Taking a Stab at Wedding Photography

This past weekend, I had a chance to attend my friends, Jen and Jay’s wedding. The ceremony took place on Grouse Mountain, overlooking Vancouver. At first, I wasn’t going to take my camera along, but how many times do you actually get a chance to shoot a wedding? Besides, there’s no better experience than the real thing and I doubt I’d shoot my own wedding.

Since I knew that they had hired a professional wedding photographer, I decided to go a bit low profile and left my main body, the Nikon D200, behind. Instead, I took my smaller Nikon D80 with me and popped on one of my favorite lenses, the Nikon 35mm f/2.0. Unlike my D200, this setup allows me to hold my camera one handed with my strap wrapped around my wrist. Since there was an open bar, it would also let me take pictures while enjoying a beverage. Not to mention, the smaller camera and lens lets me get shots without people trying to pose on me.

Here are a few of my favorite shots…

The top of grouse was covered in a layer of cloud and mist, making it difficult to get really tack sharp photos sometimes. Everything I shot outside seemed to have a fuzziness to it. I did my best and surprised myself with the results.

The weather gave the pictures a bit of a mystical feel as cloud and fog would come in wisps and surround the wedding party every so often. Since there was no sun, it made it very easy to take pictures pretty much anywhere in the flat light.

I spent most of my frames capturing moments with the couple instead of trying to get them with their family members and friends. Here, Jen and Jay take a moment to themselves as the paperwork is finished up to finalize their marriage.

Since they didn’t do the dancing thing as part of the festivities, the wedding photographer staged a mock “first dance” as part of the pictures. She had the crowd move around as the couple stayed still. This would produce a shot that would look like time was frozen for them. I squeeze one off here and funny enough, I managed to get Jay’s Mom in the frame (back right) as she stares approvingly at her son and his new wife.

This was a really great experience and was nothing like shooting models in a studio or messing with long exposures at night. I did make sure to avoid the flash in order to make my pictures turn out more naturally and employed a lot of technique that I learned during my photography class. I’m so happy I took that course and I can’t wait to go back this fall to learn more.

The bride and groom along with all their Facebook friends have seen my pictures and think that I did a great job, even though I wasn’t the wedding photographer. To think, I wasn’t even going to bring my camera. However, friends tend to be nice so I want to know, what do you guys think of my pictures?  Should I moonlight as a Wedding Photographer?

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