12.31.09 / musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: long island new york wedding photography, wedding photography albums, wedding photography concepts
Just a note to thank all my New York and Long Island wedding clients for an amazing year photographing your weddings! This year had some pretty cool developments in my wedding photography journey; it’s an always evolving process for me. That’s great because it keeps photography new and exciting as I get to explore new techniques, ideas and concepts. And wow did I have some major aha! ideas and concepts this year!
I really feel there were at least two or three revelations this year that quantum leaped my photography to ever higher levels. (Not that I was doing badly before…)
One of my best set of ideas this year evolved as I was designing wedding albums.
As it was, I had been paying careful attention to design elements and story telling flow in my albums, being guided by criteria I had observed were common denominators in award-winning layouts of prestigious national and international professional wedding album competitions. That, for one thing, also had the effect of impacting how I was photographing the wedding to begin with! That alone led to a new dimension in my approach photographing the wedding story.
It also made significant that having one person (me) overview everything from inception to finish, as it allows for ideas implemented on the wedding shoot to be realized in the finished products such as wedding albums, would be a rather compelling reason wedding couples ought to consider the boutique photographer rather than the large studios, who because of their infrastructure relying on freelance shooters to turn over whatever they shot that weekend to a staff who were not at the wedding, for further production, can’t give that level of attention to detail and follow-through.
I also saw the need to craft whatever images end up in the album as separate from the finishing stage they went through when “proofed” because it’s only after they’re selected for the album and only after the layout design is created that we finally see which images will be forever placed together; which then led to creating yet another production step to make those images harmonious in color, tones, contrast levels, in their finishing, to name a few examples, so that they appear cohesive, consistent and not as a jumbled assortment of a hodgepodge of finishes.
That, in turn, led to understanding that the album ought to be treated as a separate piece of artwork entirely! That the images contained in it needed to be further refined with retouching, each and every one of them! That there needed to be selective “burning”, “dodging”, cropping, vignetting, tonal adjustments, color balancing and whatever other treatments plus artistic enhancements to ultimately render the images to the most highly desirable perfected level!
And that, in turn, then led to my seeking world class album manufacturers that would craft a high quality album according to my particular specifications: A wedding album that would go beyond the realm of the typical. A wedding album where I could say this is not just “an” album, but one of the better, top of the line wedding albums available anywhere in the world.
Does this sound like more work, effort, time and attention? You bet it is. All this is more work and effort going into your wedding images. And it would take some time to do, to be this meticulous and do it well. But I’m fortunate to have the chops to do it, having now about 12 years experience in Photoshop (I started with version 4 if I recall rightly!), and I couldn’t see any reason why not to do it.
It simply made sense: this is how a wedding album (which, you must understand, becomes a family heirloom), should be. Not simply some kind of casing for a hodgepodge of assorted wedding prints as is so commonly created by studios and do it yourselfers, but an entirely new creation in and of itself; a perfected, artistic presentation documenting the couple’s wedding story.
That was one of my best aha! moments this year.
It’s all about the album.
I noted this was something other studios don’t do. Why? I’d venture that they either don’t have the time, nor the resources nor the know-how to do so. It may not even have occurred to them. It became clear that for bridal couples seeking something more than the typical wedding album, my concept made more and more sense the more I thought about it.
I tend to attract brides and grooms with artistic and aesthetic sensibilities; you could say they’re “picture people” or lovers of fine photography. I’ve photographed brides who work at major, nationally published magazines in NYC. I’ve also photographed weddings of models. These are professional, career people who are used to seeing high quality images from photographers, so when they get married, they expect to see that quality in their wedding photos too – and nothing less will do. But they tell me they have a hard time finding it because so many wedding photographers are – to be blunt – average. This isn’t a slam: the biggest group in any industry are those with average abilities, whether they’re teachers, cooks, students, accountants, doctors, you name it. I liken it to what we see on “American Idol”: 25,000 people in any city may audition, most having some ability to sing, some not. Yet it’s only 5 or 6 who really outshine all of them and are considered good enough to go on to competition. It’s the same with anything else and certainly with photographers. Some are not so good at it, some really seem to have quite the magic touch, but most fall somewhere in the middle.
