Recently I mentioned that I was asked to shoot a wedding for a friend and that I planned to use this as learning experience for shooting events. Wow. I want to go on the record right now and pay my deepest respects to wedding and event photographers. It is incredibly stressful and tiring. It is a non-stop affair, no sitting down, no eating, no drinking, NOTHING.

Here are some of the things that I learned that others might benefit from.

• Visit the location BEFORE the event. You need to get the lay of the land. In my case there were several obstacles that I would have loved to know about. One example is that the location had really tall ceilings. This made bouncing the flash off the ceiling useless. Also, the buffet area was next to the happy couple and it was sending out some bright fluorescent light that made it hard to expose correctly without blowing the background.
• Indoor wedding are almost never bright enough. Take your fastest lenses.
• If any videography is going on, talk to the person and develop a plan to not get in each other’s way. No reason why both of you should have your shots ruined.
• Take some test shots to see what sort of exposure settings you’ll need. With this in mind, you’ll be able to make changes faster if the need arises.
• Take a backup of everything. You don’t want gear failure to ruin the whole shoot.
• Know your camera in and out.
• Do not bring gear you are unfamiliar with. This is not a time to experiment.
• Shoot RAW. You’ll need as much flexibility as possible to fix any errors in post processing.

These are just a few. If you really are considering weddings, then I suggest you work for free as an assistant with another experienced photographer so you can get some experience under your belt.

Some really cool ideas to get your creative juices going! Tempted to try some of these.

Running dry on ideas to push yourself and your photography portfolio? Here’s 5 ideas worth stealing. Perhaps one might catch your attention, or inspire to you do something similar. Or very very different.

* Read

A friend of mine is celebrating his 25 year wedding anniversary tomorrow night and is having a ceremony and reception to commemorate the event. He casually asked me if I could take some pictures. Now, photography is a hobby for me. I like it, I want to continually improve my skills, but I’m by no means a professional. Because weddings are very important life moments, I would n0t try to shoot one for money as it would be too much pressure to deliver great results at this stage of my photographic development (pun intended).

This is the reason I’m excited about tomorrow, it’s no pressure! I’m not charging, so I don’t feel the pressure to deliver something great. It’s not a real wedding, it’s more like a “take 2″. It also will allow me to practice in a “real world” situation.

Just because it’s no pressure doesn’t mean I’m not taking it seriously! On the contrary, I’m taking it very seriously. I see this as a view into the future, and as a test to see how far along am I with this. So here is my plan:

• I’ll be shooting with 2 Nikon D40′s (mine and a friend’s). Two reasons for this, it’s critical to have a backup camera, and I know how to use it well. It’s a crop sensor, but it’s all I have access to.
• Weddings usually mean low light, so I’m taking two pretty fast lenses: a 35mm f/1.8 prime, and a 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom. I plan to put these on the 2 camera’s and just change cameras as needed for the shot.
• Taking plenty of storage capacity in multiple cards. I plan to shoot A LOT, thus giving me many pictures to choose from and be able to deliver the best takes.
• I’ll be taking two flashes, my Nikon SB-400 (small and light) and my YongNuo YN-465 (a more powerful flash with variable rotation on the head).
• Shoot RAW. I usually shoot JPEG as it’s more convenient, however, for this key event the post-processing flexibility will be critical.

I’ll post a follow up after the fact with some select images. Wish me luck!

Photo Credit: Bob AuBuchon