savagesax

OK Danial. Is this church big enough to hold 700 folks? Is there a balcony? Maybe this is a very simple way to solve your problem. Can you all meet at another church that will accommodate 700 with the balcony? Then, with the use of Photoshop you can add a title at the bottom with the name of the church. Needless to say the very first thing you have to see is the lighting. Will it work? "Also let me add that I am pretty good with photoshop and photo manipulation since thats what I used to do before I started doing photography. Would stitching be possible with so many people? Can someone give me more help on this if you think it could be an option.Also let me add that I am pretty good with photoshop and photo manipulation since thats what I used to do before I started doing photography. Would stitching be possible with so many people? Can someone give me more help on this if you think it could be an option." To answer your question it depend totally on your lens of choice. A wide angle lens will distort the images and the people won't line up correctly, curved, as you try to paste the images together. Another question for you - Unless you create a 10 foot panorama you won't see the faces of the people. Can you ask and see if you can ask if you can order a quality photo book and put 8X10 prints on each page? About 30 people per page? Or can you take photos of everyone in small groups and make 8X10 or 11X14 prints mounted on frames. Again you can use photoshop and write a title at the bottom of each photo. I'm just throwing out ideas for you. It bothers me that you won't be able to see any faces. You are looking at major bucks printing something like an 8 to 10 foot photo.

I have to agree with Marc with this one. Another serious problem are kids, probably under 18, I'm not sure, 16? I do know that putting kids on the internet can make some parents pretty irate. Intense angry parents can challenge your innocent postings of kids on the internet. Even though a contract is signed by the couple, the parents, whomever, this is a very sticky situation. Lets say that an FBI agent is attending the wedding, a famous movie star, you get the idea, you have to remember that they didn't sign the wedding contract. So is this wedding considered a public affair or a private function? I'm not answering this question.

Don't just go after the photographer, a video guy, a DJ, a florist, the works. Get all of them on your site and call yourself a Wedding Planner.

I would follow the other people that posted. No thank you is actually a good thing at times. Another idea is to contact photographers that work with schools and sports teams that are already set up . Maybe hire one of them for a set price and you pocket a lot of the money for getting the job. Do the math, you may be able to pocket a nice amount of money for very little work.

Ask the couple to add a comment to you website blog.

Buy a dye sub printer. Prints an 8X10 in 45 seconds. I'm using a Kodak and it's for sale. I've cut way down on my holiday parties and wedding photography. The printer is a 9810. They don't make them anymore. Kodak doesn't make anything anymore. There may be a company that will make paper for for this printer. Kodak still makes the paper, but not for long. You need to print FAST. There won't be time to play around with a printer that takes more then a minute. 3 minutes won't cut it. To do this correctly you need a backdrop, 2 soft light boxes, a person posing, someone collecting money, and the stressed out printer. We sell 8X10 prints for $20. So for 400 people you are looking at a profit of $8000, minus what you would pay for the help and about $1.65 per sheet of paper. I'm not new to this. I have about 15 or more years of experience. Do not use an ink jet printer. Too many things WILL go wrong. Enter this project with careful thought and strict mathematical calculations. For example for 400 people, perhaps 200 couples, I may use 2 printers, but probably not, because I use a bit of math and since I've done so many we have a good team in place. If you print 200 couples you are looking at around 10 hours to do this job with an ink jet. With dye-sub's it's about less than 3 hours. Here's the deal - if you screw up people will remember your name. Hope this helps.