A studio churning out hundreds of weddings a year can’t do work at this caliber either – there’s isn’t sufficient time for them to devote to each single assignment. There’s a popular long island wedding studio, for instance, where the owner admitted on a photography forum recently that “my whole game plan is to keep the Photoshop work to a minimum. I use actions… to spend more then 10-20 seconds on an image is too much in my opinion for an everyday wedding shoot”. Hey! I’m probably spending anywhere up to half an hour on each image and it’s certainly not because I don’t have a game plan! The difference is that those studios are simply running canned actions on hundreds of images at a time (aka “batch processing”) to do things such as bump up saturation levels or heap on glow effects to apply a look quick and dirty, whereas I believe, not so much in effects, but in crafting the image individually, carefully, according to what it may specifically need to bring out its full potential, much as a Master Printer would accomplish working on a print in the darkroom.
But I have the time to work on images in this fashion as I’m not looking to turn over hundreds of weddings a year. I believe spending time on wedding images is worth it – these images will be viewed for generations and be of priceless value down through all that time. Certainly all through the bride and groom’s lifetime. Do you realize these albums will likely be seen by people born after the year 2100? I can’t see a basis for calling any of these assignments an “everyday wedding shoot”.
I really believe that it’s all about the wedding album and crafting it to perfection.
This is why I turn away requests from bridal couples not looking for an album.
This is why I can only work with couples who have strong feelings about the quality of their wedding photography, as I do.
And so, I keep evolving this art form. One thing influences the other, and so on, and so forth. I’m forever taking it to where I think wedding photography really ought to be.
I’m looking forward to all the new ideas that will come photographing your weddings in 2010 and beyond!
Have an amazing and wonderful new year.
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12.17.09 / behind the camera, musings, wedding HELP!!!! / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: photography of the wedding gown
Hi guys! Thought today I’d blog about something that drives me nuts about newbie wedding photographers, but it’s a good rant because it’s educational! Not only for photographers at the start of their careers but also for brides and grooms-to-be looking through photographers’ portfolios because this will make you more savvy about what to watch for.
Our eyes are amazing contraptions. They work way better than cameras do. For example, you know how you can see a white dress and also see the details in it, without the details being washed out by the brightness of the gown? The way we make out details of white on white is to see shadows that depict the details. We take it for granted that we can see these highlights and shadows at the same time.
The way your eye works, it’s actually looking at the brightness of the white gown, but then instantaneously the very next split mini micro fraction of a second later, your iris closes down to let in less light so that the details can be seen better. Both images are then combined together in your mind in that amazing fast sliver of a moment, making it appear to you that you’re actually seeing it all at the same time.
Pretty impressive, eh?
But cameras don’t work as well as that. They either record the white gown or record the details, but typically not both if the latitude of exposure between the two is too great. The photographer typically has to choose whether to expose for the bride’s face or for the gown’s details, and guess what’s going to take precedence? Unless you want a super dark face in the image, the face will be exposed properly and the gown becomes “blown out”, meaning it will appear all white, losing all the details.
Lots of photographers, experienced or not, don’t even think about the gown being blown out in their images. But I think brides want to see the details in their gown, no? I mean, aren’t the details one of the top two reasons a bride loves her gown (the other being how amazing she looks in it)? So a good photographer ought to be rendering the gown with detail and not distributing images where the gown looks like some big white sheet hung flapping on the bride.
The other thing that drives me bonkers is the blue tinge that digital gives the gown. Lots of photographers overlook that too and don’t eliminate it from their photos. We must be so used to seeing this in mages that we don’t ever seem to notice it – until someone points it out.
Here’s a couple of images I found on the web of photographers blowing out the highlights in the gowns and overlooking those blue tones just so you can see what I’m talking about. I’m not picking on these particular photographers, any google image search will bring up scores more, as this happens all too commonly:
Here’s an image of mine where I’ve made the gown’s details evident and any blue tone on the white fabric has been taken out. Makes a big difference, no?:
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12.15.09 / musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: best of wedding photography long island and new york weddings
Just want to take this moment to thank everybody for their love, kindness, sentiments and all. It’s been pretty amazing this year! Had a ton of fun! And to those of you that are blasts from the past and hearing how much you’ve enjoyed the photos I captured for you back when you got married… it’s been so heart-warming to hear from you, very touching, and I’m grateful for your continued support! Thank you!
