Doing Weddings - Be Careful!!!

[Mike1234]

No, I think she was the aunt of the bride... of a local mob family, I believe.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

I thought about being a wedding photogaper at one time many years ago, but more I read about it the more I'm glad that I'm not one.

Jeff

 

[Prest_400]

I thought about being a wedding photogaper at one time many years ago, but more I read about it the more I'm glad that I'm not one.

Jeff

I do agree with you, but instead of only being a wedding photographer; I'd not like to do any kind of professional activity.

Just as hobby and entertainment, also for documenting anything I want to. Nothing else.

 

[benjiboy]

My favourite quote from the article referenced concerns another of his customers:

"The Durands claim Mr Bowers left early on the wedding day, saying he had a gig as a stand-up comedian."

A man of many talents, indeed.

Matt

I never cease to be amazed at human beings facility for self deception, I look foreward to Mr Bowers audition on the X Factor.

 

[alexmacphee]

I never cease to be amazed at human beings facility for self deception, I look foreward to Mr Bowers audition on the X Factor.

What do you think of him doing that old number from Half a Sixpence, you know that one that goes

#All lined up in a wedding group
#'Ere we are for a photograph
#We're all dressed up in a morning suit
#All trying hard not to laugh
#Since the early caveman in his fur
#Took a trip to Gretna Green
#There's always been a photographer
#To record the 'appy scene.....

#'Old it, flash, bang, wallop, what a picture
#What a picture, what a photograph
#Poor old soul, blimey, what a joke
#Hat blown off in a cloud of smoke
#Clap 'ands, stamp yer feet
#Bangin' on the big bass drum
#What a picture, what a picture
#Um-tiddly-um-pum-um-pum-pum
#Stick it in your fam'ly album

I think he could be on a winner here...

 

[archer]

In my early life, when I worked for a large studio, I shot countless weddings, most of them, handheld 4X5 with flash at first, then later, strobe. We always shot from a script and the usual wedding was 200 negs. It was well known that shooting a Mexican wedding was where the real money was. It was not unusual for the photography to run over $2000 and up while the normal package for most other weddings was $750. I was working one wedding as assistant to the studio owner who was personally taking all the script formals at the church. Fifteen brides maids and fifteen ushers and because it was a formal Mexican ceremony most of the women of the brides group wore black. The church was very dark and lit only by candles. My primary job was to reload holders and fetch and carry for the boss. After all the church formals were shot I started to unload holders and much to my horror, none of them had film in them. Meanwhile the wedding party had already left for the reception. I gave my boss the bad news...his fault. The primary photographer for each wedding had the sole responsibility to load his own holders before leaving the studio, usually the night before. That morning at the studio I grabbed two Rollies and ten rolls of Super Hypan 500, which I normally used to shoot candids but as luck would have it I shot all the church formals too, right behind my boss. I never did that before and never after that time but It saved the shoot and later in the darkroom I souped the 4X5's in DK50 and took the 120 home and souped it in Microdol X. Well the grain was still like 50 grit sandpaper but the Brides family loved the look and they ordered two 20X24's oil painted and fifteen 16X20's all oil painted. Together with 100 8X10's and 200 5X7's, the wedding was worth $5100. All the enlargements from the Super Hypan were printed through black screen diffusion and I can tell you that the women in black looked otherworldly but beautiful. To this day I still think of that wedding as the best I ever shot. Would I ever shoot another wedding? NOT IF YOU BOILED MY MOTHER IN OIL!!! There is an old saying about wedding photography...The photographer is the first to get criticized and the last to get payed. Who needs the stress?
Denise Libby

 

[werra]

Maybe he's trying to start a new trend in wedding photography. He could be on the cutting edge of "Modern Crap".

Lomo-weddings.

 

[benjiboy]

What do you think of him doing that old number from Half a Sixpence, you know that one that goes

#All lined up in a wedding group
#'Ere we are for a photograph
#We're all dressed up in a morning suit
#All trying hard not to laugh
#Since the early caveman in his fur
#Took a trip to Gretna Green
#There's always been a photographer
#To record the 'appy scene.....