Hi Marc! I just noticed that you are a POW recipient. Way to go! A great honor that can never be taken away! B

Hi Mike, A really great question and I hardly ever say something like this. If you have time it's best to call. If you don't have time send an email with an attachment to your site and offer some sort of special. Something that requires them to order a print. Such as a free 16X20 or a much larger frame. Your cost is around $25 or so. The print is worth whatever you think is about right. There's no need to give you my prices, because photographers can vary from $50 to $350 or more. It also depends if you do a canvas mount, or a texture mount, retouching, and of course the UV spray. Some people want your photo signed. I've offered free parent/grandparent albums. They don't cost very much and you can profit very well from the prints for these albums. Free engagement sittings? It's really up to you to learn how to sell yourself as a very excellent photographer. This is why you are much better than anyone in your area. That my friend is the key to success. Believing that you are the very best. I have about 25 awards hanging over one wall in the house for photography. A lot of them are for my nature work. The clients don't know that! The local Chambers vote regarding the best photographer of the year. Well there are only 2 of us in this one Chamber so chances are you will win. Brag about your awards through the email link to your wedding site or by phone. Selling is the very hardest part yet the key with booking your weddings. You need to be a top seller. Always believe in yourself. Best of luck to you.

700 people is a wicked task to take on even for the most advanced pro's. If it were my job I may rent some risers, but I'd rather not. I wish I could offer you some sort of an easier way. If your church has lots of steps that could work really well. Is there a wider hill around the area? Both would give you a chance. A place with a lot of steps. I'd look around the area for something like this. The hardest one I ever did I decided to rent a helicoptor! Well it worked. I won't get into the wind factor from the blades from the Helicoptor. The company wanted the building which everyone worked at in the background. I took 3 shots. One shot with just the building, one with the people, lastly one shot on everyone plus the building. I took the final image of the building and the other image of the people and used photoshot to put the 2 images into one image. It actually looked pretty decent. I think I made about $5000, with all of the reorders. I hate to say this, and I'm a bit bummed, but at high noon your flash units won't really work. You need something somewhere around 3200 watt seconds to pull this off. Most flash units are around 100 watt seconds, give or take about 200 watts for something like a Quantum or a Norman. Even those won't work. Can you get a ladder and climb up on the roof? I'm just throwing out all sorts of ideas, hoping that this may offer some ideas of how to achieve 700 people! The last option I can think of is to take 7 shots of 100 people or even less, much smaller groups. Then use photoshot to set the images up as a panoramic. I've also done this before. Use a tripod and don't move it, EVER, so that every shot looks the exact same per group. This will help you align all of these groups and then make something like a 10X40 print or even larger, 10X60. What ever has to be done to to fit the groups together. I can't stress enough to keep the tripod the same and group of people aligned the same. If you are using a zoom lens, don't adjust it. EVER! This works! It's not fun though when aligning the assorted groups together. Hope this helps. Feel free in asking more questions. Let us kown what happens!

Just a reminder about the airports. Don't put your film through those x-ray machines. Give the film to the security folks in a clear plastic bag. They may say the film is safe to scan, however I've had a few situations when the film got wrecked. Even the low ISO/ASA film.

Well this is written by someone with many years of writing bad and finally good contracts, for weddings to business inventions. I always use an attorney to write my contracts, not copied from books. I'm not an attorney. Contacts are for the real pro's to write. You ggive them a few hundred dollars and the contract is done the right way - your way. I stronglybelieve that every business related contract needs some room written in the contract regarding "Clauses." In your case I would surely have a clause stating that if a wedding has been cancelled and or the phtotgrapher isn't needed - No refunds or deposits are returned. Here's the cool part of this. - The photographer will honor the use of the held money deposits for future events. Good for -whatever length of time you feel is reasonable. I usually offer 1 to 3 years depending on how nice or nasty they are! During this time I usually call them every 6 months or so. So in good faith you are STILL providing your photography. One time a couple asked me to do a family portrait at Christmas. There were a mess of people there. Maybe 35. After all of the reorders were done I made about $3000 just for being nice and this job took a grand total of 2 hours. So that's my advice. Keep people happy, very happy and they will remember you in a good way as a true professional and remember you for many years.

I do have to add this about the 100 to 400mm zoom. The quality of the glass is really great. About 2 years ago I used this lens with an extension tube and I was able to get some amazing photos of little tiny dragon flies. Who thought that taking photo's of these tiny insects could be so much fun and the quality was excellent.