So I thought I’d revisit some of my favorite images, as a “best of wedding photography” feature to recap from several weddings I’ve photographed, and starting Christmas Day, there will be one wedding photo featured daily, one for each of the twelve days of Christmas.
Subcribe to my blog to have each one emailed to you, or just be sure to come back and check them out!
Happy holidays! See you at the next wedding!
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12.05.09 / behind the camera, musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: long island new york wedding photography, post processing wedding photography
I was asked by a colleague recently if I use Photoshop Actions. An “action”, if you don’t know, is simply a macro of different steps done in Photoshop to manipulate an image a certain way and recorded so that one needn’t repeat all the clicking and navigation everytime you want to do the same thing, but rather simply click the action that’s been recorded to set it all in motion.
What’s happened is that many photographers have put their particular actions for sale on the market as sets and others can purchase them to affect their own photos (I must tell you, however, that actions don’t work on every image, it’s not some magic recipe that guarantees amazing images). You know, they ooh and ahh over that photographers amazing work and think that by applying their actions they’re own work will look as good.
My answer was “no”. That’s the short answer.
I did look into it, for a bit when they started becoming popular, but I stopped. What I’ve seen happen is that they become effects for effect’s sake and/or I’ve seen over-processing of images because of the availability of these action sets. That is to say, I’ve seen many studios where the action used just doesn’t seem warranted by the picture they’ve used it on. Does that make sense? I’ll explain:
One studio, for example, touted the over-saturated purple and reddish sky hues they created in a series of images of a bride and groom, cooing over the colors, but entirely overlooked that they had left garbage cans prominently in the images for all to see (whereas those could’ve been either cropped out or manipulated out. See my post where I did this enhancement of a wedding image ). What’s the point of bumping up the colors if the rest of the picture is what needs work?
Another very popular studio has nothing but over saturated, over processed effects in their images, it seems because it’s faster and easier to batch several hundred photos at a time and click once to affect them all rather than work on each one individually, especially since they’re trying to knock out 800 weddings a year.
I think more in line with how master photography printers used to work in the darkroom: They would size up an image and determine what that image needed to fully bring it to its potential. They would “burn” and “dodge” the print and tweak its hues and blur or sharpen the focus, and vignette it, all to accentuate or minimize parts of the image, and that would really take the photograph to a whole higher level. If you could find a great printer back then, you were consider blessed by the photo deities. The finer photographers would pay these artist-technicians good sums of money to enhance their images in this way.
When entering print competitions, for example, pro photographers would avail themselves of these services in order to have something created that was worthy of winning. One of the things I’ve taken away from these album competitions, for example, is the criteria of having the colors uniform and in a consistent range throughout the book. But yet nowadays, because it’s just a mouse click away from anyone with the program and a finger, it’s not unusual to see all sorts of incongruous images in one album, as if anything goes, it’s an extreme of effects and actions. It’s the photography equivalent to some years back when every videographer (or so it seemed) poured about 100,000 special effects into their videos just because they could: cartoon cupids popping in to shoot arrows, pictures whirling in from one side after another, animated hearts floating around, puzzle pieces assembling themselves rapidly into one large image, etc, etc. You’ve probably seen these and more in your older sister’s wedding video. If you could sit through it long enough…
Truth be told, the point being missed is it’s not about slapping on post process photoshop actions for the effect it has on the image so as to be a novelty; crafting the image in post process should be about determining what treatment each particular image benefits from. It always behooves the graphic artist to, if applying effects, to apply them tastefully, and to limit their use rather than go overboard. It’s the amateur who has the mind set of “if some is good, then more must be better” and goes ahead whether it’s warranted or not.
As a matter of fact, the moment the processing becomes the star rather than the image, being more noticeable than subtle, you’ve got yourself a picture that someday will look very dated. Trends will come and go, but “classic” lasts forever.
For example, consider this straight-out-of-camera image of a bride with her dad in the car before the ceremony:
It needs some work, but what shall that work consist of?
It’s easy enough to run it through a few actions, change some colors, add some effect and, voilá! Like these for example:
But whatever was done in those variations, it had nothing to do with that image.
What I mean by that is, this image is calling, indeed shouting, for the bride and her dad to be isolated in the picture, to draw the viewer’s eye to them, because there’s a story going on in that picture and that’s exactly where we find it.
