gordon_mcqueen

<p>Thanks for the responses guys. I shot a wedding yesterday and just tried to be a bit more vocal and give a bit more direction than I used to, which helped. I suppose it's just about being more confident, I'm naturally a quiet sort of person, but I felt I did a pretty decent job of the groups yesterday. I got a bit more creative with the wedding party shots too, having more fun by staggering people and getting some silly shots as well as the standard formal ones. It helped that they were up for some fun of course. </p>

<p>Hi everyone, </p> <p>I don't know how many people feel the same as me about shooting groups at weddings - it's the worst part of the day for me as I enjoy shooting weddings in a relaxed, documentary style. Does anyone have any good tips for getting people to smile if some look a bit grumpy? And also, if doing a large shot of everyone how do you go about letting them all know you're about to take the shot? Do you just simply shout 'smile!'? Or count down 3..2..1? Any advice would be great, thanks. </p>

<p>Interesting point Shun. I do have my suspicions about about the assistant. She didn't seem to be all that sure about what she was doing on the day, for example, asking me advice on what settings to use on her camera! My post seems to have led to a fair bit of discussion about the number of images being given to the clients. For me as a reportage style photographer who takes very few posed images I usually shoot several frames of each event, moment, detail, group of people etc etc resulting in say 5 or 6 very similar images, only slightly different in composition, expression, sharpness and so on. I then pick the best image from this series and discard the rest as I don't want to give the client 5 shots that are virtually the same. This is how I end up only selecting about 25% of the total shots taken. I know every photographer works differently and this may seem like overshooting but I shoot like this to capture 'the moment'. </p>

<p>Thanks for all the comments guys. It's probably also worth mentioning that the FOB had his assistant taking pictures throughout the day as well, even in the bride's bedroom shooting the preparations (despite my contract stating I will be the sole photographer). So the FOB presumably has all of her images on top of the ones I'm supplying. And all of the requests for all my images are coming through this assistant, not directly from the father. In response, Katrin, to why he wants them, apparently it's 'for nostalgic reasons'. But then every FOB could start asking for this. I've tried explaining that it's up to me to use my judgement in selecting the best images, I've also explained that any such request should have been discussed with me before signing a contract. Interestingly I've had no contact from the bride and groom i.e the clients, the people who signed the contract. Touching on number of images again, I was only hired to shoot till the groups and bride and groom portraits. I stayed to shoot the speeches as well just to go the extra mile for the customer and supply some extra images, so was there till about 5pm. So I felt that 360 images was a fair amount, although I don't actually specify an exact amount to the client as it varies at each wedding. </p>

<p>Thanks for your response Michael. I think it would be daft to give clients all images, considering many of them don't turn out as well as I would like. I don't want poor quality images being seen. Regarding the number of images I take, I shoot mainly reportage style and therefore tend to overshoot a little, and then pick the images that best tell the story of the day. </p>

<p>Hi everyone, </p> <p>I shot a wedding a couple of weeks ago, clients signed usual contract. About a week after the event I get an email from the father of the bride (who happens to be a photographer himself, but not a wedding photographer) requesting all the raw files from the day (i.e all 1000+). I refuse, stating that I don't give out raw files to anyone. Now he's asking if he can have all the jpegs from the day (again, the whole lot of images that I shot, not just the edited images). The clients will be receiving 360 edited jpegs on a disc, images that with my experience I have selected as the best shots from the day. Has anyone else had this issue? Am I being unreasonable in refusing to release Raws/poor images that didn't make the final edit? </p>