Well I'm going to pop this out. Just to confuse everyone, mainly the PO and myself! For 11K you can get the Canon 200 to 400mm zoom. Based on the reviews it's pretty darn sharp. I've never tested it. When using longer lenses you could, actually in my opinion you will lose some sharpness the more space there is between you and the subject. I have both lenses, the 300 and the 400mm. I like the 300 a bit better and I really like the price difference. With the 300mm you can crop and often get better results compared to the 400 thats not cropped. Because you are closer to the subject. I'm getting rid of the 400. Canon does let "Pro's," borrow lenses. You have to register with Canon as a pro and pay for the type of repair service you want to spend per year. This is goofy. If you buy one of the 3 packages you get a faster service turnaround. This varies from a week to whatever service plan you want. It's not inexpensive. Well they did at one time rent them, I'm not sure if they still do. If they will let you test them see how the lenses feel in your hands. Often some lenses feel better than others. Such as the balance, even if you are using a 10 pound tripod you can feel if the lens may be top heavy or if it is well balanced and it's easy to use and carry around. Also about the feel of the lenses take note with the focusing. Does one lens hunt around trying to focus on a subject and how fast is the focusing. An example unrelated to the 300mm and the 400mm is the 100 to 400mm zoom. That lens is sooo slow. You could go out and get a cup of coffee at Starbucks then come back and the lens will still be in the focus mode! Often for me there's nothing more frustrating when you have a moving subject such as a bear or some sort of animal and the lens hunts to auto focus on the subject, often relative to what camera body you have. You don't want to take a image of a bear. You want to get that bears full face turned towards you. Hope this helps with your search. It's a very personal decision. Take your time.

Thank you Mark and Mark! Really great information and thank you for the link. Funny thing happened today. I went online to find out how to check for the amount of shutter clicks I've taken on the 3 cameras. Nothing was in the manual. Well it turns out that you have to send the 1Ds Mark iii cameras in to Canon and the cost per camera is $20! How crazy is that! I guess when I put one of the cameras up for auction on ebay I'll have to say, "There could be 50 or 250,000!"

Hi folks, does anyone have information about the maxium shutter clicks designed by canon before replacement is suggested? For example I have the 1ds mark 3 cameras and the expected clicks are around 300,000. I may be interested in trading in one of my 1ds mark 3's for the 5d mk 3 because of the weight and the dual card support. Hey, thank you!

The advice above is fantastic. Since it is a disco theme will there be disco DJ lights around the room? If so you may have to adjust your flash units, your F stop to about 5.6 and then your ISO to about 800 or so. Your camera speed should be around 60th of a second. If you set the speed slower you will pick up movement. This should bring out the disco lights. You don't want to over power these lights, but use them as your theme. Hope this helps!

Sweet photo's Ian!

Needless to say I don't live in the UK! I think I may be able to offer some ideas for you. Can you call some other photographers in or out of your area and ask them what they use? Also, very often the pro labs which you may or may not use can lead you in the right direction. Hope this helps!

Thaun, there's no need to compare my work to Bryce. That wasn't his question nor mine. I did not ask you to review my work! So try not to in the future. However, since you commented on my work I have to ask a very simple question to just you. I normally never do this... Kindly answer this question for the readers. The bride pays a lot of money for her dress. Perhaps thousands, because I shoot a lot of weddings in the Beverly Hills and the general Los Angeles area. Higher end clients. So why would a photographer overexpose a dress to the point of not showing any details of her dress? Even if the dress may be a free dress, such as her mothers dress handed down. We have to be careful. In photoshop it's hard to bring back the details when overexposed. If the face is underexposed this can be adjusted without effort. I'm not saying to never be creative, such as overexposing. I use this effect in most weddings, however blowing out the details should be done when the photographer wants to. Surely not doing this during the formals. We all have artistic styles and I'm not trying to take this away from Bryce or anyone. Hope this makes sense. We can get into technical approaches to shooting in RAW. That wasn't the OP's question.

Sometimes flash unit's aren't needed. In general the photo's you posted are over exposed. You can tell from the washed out cloths that have no details and the faces are also a shade over. You can also tell form the reflections, hot spots on the faces. I like the detail shots, such as her shoes. The group shots need some work. Turn the people more in an angle so the guys guts aren't showing. Ask the person if he'd mind taking off his glasses. You are off to a good start. Check out some portrait books and wedding books.