#'Old it, flash, bang, wallop, what a picture
#What a picture, what a photograph
#Poor old soul, blimey, what a joke
#Hat blown off in a cloud of smoke
#Clap 'ands, stamp yer feet
#Bangin' on the big bass drum
#What a picture, what a picture
#Um-tiddly-um-pum-um-pum-pum
#Stick it in your fam'ly album

I think he could be on a winner here...

Great,he might still have a career entertaining at the Pontefract Job Centre.

 

[railwayman3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mavc7H5W-zg

 

[benjiboy]

The first thing a person embarking on a career in wedding photography should ask themselves is "what am I going to do the first time it goes wrong", because if you do enough of them It's inevitable that at least one will.

 

[eddym]

The first thing a person embarking on a career in wedding photography should ask themselves is "what am I going to do the first time it goes wrong", because if you do enough of them It's inevitable that at least one will.

Quick answer: Change your name, move to another state, consider plastic surgery or, in extreme cases, sex change. Oh, and never touch a camera again!

 

[Christopher Walrath]

I actually messed up one wedding and it was all me. Borrowed a camera in a pinch and was not familiar with it. Being able to compose and coax the best shots in the world don't matter a bit if you can't expose the film properly. I was fortunate in the way it turned out. There was enough to salvage the deal. I refunded all of the money. Actually the reason I stopped doing weddings. I figured if I couldn't deliver the goods I should pull in my sign. And I really don't regret it. Now I go to a wedding and I'm the fat relative that eats too much cake and also has a camera. I don't miss that responsibility.

 

[benjiboy]

I've done more weddings in than I care to remember Chris, and am happy to say I never had a disaster, but I always had it in my mind that the laws of probability said that the next one could be the one, I hated them and only did them because I had a young family in those days and needed the money, I'm pleased to say I'm in a much better position now my kids are grown up and I'm retired, and if I'm invited to a wedding, I'm like you, happy to eat too much, socialise, and enjoy myself.

 

[eddym]

I've been refusing weddings since I closed my studio. Here in PR, digitographers will shoot a wedding for $300 and hand the bride a cd with the images before they leave the reception.

 

[Mike1234]

The only time I messed up a wedding is after I made an out-of-state trip to care care of some urgent business... had absolutely no sleep for three days... and was hyped up on caffeine pills to keep going. My brain was completely fried the whole time. I only lost a few images and the couple was very understanding and forgiving... I'm still not sure if that made me feel better or worse.

 

[alexmacphee]

Here in PR, digitographers will shoot a wedding for $300 and hand the bride a cd with the images before they leave the reception.

Maybe I'm too much of an old romantic, but I'd have thought the bride would have had more interesting plans for the honeymoon nights than looking at digisnaps of cousin Henry in his ill-fitting suit on the laptop...

 

[Mike1234]

Maybe I'm too much of an old romantic, but I'd have thought the bride would have had more interesting plans for the honeymoon nights than looking at digisnaps of cousin Henry in his ill-fitting suit on the laptop...

Alex... you publicly dropped your participle in open forum. How embarrassing this must be for you!! This is not YOUR typical style!! Are the honeymooners looking at wedding images on the laptop or is cousin Henry on the laptop? You're regularly so eloquently written that this shocks me. I'm shocked to the bone, I say!!

OMG... I've had an epiphany. You're becoming American-ized. Oh my...

 

[alexmacphee]

Alex... you publicly dropped your participle in open forum. How embarrassing this must be for you!!

Ach, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ; I wish I could blame the drink, but it's probably a chocolate overload from this box of Quality Street I've been munching my way through.

Rats, I've just noticed a whole pile of dropped participles on the carpet behind my desk, all half-chewed. And I thought Lucy was chasing house spiders (she got George on Thursday last) ; stupid cat.

OMG... I've had an epiphany. You're becoming American-ized. Oh my...

I shall be well in the morning, and my participle count should be restored. I have a higher than average regard for our colonial cousins, but there are limits!