There’s an interaction happening between them at that moment in time and it constitutes the inherent drama in this particular image. That the sister and mother are looking on is gravy, as it adds more dimension to the photo, both in its story and its appearance, making it even richer, yet they join us, the viewer, in watching the scene unfold.
That’s how I think about this photo.
It’s this story that’s the most important feature of all in the image, and no amount of special effects is going to enhance that aspect. But it sure can take away and even distract from it.
So the question becomes, what can we do in post process to bring this story out?
Well, the answer is not in running your pictures through an assembly line of canned photoshop actions, but to use photoshop tools for what they were meant for, and that is, to craft out the final image. Take it to another level. Doing that, we obtain a much more dramatic, story telling image:
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12.02.09 / musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: artistic wedding photography, modern wedding photography
Talking with a bride recently, and she’s telling me how she doesn’t like the “same old”, referring to what she’s seen as the typical wedding photography fare of bride-staring-at-her-hand type images that instantly speak of circa 1977-1982…
well, not that I disagree, but it made me think of a post I read wherein a newer “modern” wedding photographer (you’ve seen photographers classify themselves as “modern wedding and lifestyle photographers”, no? It’s the latest craze!) stated how she’s seen enough of yellowish tints on wedding images from these alleged “modern” wedding photographers, and I’ve read threads where others have said enough with brides and grooms leaping in mid air in front of distressed gasoline stations, enough of the “American Gothic” look of a stoic bride and groom standing stiffly apart from each other, each staring off into different directions, enough of over-saturated, over-processed images, enough of wedding shots flaring into the sun and enough of brides and grooms making goofy faces at each other thinking this is what convey their personalities.
Ha! It’s so hilarious how something so new can so quickly become something so “same old”.
The bigger problem is that just about every newer photographer (and some old dogs) on the scene tries to emulate this same stuff.
That’s when it becomes a parody of itself.
Dismissed from consideration is just plain good ol’ photography: The actual application of basic photographic principles.
That gives me all the more resolve to trust the adage “to thine own self be true”. And for me, that means doing what I want, rather than being pulled into imitating what’s trendy today. Oh sure, there are going to be influences, and that’s all great. Artists have always had influences down through the centuries. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. Yet it’s not about imitating others. It’s always been about evolving one’s own personal style.
For me, that leans toward artful. Guess it’s my fine art upbringing. It’s an influence.
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11.16.09 / behind the camera, musings, wedding HELP!!!! / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: wedding photography dowling college, wedding photography post processing
You may think it’s only about having a nice camera.
That’s like thinking having a nice bicycle makes you Lance Armstrong.
A learned Doctor said, “The things we get very good at, are the things we practice the most”. Put another way, to get really good at something, even if you have a natural knack for it, you have to put in lots of work. Michael Jordan was basketball’s greatest player, but he still put practice time on the court. That’s the way it works.
There isn’t barely a day that goes by that I don’t try to learn something, try out something, read something, to expand my knowledge and abilities when it comes to photography. You could say it’s a passion of mine. Other people notice my work and comment that I seem very good at this, that the quality rivals that of higher priced photogs.
I know that what they’re seeing is the application of all my continual education and dedicated practice.
It was while I was working on a wedding in the second week of its post production process that I recalled how some studios require their shooters to turn in whatever wedding images they shot over the weekend within, oh, say, four days or so. The studios want to get those images up online as quickly as possible, you understand, equating that fast turnaround with quality of service.
Four days after a wedding, I’m still working on the images! This can’t all get done in four days.
I’d rather take the time it takes to do the work, and be meticulous. Not rush it through. To me, that’s a quality service.
Well, of course, it’s not the most inexpensive way to produce work either. It’s rather labor intensive. Not only that, it’s rather highly skilled labor intensive.
I guess that’s the point of this post.
Let me show you the difference. Here’s an example from a wedding I photographed at Dowling College in Oakdale, NY.
The first image is the shot as taken. It’s fine, nothing wrong with it (though the electrical outlet holes left in the pillars after they pulled out the lights kind of irk me. Grrrr.)
But again, with digital, it’s just not a finished product. It’s like being a chef with raw ingredients, you still have to cook it well. I wouldn’t be happy just handing people the ingredients and saying “ok, now, cook it yourself.”
(Actually, neither should you be happy going to a restaurant and having the chef give you the raw ingredients to have you finish his work. Or a photo studio to have the photographer do the same.)
