jon rennie

<p>Some people do it naturally. It isn't photographer specific. Often when the girl is shorter.</p>

<p>Why don't you just let the paying people sign the normal contract with all the $$ on it and just have the wedding couple sign a model release with usage rights and that stuff on it? As far as I know those don't need any monitary compensation to be valid.</p>

<p>I use the 1510 for all my lenses, cameras, and flashes for what I need for the day. I then carry stands and a few other non-essentials in a bat bag. 1600 is too big in my opinion.</p>

<p>You are experiencing PW's huge issue with not properly testing their products on enough of a range of flashes before pushing to the market. The hoods or the cords are the only "fix's" at this point. I for one will stick to my Plus II's until they hopefully fix the TT5's</p>

<p>You can get it a lot cheaper then $1000/year. Photo.net even has a group insurance thing going. With a little searching I am sure you can find it.</p>

<p>I do the 1-2-3-JUMP technique. It almost never works the first try. There will always be late or early jumpers, and sometimes people's hands will go infront of others faces.<br>

So after the first try I always pick on those who did it poorly in a fun way. I call them out and show everyone the shot before trying it again. When they see that I will do this, it gives extra incentive to do it right the next time and they always get it within the next 2 tries. Unless you are shooting with a 10fps camera don't bother with continuous shooting - too much chance YOU will miss the best moment of the apex. 4-6fps just isn't fast enough in my opinion.<br>

Here is an example of one I did with a group of 8 a couple weeks ago. I think this was the 3rd try. 2nd one worked, but this one by far was the best. They were even in heels.<br>

<img src="http://www.jonrennie.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/img_9383.jpg" alt="" width="550" height="367" /></p>

<p>First dance shot from the other week. 2x 580's in the corner<br>

<img src="http://www.jonrennie.ca/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/img_8031.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="600" /></p>

<p>Last week I just did a shoot a couple days before their wedding. I treat engagements/trash the dress/bridal sessions/day after sessions all the same really. Just charge for the extra session.</p>

<p>1DmIII & 5DmII<br>

16-35 2.8, 50mm 1.2, 85mm 1.2, 70-200 2.8 IS, 100mm macro, 24-70 2.8<br>

3x 580exII<br>

And since money is no object a 24mm tilt shift and a 15mm fish.</p>

<p>M is the best if you know how to use it quickly and well. If you can't, then use whatever works for you to get good results. Aperture Priority is a good one.</p>

<p>Unfortunately with a budget of $200 or anything around there you are going dirt cheap no matter how you look at it. Only decent thing in that price range would be a prime (50mm). The more range you have in a lens (ie: the 18-200) the more you sacrifice quality.</p>

<p>Unless the car was in the garage I would never load my camera equipment into it the night before even though my insurance covers it. Leave it at the front door. It takes all of 2 minutes to load it in the morning of.<br>

I'll leave lightstands or tripods in the car and things like that. Stuff that isn't essential to perform my job - but the core equipment is just asking for trouble.</p>

<p>Two main aspects that help produce pro results right out of camera is lighting and lenses. There is no short forum answer on lighting, and high quality pro glass give great sharpness and bokeh among other pluses. There are no magical filters or camera settings.</p>

<p>It doesn't matter what dpi you save your images at for the web. The only thing you can look at is actual pixels. Actual physical size of the images are different on every screen size/resolution. A 500px X 500px @ 300dpi compared to one @ 72dpi will be the same on the web no matter how you look at it.</p>

<p>Nothing will prevent people from copying like others have mentioned. You can only deter. If an image is visible in a browser, it can be saved to a computer. You don't even need to screenshot it. Remember if the image is showing on someone's screen it is on their computer already. So no matter what way you try, it will never stop people.<br>

You can right click block - and this is a simple thing to do on almost any site. I hate this method though as I use right click for many other reasons.<br>

You can use an image overlay with a transparent image. Harder to implement though.<br>

Watermarking. Sure they can save it but it's got your mark on it.<br>

Embed in flash. Hardest to extract but still very possible even without a screen grab.</p>