Are you doing folders? For example in each folder there will be a team photo on one side of the folder plus the individual photo of the kid on the other side. These packages are known as Memory Folders - Cards. Or are you taking photo's of just one kid and hoping to sell it? Most often the photo's have already been taken or will be taken very soon by people that make their livings doing this. The photographers don't have time to print on site so the photos are sent out to a lab, plus the lab prints them as a unit. The cost could be as low as $1, includes the folder. The photo's are done by the lab in a week or so. I'm not going into details because I'm not sure what you will be doing. I do know that there is no way a dye sub printer can keep up. Plus the prices will be at least triple the cost of what a sports lab will charge. In the past I gave each parent an 8X10 group photo, a 5X7 of the kid, put in that baseball folder, plus whatever extras the parents wanted, such as wallets, even mini wallets, coffee mugs, key chains, purses, magazine covers, and even poster size photo's - 20X30. Hope this helps a little or a lot. The key here are the parents have already pre-paid. You can't be messing around with money, kids forgetting to bring the checks, plus you have to have a make up date for those that couldn't make it for the picture day. Now you have to start over taking the group shots of the team, because the kid wasn't able to show up and he wants to have his picture with his team! It's nuts. I've done this. It's not fun, but there is a lot of money that can be made. $5000, $25,000, often more per day or much more if there are 500 baseball teams. Is this what you will be doing? Well let us know what you will be doing.

I'd say to send her an email or call her and ask! On my monitor I'm not seeing this grey in her hair so I'm unable to offer any advice with the grey, however I can offer or assist a professional thought or 2 about the lighting and the exposures. First off no flash was used with any of the photo's. If you look at some of the other photo's, not just the bottom photo, the whites are blown out. Perhaps part of her style is over exposing a bit in post or simply over exposing using the camera settings. Also the skin tones are over exposed as well. When white shirts are over exposed in this case the exposure changes to that bluish tint. I feel that she is about 1 1/2 stops over exposed. If the whites don't turn bluish it's most likely just 1 stop over of perhaps a 1/2 stop over. So try over exposing your subjects. If you can't see detail with the whites, such as wedding dresses well you are surely over exposed. Does this help? If not I can post a pic if needed.

Marc, another GREAT post of your's. You sure have amazing talented writer skills. Thank you for the compliments. After what you said it kind of helped me with trying to put ones thoughts together and not jumbled up! I'm confident that us wedding photographers will find value with this post. Also great photo's with your link. Very cool. bob

As far as photographing the bride and the groom you can probably get several assorted shots without taking the same ones over and over. For example you can take the main photos such as full length and close-ups of the first dance. Then you can have some fun such as taking a shot or 2 with your camera at the floor level, looking up at them; full length. You can also perhaps take a photo of her ring hand with his hand, sometimes using a longer lens so you don't get in the way. A close-up of their faces together and of each person, mainly the bride. Looking for some of those special tender magical moments. You as the photographer can "Feel," this in your heart. You sort of share together this special mood with the B&G. You are part of what the couples are feeling in their heads. Take away the technical part of photography for a moment and enjoy what you see and what you feel. Depending on what the B&G are doing, this is what you want to capture. You kind of feel and share their romance, documenting a love story. Hope this makes sense. Holy cow I don't want to sound too corny here! Photojournalism is fantastic. It's not just pounding out photo's at 5 frames a second or even more! It's not running around places like Hollywood looking for movie stars along with 500 other photographers! It's not taking the same shots of the movie stars as they get into a car or something. Te same photos that the other 500 photographers took. Meaningless photo's. I sometimes look at photojournalism as that WOW photo, such as what you would see in National Geographic. That photo which offer the viewers some sort of impact. I think I got a bit carried away here! Every photographer edits differently. Some photographers will take 3000 to 6000 shots at one wedding. I'm not not making an opinion. Whatever works best. I shoot in RAW and right now I'm using PS 6.