The second image is after I’ve worked on it some.
The third image, just on a whim, is from a photographer named Yervant, who is a celebrated wedding photographer in Australia and known all over as one of the top photographers in the world. He’s an international multi-award winning photographer, has been awarded the Grand Master of Photography from the AIPP (Australian Institute of Professional Photographers) and he’s also the recipient of the 2009 AIPP Australian Wedding Photographer of the Year award. He and his wife run a high end couture studio in Melbourne and his fees range up at about the fifteen thousand dollar mark for him to come out and shoot your wedding, and that’s without any albums or prints.
Anyhoo… does my finished work come close to his?
Just wondering…
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10.28.09 / musings, wedding HELP!!!! / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: bride groom see each other, wedding photographer in new york
There isn’t any, really. Let me explain it this way…
You’re going to see each other for the first time at one point or another during the wedding day, isn’t that true? So it’s what’s surrounding that moment that can enhance it – or break it.
If you wait until the ceremony to see each other for the first time, you spot each other at some point when you’re walking down the aisle and then… what actually happens? This: You have to get right down to the business of the ceremony, hand off your bouquet, pay attention to the officiant, recite the vows, exchange rings and then, when at the end of it you’re pronounced husband and wife (ah, finally, after all that planning), you have to get right to the task of a receiving line and/or getting pictures done quick because you have a limited time, hurrying and scurrying as family is scattered among the guests socializing and you’re steaming that nobody’s keeping in step and cooperating. The limo driver interrupts because he needs to drop you off soon and run to his next job… your MOH says she’ll be right back because she has to change take care of her baby and disappears, mom’s looking for grandma, one of the groomsmen is missing in action the clock is ticking away and all you really rather do is get it over with and party, and so, you’re like, aaargh. Not fun.
… and the resulting pictures look like they were “grab what you can” with a tense bride and groom that are feeling rather anxious and who’d really like to get to their cocktail hour rather than miss it plus have to pay overtime to the limo driver trying to deal with knocking out some needed photos so we can get going.
Do you get what it feels like? This is what it’s like probably 99% of the time, despite all assurances to the contrary.
Compare that moment to this moment: when you see each other for the first time, and it’s prior to the ceremony, away from 100 guests buzzing all over you, away from the necessity to attend to the immediate task at hand, away from the pressures of time – then you’re having that “seeing each other for the first time” experience, but now, in a much more relaxed, intimate manner without the time pressures. You can embrace, you can kiss, smile, snuggle warmly, you can hold each other and take in the moment. You can enjoy it, every second of it, one hundred per cent.
And don’t you think the photographs will show that emotion, will depict that serenity, that happiness? Of course they will.
Isn’t that the experience you really want when his eyes meet with yours for the first time that day?
Memories are made of this.
Now, add in that instead of passively *accepting* a patch of grass in the side area of a catering hall compromising image quality to knock out as many shots as possible in the limited time because the maitre ‘d is tapping his toe impatiently telling the photographer to wrap it up in five minutes (even if he’s not yet gotten everything) because he wants to show the couple their room before he has to open it up to the guests, you’re instead proactively *choosing* to take the time needed to create quality, awesome wedding images in amazing surroundings without any pressure on you but with lots of great, warm feelings, knowing that you’ll soon be fully enjoying every second of the rest of your day rather then missing them.
Which images would you really rather have? Which experience would you rather have? Which memories would you rather have?
You see each other for the first time once at some point in the day.
Make it count.
click here to read another post on bride and groom seeing each other before the ceremony.
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10.03.09 / musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: best wedding photography
At a recent meeting for long island videographers, I was invited to sit in on a discussion about working relationships between videographers and wedding photographers. You know, how to work cooperatively at your wedding and all. But one item that came up gave me a better insight as to the public mentality of what a photographer does, and that’s my topic for today.
The public is lowering their perception of what good photography is! Oh yeah.
The videographers mentioned that it’s conceivable that the cameras of tomorrow will be high definition video cameras capable of rendering a pin sharp photographic image of any frame. If that’s the case, they reason, then at the rate of shooting 24 frames per second throughout the wedding day, there would be thousands of frames that the bride and groom could choose from for their wedding pictures.
