I had a great time shooting my friend, Emily’s wedding on Saturday. It certainly was a long day and my right hand was all gnarled by the end of the night from clutching the camera for 7 hours straight! But the day was full of surprises and opportunities for pretty pictures. The light was gorgeous, and it wasn’t hellishly hot in the shade (although it pushed 100-degrees in the sun!)…

I had been a little nervous about being able to get great shots documentary style because of the speed of the technical stuff like changing lenses and ISO settings quickly. It was definitely a challenge to work my Nikon’s shooting menu, constantly changing the ISO and white balance settings as we moved indoors and out. It was like typing on a Blackberry, I was making so many adjustments from moment to moment!

I found that I had just the right equipment for what I wanted to do. While my Nikon D70s has only 6.1 megapixels, that is more than enough for 8×10 images, and even for 11×17. The bride assured me they wanted no prints bigger than that. If I were to do this for a living, I would likely upgrade to a meatier camera but hopefully not a heavier one because a whole day of lugging that around is tiring.

I used my 18-70mm lens, a 70-210mm lens, two 2GB memory cards, and my Nikon SB-600 off camera flash. I thought about buying an offset flash bracket for the camera so there would be less red-eye in the shots, but decided against it at the last minute. Turns out I didn’t need it, as I only had one shot with redeye in the gazillion shots I took. I brought my tripod, but I never used it.

Some of my favorite shots are of Emily getting dressed (I really like the top shot. It’s totally iconic and her hair looks really cool). We set up in a vibrant sea green room which was perfect for the 1950’s-inspired wedding, and a red-headed bride. A large wall of mirrors helped me to get a wide variety of angles.

The most difficult part of the day was shooting the groomsmen. They arrived at our location all dressed and ready to go, so they weren’t involved in some activity that I could document creatively. So we had to resort to posed shots. Ugh. I didn’t have any stock shots in my mind to help guide me through that uncomfortable shooting session, so I winged it and did ok. I’m not super thrilled with those shots, but they’ll do.

Emily took a big risk in hiring a photographer who had never shot a wedding before! She had to convince me to do it, because I was wary about taking on that kind of responsibility. Your photographer is next to you the whole time as you take this leap into marriage, and I’m so glad she convinced me. It was a great experience.