Paul & Brittany Weir's Wedding

Shot my first wedding on May 22nd, 2010. The bride, Brittany, is a co-worker of mine at my day job. She actually asked if I would want to shoot her wedding and of course my first response was, "HECK NO!!!", but kept that to myself. To be nice and give her a chance to reconsider, I asked her if she was sure she wanted me to do it and not a professional. All my shooting has been for fun and I've never gotten paid for any of it. I've had a few people contact me thru Flickr to use an image or two in something they were doing, but was never paid for any of it. Brittany seemed to like the work she had seen and insisted that I be the one who does her wedding. I told her I would do the engagement pictures and we'll see where to go from there, but to keep another photographers number handy. I would much rather be a second shooter a few times than jump straight into to deep end having never swam before.

So we do the engagement pictures and they actually come out pretty good. For my first time doing something like that I was supprised with how well they came out. This had built up a little confidence but I was still uneasy about doing their wedding... but Brittany kept insisting that I do it. So I figure what the heck, lets do this thing.

I end up buying some new toys, I mean photo gear, a shoot thru umbrella, reflector, and flash sync cord, and decided we need to do bridal dress pictures. This will allow me to get more comfortable shooting and also try out my new stuff. We do this on the day she does a test run on her hair and make up, that way it looks like we did them on the actually wedding day. This was a lot of fun cause I had never really used an off camera flash before (other than playing around at home) and got some creative lighting with it.

The big day came and went pretty quick. I was really nervous about it for about a week, but once I got there and started shooting, everything just kinda flew into place. It was still nerve racking, but much easier than I thought it was going to be. Plus the fact that I'm friends with the bride and groom and also had other co-workers there, it made it a little easier to see a face I knew every once in a while.

Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Weir.

To see more pictures of their engagement, bridal dress shots, and wedding, please click here.

Had an idea

I was thinking about buying a neutral density filter for the camera but didn't want to spend between $60 and $100 on something that I wont use that often, at least right now, and then it dawned on me to stack a couple of circular polarizers (that I already own) on top of each other and see if that would make it dark enough to leave the shutter open for a good long while in normal light. So I busted out the filters, set up a tripod in the kitchen, grabbed a glass and turned on the water. Fired off the camera using a remote, so as to reduce any vibration that might be caused by me pressing on the shutter with my finger, and did a few test shots. Found that 15 seconds at f22 looked the best. I ended up with what I was basically looking for. A silky smooth flow of water. Now I've got the bug to go out and find a creek, river, waterfall or even a nice fountain and try and get some interesting exposures of moving water.

iPhone test

Just a test to see what happens when you post from the iPhone app.