Then it hit me: These videographers, and the public, think that a still photograph merely displays what any particular moment looks like. In other words, there are no other considerations to it such as composition, aspects of light vs. shadow, the ratio of light to shadow, how light is illuminating the subject, the color tones and gradations, the design lines in the image, their exact expressions, the angles of their faces, bodies, etc., in short, what makes a great image a great image, not just a snapshot; that a wedding photograph can simply be plucked out of a series of images taken from a video camera that was panning from left to right or directed at a bride and groom. This is almost like thinking that a wedding video can be created from taking the photo proofs of the day and flipping through them real fast.
Think of how it is that magazines like Vogue or Elle use photographs where the experienced photographer very purposefully arranges lights and backgrounds and composition and poses to get one shot, captures many renditions of it, perhaps a few hundred of the same series, and then the photo editors cull over them examining each one closely to find that One to use. Even when it’s not for a magazine cover, a great photograph has elements intentionally created in it. The photographer works to fine tune and tweak the scene to get it just right before the shutter is triggered. How could it be then that if someone takes a video camera and tapes a bride and groom nonchalantly walking down a street for five seconds without regard to the above mentioned photography process, that out of the 120 resulting frames there will be that one perfect photograph?
People think it is possible because people have been conditioned to think that photography is just about snapping away, simply pointing a camera and snapping the shutter.
You know, part of the reason people may think photography is only that is because so many wedding photographers don’t know photography! They do just point their camera at a bride and groom and don’t know to consider light or design. They’re not even aware of it.
Over the weekend, I was at a park and came across a photographer photographing a bride. I stopped to watch. Although about a few feet away there was a patch of light that really would’ve made the shots stand out, he had her standing in a different spot, just shooting her with his on camera flash. Straight on, like an amateur does. I can “see” what the result would look like. I walked a few feet further and saw a background that made me drool (I made a note of it to bring my brides to) yet this guy was photographing his bride against a lackluster background. She was just standing there mugging for the camera, without direction from the photographer so she looked awkward left to her own devices (even professional models who know how to pose for a camera get direction from the photographer because he sees how she’s coming across), so I have to say, the picture was boring. It was really nothing more then a snapshot.
Not surprisingly, that “snapshot level” of photographic quality is prevalent. And because of the proliferation of these photographers who simply point and shoot, unaware of the principles of photography and of what enhances an image, and because of their resulting work being circulated, people think this is what pro photography looks like! We’ve forgotten what great images look like.
Making a great product, i.e., a great wedding photograph, is not done by mere happenstance. It takes thought, skill and is purposefully created. Camera enthusiasts, amateurs and hobbyists all take pictures, but pro photographers create them. You could hand over the same camera to an amateur and to a real pro, yet the results would be markedly different from each other because of that factor. As they should be.
Your pro wedding photography shouldn’t look like it came from a video.
A great image is deliberate and many elements are considered. It's not just a snapshot.
10.01.09 / musings / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: candid wedding photography, new york wedding photography, photojournalistic wedding photography
A newbie wedding shooter admitted, “I shoot a lot of pictures because I don’t know exactly what I’m doing. So I want to make sure I get the shot.”
Yikes! Yet, many area photographers have turned that into a marketing plus by phrasing their weakness like this: “We take lots of pictures at your wedding!”
Now quantity is a good thing, but paying a pro for a quantity of images that could’ve been just as well taken by your Uncle Joe just isn’t. Neither is the lack of professionalism in doing what’s needed to keep firing every second: I saw a couple of wedding videos recently where the photographer was right in front of the bride and her dad shooting away at every step – as they were walking down the aisle at the ceremony. Can you say “obtrusive”? In one of them, the Officiant even tells the photographer to “Get out of the way!” because she was holding them up while focusing and in all of them, the wedding video view is obscured, being blocked by the photographer.
Really, do you need every possible instance of a bride coming down an aisle? I think only if you don’t know how to get the best shots and also if you’ve promised to deliver a gazillion images as part of your marketing ploy to obtain a customer. Not that a pro photographer should conduct themselves in this very obtrusive manner.
Here’s the article:
MACHINE GUN SHOOTING AT WEDDINGS
excerpts from wedpix.com
by Lorna Gentry for the Wedding Photojournalism Association
WPJA photographer Scott Lewis, who just moved to Philadelphia from central New Jersey, halted his unpacking to ponder a question: When photographing a wedding, is it necessary to shoot constantly to ensure that every memorable moment is captured?
