Photoragher - Are We Crazy?

i would personally hire a pro....... i being told that we become bridezilla on that day about the little things...so if your pics don't come out right you may remain bridezilla for a longer time....")

Here is the update we decided not to go with our friends son and we hired Evan Baines which we found on this forum. He does amazing work and we are so exicited!!

Evan Baines Photography

I think you made the right decision in hiring a pro

good choice. When I was starting, I thought I would be able to do a wedding just because I took decent pictures. There is so much more that goes on besides knowing how to use a camera. I think you made the right decision.

Photographing a wedding for the first time is damm stressful. If he feels it isnt, you have the wrong young man. Technically it is a very very demanding dicipline - you need to expose everything perfectly, in wildly changing conditions (dim church vs full sun outside). To top that you usually have a bride in a white dress next to a groom in a dark suit. This makes the latitude for error in exposure tiny. Most consumer cameras deal with this awfully. A professional will be shooting with a camera with a wide dynamic range, and shooting the shot in a way to minimise these issues. Most non-professionals do not anticipate the problem, and end up either blowing the dress, or under exposing the suit or (usually) both

First time wedding photographers allways underestimate how much they need to be in control of lighting, and amuters or semi-pro's just dont have the right type of gear generally, and if they do, they generally havent been under the presure of using it to get every shot nailed first time everytime

So your young chap will be currently used to taking his time and shooting a load of shots off and picking a good one out of the bunch.. This is cool, this is how most people work. Wedding photography is so fast paced at times that you are litterally thinking about the settings for the next shot while you are taking the curent one. Only experience and confidence lets you work like this

If you still decide to go down this route, the suggest to the lad he tags allong with a pro for a few weddings first. He will learn loads, the pro will be pleased to have a free second shooter / bag carrier / assistant

The next thing to consider is what happens afterwards. A pro will have (very very expensive) software to edit and balace the images with. Photoshop/lightroom/niose reduction/focus software is still required even when the photographer is not making drastic artistic edits. Matching the colour and tonal range between shots, sharpening specifically for web, and then print, tweaking the RAW conversion, removing spots and blemishes are all things that the pro just does, but actually spends hours on. It is unlikley the young chap has suitable software for this

My one further bit of advice is a technical one and then a obvious one. Make sure he shoots in RAW format. Its more work afterwards, but if he does screw up the exposure a bit, you have some lattitude in the post processing to recover the image. Secondly - make sure he has a backup of everything. A camera body of mine "died" 10 miniutes before a wedding 3 weeks ago (it was 2 months old with just 1000 frames on the counter). I had a lens give up auto focussing earlier this year in the middle of the ceremony... it does happen, so makesure he is prepared for it. Secondly, whatever he thinks he needs in batteries and memory cards - multiply by 4. I can drain a set of 5 rechargable batteries in my flashgun in 45 mins!

I hope that helps, and whatever you decide, good luck and have fun

Richard King