Wedding Photographers, Then & Now

Gumby said:
I think so too. But if he and his customer is happy, then all is well.
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The trick would be making the customer happy and only shooting a few hundred photos. That'd leave more time for drinking coffee, riding a bike, playing basketball, etc.

This thread reminded me of this poor chap: LINK
 
tlitody said:
Bride to be was a graphic designer and insisted that it should be photographed on transparency because that was the best quality film you could get.
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LOL! :)

As I've said, I don't think there's enough money around to convince me to be a wedding photographer. :)

However, a couple of weeks ago a girlfriend discovered a long-forgotten set of 35mm slides taken at her wedding, ca. 1972, by her uncle. She brought them in and from a quick inspection for that bas-relief, they turned out to be {drum roll -- tat-a-tat-a ...} Kodachrome! :)

Of course she wants to see if we can do some nice prints of them.

The challenge is twofold here. First, these slides were not stored under anything close to ideal condition, just a (decrepit) rubber band and lost in a box for decades. Major dust! (see attached)

I'm sure we can clean it up more. What you see is just a generous blast of canned air.

But, the real issue -- and this is almost a cliche of weddings shot on slide film, the contrast! If you look at the example I'm attaching, the details of the jacket and the ascot are lost in the mud! :( Using the eyedropper sampler, the tux is way down in the single digits, roughly the same as the unedited border. :(

Now as for the highlights, it's not the dress in this case (stark white taffeta) but the cake! The frosting is way blown out, as if on the surface of the sun!

However, there may be a silver lining in this cloud. Had these been shot on the Kodacolor of the day, the prints would have been long faded, and the negatives most likely shifted badly. :( Since these are Kodachromes, I'm reasonably confident that with a little careful cleaning and some TLC in re-scanning, we'll be able to produce a number of reasonably decent prints. Not ideal by any means, but quite passable and quite memorable.

So, there may have been an unexpected advantage in that well-intended but naive choice of Kodachrome for the uncle's shoot. :)
 

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Leigh Youdale said:
...The principal photographer (who was also there as a guest) shot just over 1000 frames. The second one shot over 2,500. The final album ended up with 38 images. About 1% usage rate!... a very successful portrait photographer. For a portrait session she shoots around 70 frames in different poses and settings within the studio, using natural light only. She immediately culls 50% leaving her with 35-40.
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I'll take a portrait by Elsa Dorfman over any of 'em, any day. Two shots; you choose one. $3000.
 
The style is completely different now. Staged shots are part of the wedding, and you probably shoot like 100 frames. But now there is a documentarian approach, and a aesthetics that are more off the cuff. You shoot a lot because you can, and at the end of the day you have probably like a 10% success rate. Also consider that if you were a weekend warrior shooting weddings for gas and beer money, today with a proper rate you'd be a highly successful photographer. At 3 grand a wedding before the album and print you gotta bust your ass out there. 3 or 4 rolls of film and some medium format don't cut it.
 
Well, a slight change of pace here. For my second (and most recent) wedding some 35 years ago we were on a pretty tight budget. Small country church ceremony, buffet lunch at a nearby bistro/wine bar with a guitarist in the corner, I took all the photos myself except for the ones in the church when I handed my camera to my uncle. Probably took about four, maybe five rolls of 35mm. Got everyone who was there, mostly in table groups or chatting at the bistro. Great fun, cheap and we have some nice memory shots but very few of the "Fairy Princess" style and next to none of "Prince Charming" variety.
 
Amused I used "quick reply" feel free to skim and go to the last two paragraphs.

I have shot more than 100 weddings, over a significant period of my life.

First wedding was 40 shots, had ten film holders, and went home to swap out the film.

It was a big leap to go to 35mm film from MF, I was so used to doing almost everything that is now done automatically I had to test and trust things were working properly, and in a sense it was my first digital wedding as I had the film scanned by a pro lab hi res tif's during processing. They were on a tighter than some folk's budget, so an edited CD + double copies of smaller prints were what they wanted. BTW, I put up a couple shots of her made with a Hasselblad in the park, her name is Lisa.

I do not recall the number of shots, but it was sometime like 10 rolls, and I had a feeling that anything more at this occasion would be making the day more about pictures than the wedding.

