Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Here Comes the Bride (so why isn't my flash going off?!?!)

Ah, the wonderful world of wedding photography...

Last weekend, Chad and I had the privilege of photographing the wedding of some friends of ours. While the day dawned bright and beautiful, the not so beautiful side effect was the fact that the temperature soared into the nineties in a country where air conditioning is NOT a given. As camera-stalking melting people who had to get dressed up despite the heat and humidity makes this job a labor of love, it's a good thing Chad loves doing it as much as he does.

And now, a commentary on wedding photography in general, from someone who has spent a little time in the trenches:

If you peruse most photographers' wedding website galleries, what you'll find highly under-represented are the obligatory formal portraits that are feared and loathed by both the photographer and photographees.

On the one hand you have the wedding party and families, who honestly don't want to stand for hours with frozen smiles while you take essentially the same picture endless times, yet can't pass up the opportunity to get a family photo with everyone gathered and (mostly) nicely dressed for the first time in 10 years. Then you have the poor photographer who really can't do much with the bulk of them creatively to make them more than just a record of who was there on the day - all while trying to achieve the impossible job of making everyone look good at once.

The reason this is such a herculean task is that the average person has no idea how to be photographed well. Really, it's quite shocking. You'd be amazed at the little things that they do: standing practically hunched over, refusing to adopt even a remotely pleasant expression, forgetting to put down random objects they're holding, and even chronically NOT LOOKING AT THE CAMERA (?!?!). My primary job as photographer's assistant is to try to counteract this phenomenon as much as possible, but even then, to harp on it until everyone in the shot is presentable means it would take three times as long, and they might possibly assassinate me out of hunger and boredom.

The wedding this weekend was not even full of especially difficult characters, and went off quite well - it's just the nature of the wedding beast.

That said, we had a wonderful time capturing the highlights of two people celebrating their love and commitment to each other, and can't wait to do it all again in late May! Unfortunately in that instance, I'll have to scale back my responsibilities - being on your feet for 9 hours when you're 8 months pregnant is for masochists only. Should also be good times trying to find a flattering dress for the event when you're as big as a house!

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