A warning to those who think they can do weddings...

[symes]

Folks,

I guess this is just a warning to those who think they can jump into wedding photography.

A friend of mine had mentionned that maybe I might be interested in shooting her wedding. I bluntly told her that I was not ready to take that leap. Nor could I believe that she had found someone to do her wedding for 400Cdn.

I wasn't able to attend her wedding either because I was away at school...but when she got the photos back I couldn't believe the horrific results. The pics are grainy, crooked, dark, and all shot in poor locations... I cannot imagine presenting these to a client...

I can't even find a way to salvage them for her...my PS skills are tapped out...

I know I could have done better than this, but I am glad she has now seen the result of paying next to nothing for important photos...

Take a look....

Cheers,

[symes]

one more...

One of the guests even mentionned to her about the sailboats...she tried to pass the graininess off as a photojournalistic style...

[Tonky]

I've seen a lot worse to be honest - the group isn't badly posed.

I got into wedding photography in my teens and did it semi professionally all my life until a couple of years ago when I packed it in. I still see some horrific examples though which people have paid good money for.

You don't have to be any great and gifted photographer to undertake wedding photography. If you don't have the basic skills then you're a fool to undertake it, but the biggest problem is you'll be called upon to have people skills in organizing, managing, and posing often large groups of people, that you probably don't possess and have no experience of. It can be an extremely high pressure job, and unless you're a pretty outgoing type of person, who can keep it light and chatty while coaxing people into what you want, you'd probably do well to avoid the situation.

[Tonky]

LOL - OMG!

Pics on the skew like that are all too common. Unless your friend has already paid, what she should do is demand a substantial discount. If the photographer doesn't sell these pics to your friend, he wont sell them to anyone else.

I realise your friend will want the pics but there's room to for negotiation there.

Most of that last shot is wide angle distortion btw. The bride and the two ladies on the right are upright while the fellers are all falling over.

[MattyB]

harsh

i did a wedding for a LOWWWWW budget wedding a while ago with my 300D, and i'll agree that weddings are A) way to much pressure and expectations B) friggin hard to do! C) not worth doing unless you're a professional with the added wedding gift

[kaitanium]

maybe he wanted the dark feeling =P. spooky if you ask me

[symes]

Sorry should have made it clear that the copyright and all the images are now property of the bride and groom and this is why I was able to post them...

Cheers,

[Tonky]

O.K. Do you have the original images or are these scanned from the prints? They're quite badly under-exposed, so I don't think you'll recover much shadow detail though. Pretty awful really.

[MJP]

Originally Posted by Tonky

O.K. Do you have the original images or are these scanned from the prints? They're quite badly under-exposed, so I don't think you'll recover much shadow detail though. Pretty awful really.

I agree with you bro....its under-exposed....i think your friend used auto mode....this is a bad situation..i usually use M mode...take a test shot first...i found most of the time..using large aperature and between shutter 30-60

[symes]

Originally Posted by MJP

I agree with you bro....its under-exposed....i think your friend used auto mode....this is a bad situation..i usually use M mode...take a test shot first...i found most of the time..using large aperature and between shutter 30-60

My friend didn't take these photos...she was the bride...

it was another photog who took the photos...I know they are unexposed...I can't figure out for the life of me what kind of camera she was using...

the exif data is no existant...but the photo name was P3330033 something like that...

any idea what camera that was?

Cheers,

[sdommin]

Originally Posted by symes

the exif data is no existant...but the photo name was P3330033 something like that...

any idea what camera that was?

Some (if not all) Olympus cameras have that kind of file name.

[Merle]

I have been photographing weddings for 33 years. The bride obviouly did not choose to hire an experienced professional, that being said the photographer had good ideas as to what they wanted to accomplish. Photohop and a good noise reduction program will do wonders. There has to be a first wedding for every wedding photographer. If this photographer is willing to study his/her work and hone his/her skills things will improve. I'm glad the bride did not pay more for what she recieved.

[Tonky]

Indeed there has to be a 'first' wedding for every photographer and it's a little odious ganging up to rip someone's work apart - as I said at the outset, I've seen much worse. Tbe thing I find curious about these shots is they're all crowded into cramped spaces to get the sort of shots I'd normally associate with a nightmare wet day when the shots have to be taken indoors, although it was clearly a sunny day. The outside shot of the bride and bridesmaids is a little crowded in the frame so perhaps the surroundings outside simply weren't suitable, and backgound and surroundings do make a huge difference.

In short we don't really know what problems the photographer had to contend with.

[symes]

Originally Posted by Tonky

O.K. Do you have the original images or are these scanned from the prints? They're quite badly under-exposed, so I don't think you'll recover much shadow detail though. Pretty awful really.

These are the digital images...

these are just downisized versions of the originals...

[robertwgross]

The wedding shooters of this forum could tear these shots apart, item by item, if that were necessary. However, on the other hand, I see a few things that were done correctly in each shot.

---Bob Gross---