My First Wedding: Tony & Janine

Not as in my own. The first I shot that is.

Now this is my first post. Ever. Very exciting. And daunting (think blank page syndrome). Anyway, here it is, my first "official" wedding, that I cherish like my first fallen tooth. I had already taken some pictures at friends' weddings, but nothing too serious, when my colleague from work (I know, it's redundant) Tony asked me if I could be their wedding photographer. As in, like, ME ?! Like, I'm actually going to get money for it?? Their wedding was not far away and he said they "just remembered" they needed a photographer. So I guess their medium care factor for having their photos taken got me the job.
I LOVE YOU Tony and Janine. You trusted me and opened the door to my dreams.

I could go on and on about this wedding, as with most firsts, it was charged with excitement, fears, mistakes, surprises and discovery. I don't want to write a novel here but I'd just like to mention something that makes me smile, and that is the very non-professional equipment I was using at that time. On the day I used two Canon 350D, a Sigma 18-200mm lens and Sigma wide angle 10-20mm lens. These aren't sharp or fast/bright lenses. I'm all the more proud to have produced images that the couple loved in the end. Having said that, I'm MUCH happier with the fine weapons I now use...

Here are the BIG lessons I learned from that wedding, and the actions I took to never make them again! :

• Noise: Well, it was a church wedding, so rather dark-ish. Not having fast lenses meant I had to raise the ISO big time. On top of that, I was snobbing flash, and the Canon 350D is not really known for it's noise reduction capabilities! Of course, things looked fine on the little LCD screen. However, I almost died when I downloaded the pictures on my computer. The pictures had speckles all over them! I had nightmares the bride would burst into tears and take me to court but with many hours on the computer (using Aperture) I managed to save what I had left of dignity. I purchased the noise-reduction software Noise Ninja which does a brilliant job at smoothing all the speckle (you have no choice but to love the "smooth look" with that one!), and I also converted many of them to black & white, where noise looks much better (like in an old movie). Since then, I've also invested in a Canon 5D mark II and Canon 7D for their low noise capabilities, I bought fast lenses down to f/1.8 and I've learned to use my flash properly if things get really too dark. This really scarred me to life ;)
  

• Sharpness: I've been shooting in RAW for a long time, but when I shot my first wedding I didn't know that RAW images were naturally a bit soft since they are not sharpened in camera like JPGs are. I only learned that a while after everything was handed over to the couple, so they are the proud owners of about 1000 unsharpened images!! They didn't notice, I didn't notice. I do now, but hey, they are happy, and it's a wedding, so I guess in a way soft is not all that bad. It's not an ad for a bottle of Vodka. Let's move on.