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My First Wedding

March 27th, 2009
21 Comments
The Bride

The Bride

I’ve recently had the opportunity to photograph my first wedding, and I have to say right from the start that it was a very nice experience. I’ve covered various events before in the past, so I have experience with event photography, but I have been wanting to do a wedding for a while now. Being the official photographer on a wedding brings a lot of responsibility along with it. For one thing, you are tasked with capturing the important moments during the wedding, a very important event for the couple involved, and providing them with pictures that will enable them to relive the day for years to come. You’ll have to deliver images that will tell the story of their wedding day to their kids, grandkids and other family members as best as possible. If you mess up, in the worst case, they have nothing.

And I have to admit that these ideas did make me nervous before and during the wedding, but I think that in the end it was a successful first wedding. I certainly am satisfied with the feedback I’ve received so far from people, including the couple and their family. It was a very nice experience, I’ve learned a lot, and it is very hard work, not only during the actual wedding but more so during the post processing of the images after the wedding. When you go through this, you start to understand why wedding photographers charge so much for their work.

The Groom

The Groom

Apart from the fact that this was my first time covering a wedding, the wedding itself was also special because it was the wedding of a cousin of mine, Vashist Sewgobind. I’ve known Vashist since early childhood, and we’ve essentially grown up together, sharing the same friends, going to the same schools, sitting in the same classes etc. During this time Vashist was actually more a friend to me than a cousin. And they say that as you grow up, your surroundings play an important role in shaping you into the person that you become. This is very true if I look at the influence Vashist had on my life. The three things that I do today for a living, namely Software Engineering, Design and Photography, are all things that I got involved with because of Vashist. It was Vashist who one day took me to a computer training center years ago, where he was working part-time, and got me interested in the personal computer and software development. I didn’t feel like going that day and wasn’t very interested, but he insisted I go with him and after a tour where he took the time to patiently explain things to me, got me hooked for life. Now I can’t even begin to imagine what my life would look like today had I not gone with him that day.

It was Vashist who got me interested in graphics design and computer generated animations when he again took the time to show me the possibilities on the personal computer. And finally, I only got interested in photography, after Vashist was emailing me pictures that he was taking with his new digital camera and showing me some clever tricks that he was performing on them using Photoshop.

So when he approached me a few months ago to cover his wedding, one of the most important moments in his life, there was only one answer I could give him.

The wedding was a traditional Hindu wedding, and one thing you’ll notice is that it was very colorful. The equipment I used mostly are two Canon EOS 40D bodies with the EF 85mm f/1.2 L USM lens, the EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM lens and the EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM lens. All very light sensitive lenses and I mainly used available light during photography, which is the way I prefer to shoot. Walking around constantly with two 40D bodies and heavy lenses attached around my neck wasn’t easy on my back. In total I captured about 1700 images, of which only about 850 made it through the editing process. My friend Jimmy accompanied me on this first wedding with his own camera, as a backup to make sure that if I messed up, the damage could be kept to a minimum.

Below is a gallery with sample pictures from the wedding.

Meta

This entry was published on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 10:11 am by Karel Donk and is filed under Art Personal Photography. You can use the permanent link to bookmark and/or share it.

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