Like many others, I love to take beautiful events such as weddings. However, one of the first things I read about wedding photography is not to do it. I don't believe advice like this comes from wedding photographers worried about their livelihood trying to scare amateurs like myself away.
The wedding should be the most beautiful day of one's life. Please excuse my generalisation, the main characters (bride and groom) in the event (wedding) are young, at the prime of their lives, courageous and deeply in love with one another, looking ahead to a lifetime together, choosing one another, forsaking everyone else, to facing whatever the world throws at them together from that time on, or can not imagine living the rest of their lives without each other, wanting to grow old together...
Why this long winded babbling? What is my point? Yes, there is a point to this. And it is that the wedding day should be the most beautiful it can possibly be, for the bride and for the groom, it is not the playground for a keen photographer who doesn't do wedding photography professionally for a living. One of the best thing one can do when approached by a friend to do a his/her/their wedding is to foot the bill for (probably with the financial help of other friends/family) for a professional wedding photographer.
Even if your friend/s tell you that they just want some journalistic pictures to capture the event. You want to make sure their wedding pictures are worthy of looking at by the love birds and family and friends and future family and friends for ages to come.
Having said that, like everything else, there are exceptions of course. But they ARE exceptions.
Recently I attended an event where the official photographer's pictures were deemed un-usable by the client. It was a big event and as the nature of events go, it can not be redone for the photographer's benefit. To the relief of the organiser, my pics happens to meet their requirements, hence the client took mine... I feel very sorry for the official photographer because I know what went wrong and it wasn't completely his fault! Also, I am very aware that the same could happen to me.
Just one week on, I was shooting casually at a fashion event where powerful sunlight was streaming into the room while very warm (aka yellow) and powerful spotlights were on the little platforms where models will walk to and post. I had the benefit of being able to do it twice. After learning some great tips from my good friends (photographers) who were also there, it turned out ok for the second time. What a disaster it would have been if I were contracted to shoot this fashion event.
There is so much more I need to learn!
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