I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Most photos were taken using a tripod of course because some of the exposures were several seconds long. Because I had the tripod I could then also keep the ISO low at 200 and keep the aperture closed down for plenty of depth of field. For the wide angle shots I was using a 12-24mm wide angle lens, although I mostly used it at 24mm to reduce the distortion at the edges. A little bit of Photoshop was used to straighten what distortion there was. For the panoramas I was using a 50mm prime lens, in portrait. I don’t have a proper panorama tripod head (which rotates the camera around the entrance pupil of the lens to reduce parallax error) so they’re not perfect, but I’m quite pleased with what I’ve managed, and maybe I’ll treat myself to one if I find myself doing more of it!

For Roger and Lucy’s wedding we couldn’t have asked for better weather, it was a beautiful sunny day and we were able to take some wonderful shots down on the beach. It’s great when you can have some fun with wedding photos and the decision to have ice creams meant we got some great ones!

 Nick and Sam were less fortunate with the weather and I prepared myself for a wet weather shoot, with white umbrellas on standby. In the end the rain stopped just as Sam arrived. They were really good sports as we headed to a very soggy, nettle filled area of woodland for some interesting and original photos under the trees. It was a shame we didn’t have sun streaming through the leaves but I’m still very pleased with the results.

This photo in the car is one of my favourites and I always try to get it. The light is very soft and you can use the door to frame the bride.

Ant and Claire also had rain and we were caught out in it during the group shots – I think we must have broken a record for the fastest set of group photos ever! The sun came out in the late afternoon and so we went outside again to get some stunning shots on the recently restored bandstand on Hove seafront.

Note the half-moon just above the bandstand - love it!

One of the technical difficulties for this shoot was getting the colour temperature correct, as the room we were in had a mixture of tungsten light, candlelight and blue spotlights pointing at the ceiling. This meant that depending where in the room I was standing, the light could be very warm or very cold! Shooting in RAW is vital in these situations so that you can adjust the photos afterwards to look their best.

I love it when I'm lucky enough to get the flash from someone else's camera light the couple from the other side of the room!

Congratulations everyone!

The best way to do this is by doing a technique called ‘dragging the shutter’. Basically you’re taking a long exposure photo (because it’s so dark) and then firing the flash in order to freeze the people. To get extra movement you can deliberately move or rotate the camera as you fire the shutter. The long exposure should allow you to capture the colours of the lights and plenty of background and the flash gives you a nicely focused and still image of the subject.
Set your camera to Manual (M) and set the aperture to somewhere between 3.5 and 5.6 (the higher the number the less light is let in, but the depth of field increases which is useful in the dark as it can be hard to focus, so it gives you a bit of leeway). Then set the exposure to about half a second and the ISO to something quite high, like 600 or 800. It’s not an exact science so start with that and then make changes – if too much light is getting in and it’s overexposed then lower the ISO or increase the aperture for example. It’s also preferable to set the flash so that it fires at the end of the shot, not the beginning. To do this you need to set your camera flash to Rear Curtain Sync or it might be called 2nd Curtain Sync depending on your camera.

Here are a few photos taken with this technique and the data:

ISO 320 Aperture f4.5 Shutter speed 0.4sec

ISO 800 Aperture f3.5 Shutter speed 0.5sec

ISO 800 Aperture f3.5 Shutter speed 1/3 sec

Remember, it’s a bit hit and miss and you’ll have to experiment with the settings, but you can learn a lot and it’s one of the great joys of digital to be able to just keep trying and trying.

Have fun!