Once you shoot completely digital, you may have a mind set change, it's only another image on a card and if it is bad you can delete it. (I of course deleted the ones where either I failed, or the people just did not look good in to, the trash can-- actual, nor virtual). When I hand my G9 or 10 to someone for a snap of my friends with me hiding behind them, I always tell the guy to shoot several, it's only digital. ;-)

Also, when I used a camera in which I could see the image at the time of exposure, RF or more likely a TLR, I could often spot when something was wrong and re-shoot.

Groups -- you always re-shoot-- someone can always look bad. If I am in the group, well, you just have to hide me and hope for the best. Always help to have a good looking B&G, but you might have to bring them with you. In reality, most are young and look pretty good, some look like pro models.

The feeling I get now is that all numbers are doubled or more at the minimum, just because it is digital.

The numbers of shots can be inflated if somehow they expect a shot of everyone there or each table as you will more than likely shoot two or three of each of those.

So, (that's for Roger), the number of shots inflate. The quality of the inflation is up to you, but I do not care to dominate the day with flashes.

I am considering doing yet a few more, for friends, but though it would be much more convenient with TTL and a Zoom reflex, I am thinking M8.

I would think numbers in to the thousands would be the hallmark of inflation and not in any positive way, and an amateur. As well stated, the final story of the day should be in the neighborhood of 50 final images, 5000-- well that is a stop motion video.

Regards, John
 
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PS-- unless they are buying thousands of images and paying a huge price, they may conclude the photographer is not good enough for their $50K wedding.

This is a "Quick Reply", my apologies for the longer post, but well, that's me, I assume you guys read quickly.

J
 
I took some for a friend last October. They wanted informal ('cept for a few) and I took no more that 250-ish. It was then whittled down to about 60 on disc.
The idea was to tell a story, as has been mentioned. Some of these are on my website.

http://www.stephenfell.net/page7.htm

Steve.
 
tlitody said:
I declined the last request of a friend to photograph their wedding. Bride to be was a graphic designer and insisted that it should be photographed on transparency because that was the best quality film you could get.
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Yikes! Only if they provide the film and vouchers for development up front.

I'm shooting a wedding for a friend in a few weeks. The requirements are a few medium format color portraits for her, and at least three nice candid black & white photos that look like Weegee's work them for him. This should be fun.
 
Interestingly 10 years ago our wedding photographer who was on the cusp of retirement and just got into digital predicted that the future would be a photographer would turn up, take hundreds of pictures and just give them all to the customer on a CD to sort out their own albums, etc.


Cheers





Clive
 
chris91387 said:
a buddy of mine shot 3 weddings in one weekend a little while ago. he had 18,000 shots from two cameras.

crazy.
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And he expects to post-process all of them? Spray and pray.:rolleyes: The most I ever have done in sports photography was an average of 1200 frames per soccer match, etc. The PP and editing drives me crazy.:p I don't do these or weddings for that matter anymore.
 
I think, too, that how a wedding is shot, and how much work you end up doing, depends highly on who's calling the shots. I don't imagine that fine art wedding photographers like Riccis Valladares and Jose Villa sit down and let the bride dictate the shots, number of pictures to be taken, form they will come in, poses, etc. They are artists who have their own concept of how the wedding should be captured. I don't know for sure, but I also imagine that they think too much of themselves to sit for days reviewing thousands upon thousands of pictures.

A wedding from hell or an expression of your art, it's all in our self-concept, as in most things.
 
Last wedding I shot 100% digital and took only 300 shots. Out of that they chose 50 keepers. I was very proud with that ratio.

If only I could manage that on the street.
 
No one has ever told me how many pictures they want or how to do it. I have always done it my way and it has always been successful. Wedding are just not any fun, or interesting to me. Sports are about the same after so many, they all blend together.:p

The final editing of either is the most time-consuming whether it be film or digital...as it should be.:angel:
 
I take an interest in the photo.net wedding forum precisely bacause of the professionalism of so many of the regular contributors there. Back up cameras, backup shooters, L glass, 35 primes on full frame, exhaustive planning including pre-wedding site visits. And they all shoot manual. I would have no concerns about high end teams coming up with a a reliable portfolio. Often budding wedding photographers on the forum ask questions about their forthcoming first gig, and they are sometimes scarified for their thinking they could go with one camera or any one of 20 other plans that are deemed by the experts to be criminally irresponsible etc etc. I've learnt a lot reading through these discussions, and have a new repsect for the wedding photographer. And I did a weeding myself nearly 20 years ago with two Leicas, a 50 Summicron and a very hazy 90 f 4 collapsible. I was happy with the result and so, I think, were the couple. But knowing what I know now I would not even consider doing a wedding.
 
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