He answered by recounting a recent conversation he had with two young photographers just beginning their careers as wedding photojournalists. They admired his style and sought guidance. Lewis, who has worked most of his career as a photojournalist, most recently at a newspaper in Raleigh, NC, gave them sage advice. "These guys shoot twice as many pictures at a wedding as I do," says Lewis, who takes between 1,400 to 1,800 images per wedding. "I told them, ‘You're taking a machine gun approach when you should be taking a sniper approach.’"
Lewis posits that less-experienced photographers overshoot because they do not trust their instincts. "As a photographer, you are always going to beat yourself up about every moment you miss," he points out. "That’s just what we do. It’s not important to get every possible moment between the couple. The guests are just as important. If you photograph a protest, for example, you don't have to get a picture of every person with a sign. You need to capture the essence of the event. A wedding is like 100 little events in a day. You just need to capture the essence, not every moment."
And let me add, photojournalism is not about photographing details like rings and flowers. It’s not about photographing whatever the main photographer is photographing but at a different angle. It’s not about getting a photo of the bride hunching over to talk to a ring bearer. Those are better classified as “candids”; photos where the subject is not aware the camera is on them and simply going about things. But it’s not “news worthy”. Photojournalism, the word itself, means telling a story in the images. It captures the essence of the moment or of the people involved. It tells us something we didn’t already know. It delivers news.
As an example, this photo of a bride and her dad in the limo before the ceremony is a candid. They’re both “camera aware” but the bride isn’t paying attention to the camera as she’s more caught up in what’s happening outside the car. I captured the expression on her face, she looks great, happy. We know what’s going on. All well and good.
This very similar image of another bride and her dad, also in the limo prior to the ceremony, is photojournalistic. We already know what’s going on, but this is a particular moment they shared, a special brief moment of interaction. It speaks of their bond, of their relationship, of the kind of people they are, of what’s in their hearts at that moment. They’re not being “camera aware”, but simply living their lives in front of a lens.
Did I have to shoot 101 images in the car to get either of those photos? No. Keeping myself trained on what’s going on, relying on my instincts as to when to capture the moment, using anticipation my friends, with camera at the ready, rather then blindly firing away – and also, how to ascertain quickly the right ingredients for composition and light that make the image. “Machine gunning”, on the other hand, can and will miss these moments. Even if it’s missed by a fraction of a second, that’s enough to turn a great moment into a missed moment. Accumulating quantity, certainly, but not quality.
It took me years to hone this skill to whatever degree I’ve been able to through experience and trial and error. I’ve learned you can’t capture moments by sheer serendipity (well, sometimes you can be so fortunate but you shouldn’t rely on it as a professional!). Yet there are photographers in the industry for years who can’t do this, but will proclaim they shoot “photojournalism”. Why? Because the word itself is marketable.
I tell people I photograph all sorts of different styles anyway, whatever works best for any image at any moment. But now you know the difference between candid and photojournalistic, and what to expect to see, and what capturing the decisive moments are more about then simply machine gunning.
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09.22.09 / musings, wedding HELP!!!! / Author: G.E. Masana /
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Tags: freelance photographers, wedding studios
Disclaimer: I’d really rather not have to post items like this, and maybe if booking a wedding photographer wasn’t such a once-in-a-lifetime thing I wouldn’t, but, boy! Sometimes what goes on behind the scenes in this business really irks me, because it’s shady.
I just watched an elaborate slide show on another studio’s website, under their “recent galleries”, of a wedding I photographed for them over a year ago. Let me make this clear: I haven’t shot for that studio since last year and haven’t any future plans to. Not any studio, especially those beginning with the letter “S”…
They’re advertising the work of someone that they cannot provide to new customers.
And the studio’s owner put his name on it to take the credit for the images.
They still have a few images on their masthead of mine too.
Some people might call that deceptive, no?
So this suggests to me that they may also very well be continuing to show my work to their prospective customers while claiming to be the person who photographed it. I can’t say that’s for sure, but it does suggest they might and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.
I’m giving you all a heads up and letting you know officially that the only place you can get my photography wedding services is exclusively through me.
click here to visit my wedding website.
find me on FACEBOOK and become a fan!