<p>It's fine for outdoor work, not so good inside.</p>

<p>It's not about having the best gear, it's having the right type of gear. The nature of the business requires us to have two camera bodies, a range of lenses and a couple flashes. That way if and when something goes wrong with your equipment you only lose 30 seconds of shooting and not the whole thing.<br>

Even if it's an outdoor wedding, often times a flash will be nice to have, if not essential depending on the time of day. I just did an all outdoor wedding yesterday but with a cloudless day, a flash is nice to fill in shadows and once if gets dark for the reception it's needed.<br>

If you aren't currently using any flashes and money is tight, grab a 430 and use the leftover to buy another item you need. I used 2x 430ex's for a while and they worked just fine. By the sounds of it you need a decent mid range lens, a second camera body and a flash or two to get setup with a proper low end wedding kit.</p>

<p>It all depends on the rights each photo is claiming. So he is right, but his article is misleading as everything on flicker has the same copyright.<br>

For instance, you are allowed to copy or remix something under the creative commons license "some rights reserved" just not allowed to call it your own. In this instance, sure you can print it (a copy).<br>

<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/</a></p>

<p>I have never had a camera fail *knock on wood*. I have a couple 20D's backup to my 5DmII. Never sent any in for warranty or service of any kind. I think one of the 20D's is over it's shutter life too but it still works like new and they have been through some crazy stuff.</p>

<p>I can do it in a day but normally split it up a bit. 26 days is rediculous! How can you make any money?</p>

<p>Learn lightroom in a hurry. I only need to use photoshop for the odd image and for some batch processing here and there.<br>

What I do:</p>

<ul>

<li>Load all my images from the CF cards to the hard drive into one folder </li>

<li>Pull it up bridge and do all my deleting (test shots, blinks, out of focus)</li>

<li>Load into lightroom</li>

<li>Flag those I will give to client and rate which ones I will edit</li>

<li>Edit those I need to (takes only a couple hours)</li>

<li>Export using LR. Blog images get exported using photoshop.</li>

</ul>

<p>Last wedding during the reception I loaded all the images I took from the day (low res jpegs) onto my laptop and edited my 40 fav's and had them on display in about 30min.</p>

<p>You would need it tied in with some other type of process. ie: the retainer payment, a tracable download, etc... You just can't give them a link and say "if you agree click here" and have it legally binding because you would need to back it up later somehow. EULA's can be enforced because the users have no choice but to agree if they want the software installed and there is no way around it. For my out of towners I just email them off a PDF, they sign it and either mail or scan/email it back. Easy.</p>

<p>Kelli, I took a quick look through your pics on your website and they do look fairly consistent but all hold true to the above statements. Unfortunately with this industry, even when b&g's go with the less experienced cheaper options they still expect more in their hearts. Now you are stuck in the middle.<br>

Family and friends are also terrible judges of your photography and will never give you the answers you need to hear. If you really want to get into photography I suggest you get into second shooting from a photographer and learn from them. Get a nice lens or two and it will help you to improve your work in the long run as well. As for dealing with your unhappy client... I am sure a lot can be improved in photoshop since her complaints are on the lighting, maybe that will smooth things over but I've never been in that situation so I don't exactly know what I would do.</p>

<p>I don't have the 180mm. The 180mm will work for what you want but is a bit overkill. I have the 100mm and love it so far. That's the one most wedding photogs use if they have a macro lens. Before that I used a 50 with a closeup set. There is no way I could lug around such a huge lens like the 180 only to use for a couple shots. It's much better suited for macro nature work.<br>

Since I just got it I haven't done any weddings with it but have played around with some flowers and such. A few flower shots with the 100mm is up on my <a href="http://www.jonrennie.ca/blog/">blog </a> a couple posts down if you want to check them out.</p>

 

<p>I think the 180mm macro is an impressive lens but I find it highly impractical for weddings. It's huge and has quite limited use. Sure it would be good for portraits but 180mm is a difficult prime lens to use in a wedding situation.</p>