Anyone can call themselves a wedding photographer, make a simple website, buy a cheap SLR and shoot a wedding. Unfortunately for those who think they can do just that,  it is one of the most challenging types of photography out there. There are no second chances. You can be moving from bright sunlight into a dark church, then back out into sunlight, then later cope with a dance-floor that is lit only by disco lights! You need to be able to create beautiful portraits, often in just a few minutes because the wedding is running over time. You have to arrange perhaps as many as 200 guests into one place for the group shot (nicely, cheerfully and politely of course!) and get it right.  You need to take beautiful still-life’s too, of the flowers and the table decorations, of beautiful shoes and intricate detailing on the dress, of rings, of the cake and perhaps even details of the car. It can then take several days to upload all of the photos and edit them, as well as a couple of days to design the album. For me, that’s what I love about it; I love the challenge, the technical challenges as well as enjoying being creative, meeting lovely people and capturing those special shots that capture the emotion and tell the story of the day. But it’s not easy, and I’m always very nervous at the beginning of each and every wedding – if I wasn’t then it would probably be time to do something else, because it would mean I wasn’t taking it seriously enough.

Making the most of difficult light conditions are one of the professional's skills at a wedding

As Rosie Tanner, the editor of  Digital Photographer magazine, mentions in this month’s edition,“With wedding photography comes huge responsibility. The people who do it and do it well have to possess far more than technical ability. It takes organisation, confidence, and a backup plan for every occasion – not to mention nerves of steel!”

Any serious professional photographer spends thousands of pounds a year on things like being a member of one or more of the major associations such as the BIPP, MPA, SWPP etc., public liability insurance, equipment insurance, courses and qualifications, new kit, premises and so on. This means that our fees must be over a certain price if we are to remain up to date, provide an excellent service – and still eat. Unfortunately there are people out there who have none of the above, and so can afford to charge a fraction of what a qualified full time photographer can. This undermines the profession and is putting a lot a excellent photographers out of work, while the weekend warriors earn some cash in hand at the weekend. If that’s what the market wants, then in a way that’s fine – we can change tack, perhaps get into other types of photography. Maybe with the quality of cameras increasing every month, with everyone having a camera on their phone, with brilliant apps like Hipstamatic and cheap online books available to quickly put together a printed record of the day, this is the way it is going. But if people want beautiful shots that really tell the story of the day, show the bride looking stunning, the very expensive dress and its detailing, the amazing vintage car, the exotic cake, and the friends and family and the emotions that go with it, then they need to be willing to at least pay the photographer as much as they paid for the cake and champagne – because at the end of the day, you’ll still have photographs after you’ve eaten the cake and drunk the fizz!
So next time you’re comparing photographers and trying to decide who to choose for your wedding (or portraits, or any other photography really), check that they are qualified, look at previous work (and make sure it’s theirs!), see if they belong to a professional association, and if they’re charging a fraction of other photographers, question why. Admittedly, the couple in the above article were being charged a ‘normal’ amount, and had been shown previous work that was apparently the photographer’s own, but you can at least reduce the chances of it happening to you by doing other checks. Of course, the best thing is if you can get a recommendation from a friend – at least you can blame them if the photos come out bad!

Related links:

• British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP)
• Master Photographers Association (MPA)
• Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP)
• Times Online: Photographer ensures that newlyweds’ big day is just a blur
• How hard is it to photograph a wedding?
• Paul Edward Photography

I’ll also add the images to my Facebook page - please feel free to ‘like’ anything – it helps promote me!

If you’d like to see a higher resolution slideshow (where you can also purchase prints, you know… just if you want…) click HERE!

Photo 1: Focal length 12mm, Aperture f/5, Shutter speed 1920.4 secs which I think is 32 minutes.

Photo 2: Focal length 12mm, Aperture f/5, Shutter speed 2892.4 secs which is 48 minutes.

The building was very dark in the original photo and I wanted to include it to give the photo some interest, so I put it into Viveza to lighten it and I also darkened the sky a little as there was still some light coming from behind somewhere.

The other photos I’ve included here are just from a walk in the grounds. I’m going to put some more up in a gallery here (http://blueturtle.zenfolio.com/) if you’d like to see them. I was having some fun with extreme depth of focus with a few of the photos (the roses for example and the manor house itself) by taking the aperture right down to f/22 to keep items a few centimetres in front of me in focus, as well as things in the distance. As I’m more of a portrait photographer and prefer to have as little depth of field as possible normally, it was a pleasant change!

I hope you like them, and please check out my main website for more portraits and wedding photos at paul-edward.com