 

[benjiboy]

My favourite quote from the article referenced concerns another of his customers:

"The Durands claim Mr Bowers left early on the wedding day, saying he had a gig as a stand-up comedian."

A man of many talents, indeed.

Matt

Was his act at the gig showing his photographs ?

 

[BetterSense]

Maybe I'm too much of an old romantic, but I'd have thought the bride would have had more interesting plans for the honeymoon nights than looking at digisnaps of cousin Henry in his ill-fitting suit on the laptop...

I wouldn't be so sure. To the newest generation, doing something virtually is better than doing it for real. Virtual photographs are better than those undesirable real ones, that cost money, have mass, take up space, and can be smelled. Playing virtual bowling on the virtual bowling machine is as good as going to the real bowling alley with real sticky seats and drinking real beer. Reading virtual books on a virtual book reader is as good as a bookshelf full of books...even better...more virtual. A harddrive is as good as a record collection...even better. A virtual-photograph-virtual-wedding is as good as the real thing....probably better even...it has more of that desirable virtuality.

I went on vacation this summer. I realized people spend more time looking at the backs of their digital cameras, than they do looking at the sights.

Although I do take photographs when I am on vacation, and go on vacation to take photographs, I refuse to ever stumble onto the next level where the experience that is sought is not the experience itself but the experience of having had (and documented with forensic precision) the experience.

The book In the Beginning, there was the Command-Line has several insightful looks at this endemic virtuality.

 

[Roger Krueger]

It's easy enough to understand how he got the job–instant portfolio via flickr! (O.K., I'm not saying I have proof, but it's certainly trivial to build a web portfolio this way, and I have trouble imagining any other path to someone spending this much money on someone this incompetent in a very competitive market.)

Haven't shot enough weddings to have one truly come unglued yet, but I came very close to disaster on a Quinceañera once (a long time ago). As I packed to go to the event I noticed that somehow the frameline selector had fallen off my Mamiya Universal, so I subbed a Super 23 as my main body.

The problem with that is that the Super 23 has a Linhof-style tilting back, and vaguely crummy locks. Sure enough, at some point I must've picked it up by the back, and added 1/4" or so of stealth back tilt to all the formals. But by some miracle I'd been doubling all the formals with my HiMatic 7s, mostly as a test of what the new-to-me little body could do. They were sharp, on Reala, and even exposed better–its GN-only-mechanical-autoflash system did better than the thyristor flash I had on the Mamiya, especially in bright daylight.

 

[Moopheus]

I've been refusing weddings since I closed my studio. Here in PR, digitographers will shoot a wedding for $300 and hand the bride a cd with the images before they leave the reception.

A few years ago when my wife and I got married in Vegas, the, uh, photographer was still shooting film. They shot one roll and gave us the film on the way out. Along with the videotape. But we were only paying, as I recall, about $50 for the service. Were the pictures great? No. Were they better than what those folks in the UK got? Yes.

When you're getting married by a big, fat, sweaty Elvis, you may be better off with not so many photos.

 

[benjiboy]

What I don't understand is why this story is being reported all over the world thousands of "photographers" are f***ing up weddings and being sued all over the world all the time.

 

[perkeleellinen]

I photographed my cousin's wedding this year using a film SLR. Fun day and some nice photos. A friend does this on the side using his DSLR and he said I was 'crazy' to do this using film as it's too 'risky' (there's no preview screen). I told him when my parents married in the late 1960s the photographer gave the films to his assistant after the wedding, he drove back to the lab and they had proof prints on a board as the guests arrived for their evening meal. Nowadays my friend spends days whittling down his 500+ photos before burning them onto a CD. Progress!

 

[Mike1234]

What I don't understand is why this story is being reported all over the world thousands of "photographers" are f***ing up weddings and being sued all over the world all the time.

If that's factual then I strongly suspect it has something to do with ever decreasing skill levels in most, if not all, professions. However, the profession is still well respected notwithstanding "wedding photographers" attempts at making a buck despite a lack of skills and experience.