First wedding practice shoot...

and...unfortunately did not get anything i'm proud of.

but...the point was really just practice as we were not hired and not paid. it was a great learning experience but i've realized my equipment is insufficient. i can do natural light portrait shoots fine but am still much better in the studio and i am not good at indoor action shoots at all...i need a good flash and probably a much better camera....disappointed​.

but...would still like to give the couple something usable from the shoot...any tips for editing to detract from the horrible grainy low light shots with ugly backgrounds? haha wahh

also...how do you approach a shoot when the venue is unattractive?

Sorry the shoot didn't go as well as planned. You've given very little info to assess your issues from. What camera, lenses, settings, flashes did you use.
A good photographer can make the best of most any location. Your creativity should shine through when challenged by a not so attractive location.

ugly locations = shoot tighter and get facial emotion. Focus on the little details of the day. Look around the room and see where an interesting shot can be had (scouting before). Bounce light as needed to keep ISO down.

For noise try to get the exposure out of the darks as that's where most noise comes from when trying to bump it up. That's where a bounced flash or fast lens would come into play. Overexpose a tad to fill in the noisy shadows produced by high ISO.

Without your gear, camera, settings that's all I can come up with really.

As far as noise is concerned if there is discernible contrast in the images B&W ends up looking pretty nice.

thanks guys...yeah sorry i didn't give more info. i have studio experience and experience shooting outside at locations i choose but this was just my friend's coworkers wedding and we did not see the location before hand...my creativity certainly did not shine through as i'm not happy with anything i shot....we did not have an external flash and both of us were just using rebels...i guess we just need to stick with what we can do with the equipment we have until we can get the other...anyway, thanks.

Now you understand how we get frustrated by all the hacks out there running around doing this to couples. Rich or poor a bride deserves better, better they hired a portrait photographer to take one picture than 100's of crap. To answer some of your questions, when the environment is ugly, don't show the environment, use excessive bokeh or close-ups.

Hi Erin - sorry things did not work out as you had hoped. This is one of the challenges of professional wedding photography..... thinking on your feet, dealing with the unexpected, being able to improvise with little or no time.

I won't belabor the obvious, but either you should have scoped the place out in advance, or carried enough "light" with you to deal with any situation. I also echo PCUNITE's comments.... we see a lot of that here. Many here in fact do shoot available light, beautifully, and we thoroughly enjoy examples they post. But there are extremely dark reception halls and other places beyond our control from a lighting standpoint, and at those times we need some help.

You mentioned horribly grainy low light images - sounds like you did not have a tripod either which would have saved a number of shots. Coming from a studio background I'm a little bit surprised you made no mention of this tool...... you do have tripods in your studio? It wouldn't have solved all your problems, but for decades I shot dark churches at ISO 160 and 400 and got beautiful images at slow shutter speeds.

But to be constructive - if you seriously want to go this route, you need to purchase powerful external flash units, and solid power to drive them....either good rechargeables or power packs. As others have pointed out, you need to "think tight and crop" when dealing with ugly venues. Concentrate on faces and really narrow your framing for the action.

Often the ugliest venues have some area of plain wall or background. Crop tight using these and it will help things. Post some samples though - perhaps things are not as bad as you think.

Being familiar with studio work I can't believe you didn't think that adding "light" at a wedding wouldn't be necessary.

And like Stu says, post some pics. I have certainly taken my share of crap photos and made them at least "passable" with some work in LightRoom and PhotoShop. I'm beginning to think that anything can be salvaged these days as long as it's in focus. (Well, maybe not everything).

sure...no i should clarify. we really went into this knowing we did not have everything we needed but thought through the act of doing it we would have a better understanding of what we did need. it was purely an educational experience and the couple had a family member taking pictures as well...she couldn't really afford a photographer and we just said we wanted to do it for the experience....put me in the studio and i'm great...i know the importance of great light for sure...i do not however use a tripod in the studio at all and never have.

and...yes i know exactly what you mean...i would never charge someone to do their wedding unless i knew i could produce great work. i'm a total perfectionist in this way...and i've done research and see a lot of BAD photography out there...so yeah...this was approached as an educational experience and it was...but i learned that to do that kind of work i have a lot to learn and need some more equipment.

i could post some...although it would be painful for me...i'll see haha

thanks again for your input, i appreciate it.

Thanks for getting back to us Erin - I can certainly appreciate learning experiences.... been there, done that. Out of curiousity did you shoot JPG or RAW? If the latter, then perhaps a lot more can be salvaged than you may realize.

i shoot in raw yeah...but honestly i don't know how to fix these sorts of issues. i typically delete everything that's not sharp. i hate it...but am really trying to salvage something out of these shots for the couple...we could not find one blank wall inside the church. she got ready in this weird funky classroom with all sorts of tacky things all around...the aisle in the church was not down the center...and they had this horrible white toilet tissue like runner that was all jumbled up and messy...and outside there were ugly buildings all around.

i'm sure someone would have had a creative solution to this problem...and hopefully i'll get there with more experience but yeah...not something i have ever had to try and shoot around...everything indoors was grainy and everything outside for the most part has an ugly background.

okay...so here's a shot i took of my niece in the studio and then a couple highlighting just how horrible my light was in this church...i mean obviously...i had no light...but is it possible to get that kind of studio light with an external flash? oh...and should i just delete all the ones that are that bad? or just edit them in that warm b&w or sepia with a soft focus?

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Can you resize larger please..... like around 900x600 or somewhere in that ballpark; difficult to evaluate at that size.

oh sorry...they're clickable

i'm thinking about editing most of them this way...it seems forgiving...yeah?
~clickable

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I can't help you on the couple. That long 1/13 shutter speed is what did it. Everything from the neck down can be cleaned up pretty well but their heads/faces were moving hence the blur. At those shutter speeds even people breathing will show up on a tripod much less handheld.

1600 ISO on a Rebel didn't help either.

You shot at f/4.5. Is that the fastest lens you have?