A Story about Taking Pictures of Married People

I wrote this post over a month ago and forgot to post it. Look at me go. I promise a more current set of thoughts very soon. 

Last week, I had my first experience with wedding photography. It turns out I'm...well, about how I expected to be. Not great. Not terrible. Out of 1,060 pictures, I forced over 200 of them to be useable in some way, so I guess that's something.

I did it for free, because it was for a couple of dear friends, and it was my first time. I figured a practice-run photography gig was a suitable wedding gift. And while I most certainly don't regret doing it for free, I doubt I'll be able to afford the same generosity to anyone else in the future. The event went from 4 to 8pm, approximately, and then sifting though the seemingly endless pictures I had taken, and editing the ones that were salvageable--I think I clocked in another 8 hours. I will never begrudge a photographer his or her fees.

One of the reasons I was so eager to do this, though, was that I knew I'd learn a whole lot, and I was right. For instance, I found myself phobic of closing the aperture; for some stupid reason, I kept it stopped down as far as I could get it--all day long, in blinding sunlight. Instead, to limit the exposure, I throttled the shutter speed between three and eight hundred. If you know anything about cameras, you can go ahead and laugh at me now. Here's the other part: keeping the aperture open decreased my depth of field to the point that I had a devil of a time keeping anything in focus, particularly for a lot of the candid shots I tried to get.

I also ended up underexposing about half of all the shots I got, having failed to adjust appropriately for drastic lighting changes. Listen. Photography is hard, it turns out.

But it's hecka fun. I did learn a ton, and I think my friends will be happy with some of what I give them. Here are some of my favorites: