a few things that I realized that I should be adding here. Aside from what I mentioned before that I need to update this at least once a week. That I'll try. To complement this once a week blog with a once a week photography project. I intended to do a 365 days project but hell, I can't think about that. 

So here's the deal. My Eos 7d would be a year old by July 2011. It's gone thru more that 20000+ actuations. I'll start my weekly pic from there and blog from there. :) And I wanted to try something different for this whole new year with my camera, all shots from my 52-week project will come from the 7d and from canon 50mm 1.4 lens.

Also I'll post next week the subjects or the themes that I'll be taking for that 52-week journey and I'll try to illustrate as much as possible how I'll be doing and did the shots.

Cheers!

Photowalk in Salcedo weekend market

It took some time for me to get back and work on this blog. I have been busy doing my day job for the past month. I only had a few time to hold my Canon 7d. Before writing this blog I'm thinking about getting myself either a Panasonic LX-5 or GF-1, something small with good performance that I can bring around all-day. I don't want to sell my SLR either, it would pay itself over time with some photo earning projects.

My wife decided last night that we have to go to the weekend market in Salcedo Village, one of the upscale places in the Metro. With this in mind, I decided to take my SLR with me and attached my 50mm 1.8. I just set my 7D at Av (Aperture Value), AWB (autowhite balance), ISO 200, AI focus and shoot away!

So here are some of my shots.

This is a crowded market, locals and expats abound

Cooked and Fresh food

A lot of guys are also taking pictures here

French guy selling French food

I enjoyed the whole experience of doing this photowalk and I wish I can do it more. It also reinforced my need to get 50mm 1.4. Why? I enjoyed my 1.8 so much, unfortunately I got this on the second hand market. I didn't notice a mold was inside, I always thought it was just a speck.

This has also made me think about getting primes, I love the way I can take pictures without looking like a "PRO" versus using my Tamron 17-50 zoom lens with the hood and all. Which sometimes frightens the heck out of people.

Cheers!

Getting things on the groove

The new year is such a great start, my wife gave birth to our first child late December 2010, family gatherings during the yuletide season was great. What I haven't done so much was focus more on photography, in my earlier blog about the new year I needed more focus on these things. I always thought that I could, unfortunately alot of things are coming up.

(1) It seems that having a baby is really difficult to start with (I'm a first-time dad), but the difficulty is always worth it. Also, I have to take care of my wife!
(2) New Year means new work, I mean MORE work!
(3) I'm taking up my Masters in Business Administration in University of the Philippines.

Even with those three things on top of my priorities God has been gracious in granting me Photography stints, so the Canon EOS 7d, 580exII, Tamron 17-50 and 50mm 1.8 won't be sitting in the drybox.

Here's a few in store for my January
(1) A Debut Party
(2) Environmental Portraits for a Developmental Report

Although I got to run the camera a few days ago for my father-in-laws birthday and to test my brother's Tamron 70-200 2.8 which I would have to write a mini-review this weekend.

Stay tuned!

New Year

2010 has been an exciting year for me. It was the year that I really "did photography", the year that I owned my own DSLR (I was just renting before). It was a year that I learned alot about photography. It was the year that I committed alot of mistakes. It was the year that I accepted paid photography work (four times). It was the year that I started this blog.

As 2011 is starting I have a few thoughts in mind about improving my photography as a whole. And here are some of the things that I have thought about or listed in my puny brain.

(1) Shoot, Shoot and Shoot. I need to shoot more to learn more. If I shoot less, I learn less. But here's the thing that I want to do for this year with shoots. I want to do themed shoots every week, say week 1 I'd do product photos, week 2 I'd do landscapes, week 3 I'd do studio fashion photography. I guess I want to make things better.

(2) In relation to (1), I want to be more concerned about having a theme in all of my photographs. Not just a matter of shoot and pray and shoot and pray. I want every shot to have a meaning, I want to work out my composition skills, I want to learn more about lighting! And with every shot that I want to take I want these things to matter, I want the light to convey a message as well as the composition. I guess this is a hard thing to do but I believe it is doable.

(3) Improve my post processing skills. I have books from Scott Kelby about getting the shot, also books about harnessing Photoshop CS5,  "Adobe Photoshop CS5 book for Digital Photographers" and I haven't finished reading them. I have another book about LR3 from "Vision and Voice" by David Du Chemin and I haven't read it too. Reading is always the start for me. 

I want to improve PP for alot of reasons, I see that my images colors differ as light changes (white balance), I wanted to recreate what I see and I want a generally equal look at the images I take whether the ambient light changes or not.

So far these are the two major things that I need to work out.

Wedding Photography Notes

I was lucky enough to be part of a wedding shoot of an officemate. She was too busy thinking about a lot of things for her wedding (if you are getting married get a wedding planner to make it easier) that she missed booking a pro photographer for her wedding. The photographer would have been Carlo Cecilio of ImagineNation who also happens to be a good friend and also the one who did splendid photographs of our wedding! If you are into weddings getting Carlo or any of the photographers of Imaginenation is one of the Best things you can do for your wedding!

Now back on my musings. During Joy's wedding I was given two days notice that I'll shoot. Given the poor camera equipment rentals availability in our country, I was again down with my trusty Canon EOS 7D, 17-50 f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8 & 580exii speedlite. Here are some of my realizations during that wedding.

(1) Do a prep (notes in prenup) would definitely work! Weddings and prenups are quite alike in terms of pre-planning. But things get so different on the wedding day itself. Check your equipment, check the venue.

(2) Know the parts of a wedding! All things happen so fast that you have to be ready, there are no retakes here. I MISSED a lot of shots as I was talking with guests, and the sister of the bride! (A bad thing if your tasked to shoot weddings!) I guess one of things to make this right is get the program flow of the wedding and attend weddings! Also write these down on a notebook and bring this with you! If you haven't attended a wedding in your life, ask the wedding coordinator!

(3) Like what I said on (1) things are different during weddings. There may be restrictions in the church like no flash allowed, upto where the photographers will be. Get to know these things before hand. This also left me shorthanded during the wedding since I was down to my 17-50 where a 70-200 is very very appropriate for closeup shots of the couple.

(4) If you have a friend who does weddings as his bread and butter, ask questions. Better yet if he is open to it, work for him as an assistant. One of the best ways to learn is to have a mentor. When I realized that I had so many things to learn as well as the mistakes I did during the shoot, I consulted with my brother(he is not a pro, but has worked in countless weddings as backup photographer and assistant). I also asked a friend that if he can spare some time that I'd work as his assistant, and I won't mind if all I have to do is lug around gear, hold the strobe or hold that reflector. In the exercise I know that I will learn by observing the pros.

(5) Here in the Philippines there is such a thing as "Fifty-Peso Wedding Photographers", well I name them as such because they crash into weddings, take picture of everyone, print in the nearest photo printing lab and sell the pictures ranging from PhP 50.00 - PhP 100.00 a piece (That's 1 USD - 2 USD per photo). I really bear no ill will against people trying to make a living but there is such a thing as courtesy in weddings, most of these photographers take pictures in front of the wedding march, literally at the middle! 

Watch that lady photographer in yellow
Take notice on where she is and what she's wearing

And when they have the pictures printed they either peddle it outside the church or they would go around while the ceremony is ongoing, pictures in tow looking for the people photographed and asks for payment for services they weren't asked of. My only thing against them if you're the wedding photographer is that they don't care about you, they would literally go infront of you and block your view. So there goes.