Monday, 30 June 2008

Wedding Photography Options - 2 - Keen Amateur


An attempted reportage shot!

This option is where you have a friend or family member who is either a keen amateur photographer, or even a professional photographer in another field (e.g. photo-journalism, nature photography etc.) and you ask them to photograph your wedding for you as a favour.
As a vidiographer I have seen a few examples of this.

Some Examples

On one occasion the bride's brother was photographing a wedding in New Brighton on the Wirral. He was a keen amateur and had good equipment (better than some pros), although he only had one camera so it might have been a problem if it had failed.

He told me this was the seventh wedding he had photographed, and you could see that he knew what he was doing. In summary, although I didn't see the pictures he produced, my guess is that they were pretty good. The only negatives I can think of from the bride and groom's point of view were that he probably took a little longer than a pro would have done. From his point of view, however, I think it is fair to say that his day was a much more stressful one than for the rest of the wedding guests.

On another occasion, at a wedding in the Hillbark Hotel in Frankby (also on the Wirral), the photographer was a friend of the bride & groom, and was a professional photo journalist. She had great equipment (probably about £10k in camera bodies & lenses) and obviously knew how to use it.

Through the day however, I noticed a few strange things. Firstly, she took hundreds of photographs through the ceremony (and kept walking in front of my video camera). This was very intrusive, and I have never seen another photographer do the same before or since.
Later on, during the first dance, it was a terrible struggle to keep her out of the frame of my video camera. Whenever I moved around to get her out of shot, she would move back into the frame.

A few weeks later, when I delivered the DVDs to the bride's mother she told me how the photographs had been a big dissapointment. Apparently she had used a fish eye lens for most of the shots. This gives a distorted looking picture, which can be quite pleasing in limited doses, but not on every photograph. There were also a number of important family members (including bridesmaids) who were missing from all the photographs. I am not sure how this had happened, maybe she had accidentally wiped a compact flash card?

I think this is a case where a skilled and experienced photographer had underestimated the challanges involved with the specific task of photographing a wedding.

In many ways the most important skills of a wedding photographer are not directly connected with taking pictures. Things like understanding what the customer wants, dealing with them in a friendly way, and understanding what to do, and not to do are all essential skills.

Pros:
  1. Low/zero cost
  2. You should get some good photographs if they know what they're doing
  3. They should be using good quality equipment
Cons:
  1. They might be out of their depth, for example, they may have difficulty arranging the group shots
  2. If you don't like the photographs it could make your relationship with them more awkward
  3. They may not have access the the range of professional albums and prints that a professional wedding photographer has
  4.  They will miss out on experiencing the wedding as a guest
  5. They may have their own ideas about how they want the photographs should look, these might clash with your own
Summary

This is a decent option if budget is a priority and you know someone who would be keen to do it. You are taking a bit of a risk if they have never done wedding photography before, and in this case the resulting photographs will certainly be significantly poorer. It is certainly a much better option than option 1 if you care at all about having decent wedding photographs.

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