ryan_jensen1

I would definitely tell her no...gently. You don't want to shove a contract in her face.

 

It's definitely a friend of hers. The downsides?

1. You are GOING to lose print sales. This guy is going to give them a CD with hundreds of images, some of which, if only by sheer luck, are going to be better than yours. This guy will end up shooting the formals/portraits alongside you and you will lose that $$$.

 

2. He will get in your way and he's going to want to be your pal. Again, not a huge problem necessarily, but you don't want to spend the ceremony telling this guy "Get out of the way!" This guy isn't going to know what "priority positions" are and will end up in your lap.

 

I would direct her attention to the contract, let her know that you have had disasters in the past (whether or not this is true) and you would very much prefer if this was NOT the case. If she had mentioned it during the initial meeting, you would have told her it wasn't possible. The reasons I listed in #2 are definitely things you can tell her.

 

If she persists, I would ask her if you can find a compromise. Perhaps you could have him shoot the reception only with you. You could offer to hang out with him a bit then and give him some pointers? There has to be a way to keep him from the ceremony and the formals without getting into a fight with the bride.

 

Ryan

Tim,

I took a look at some of the work from the people who said you are not ready...whoa...pot calling the kettle and all.

 

Here's the deal: I thnk you asked the wrong question. Anybody with a camera can shoot a wedding. (hold the flames, please!) The question should be: "I want to shoot this wedding. How can I do it responsibly?"

 

I have a few ideas:

1. Shoot your first five weddings for free. People are more likely to be be aware of what they are getting into and will be more forgiving of mistakes.

 

2. MAKE SURE TO HAVE AN IRONCLAD CONTRACT which absolves you of any financial or other obligation in the case they are unhappy with the photos. It should also detail what you are hoping to give them, etc...this is good practice for building your "for-pay" contract. I would start another thread about this and see if people have examples they would be willing to share.

 

3. Definitely have a second body available as well as several extra batteries, a charger and twice as much memory as you think you need.

 

4. BE HONEST with the B&G about your experience with weddings, but definitely highlight your enthusiasm and your dedication. It goes a long way. Tell them you are looking to refine your skills and broaden your portfolio. They may end up being disappointed in the end, but you will have warned them and you will have a contract to cover your ass.

 

5. If you can find another photographer looking to broaden their portfolio, bring them with you and team shoot.

 

6. Be prepared to fail miserably and have NOTHING turn out.

 

OR....(drumroll)

 

Take more time shooting in wedding-like conditions, assist a seasoned professional and/or take some classes wherever you can find them.

 

You definitely have a lot of work to do, but I don't see any insurmountable obstacles ahead of you. You are starting in a better place than a lot of the "pros" here have ended up, especially the ones who are telling you not to to try.

I have the equipment, the shots, the chutzpah...now all I need are the clients.

 

What are the best avenues for advertising and how do you go about that? I have

some ideas, but I figured it would be smarter to ask here and save myself some

research!!!

 

If you only had $1,000 to spend on advertising, what would you do with it?

 

Thanks!

Ryan

"why do you catagorize full frame as an "advantage" over the 1.3 crop factor?"

 

I suppose the "advantage" assumes that you use very wide stuff for your shooting. I do strap on the old 16-35 at certain points and those extra mm can make a diff to me.

 

I suppose it all depends on how you shoot!

Hey all,

I've owned a 5D since it came out and I love it. Just picked my Mark III up when on vacation. (24 hours with the damned thing and no lens in sight!)

 

Two things I've not seen mentioned:

 

1. You can calibrate the Mark III for any Autofocusing inconsistencies in your lenses. It can also save that info for each lens. Prety sweet.

 

2. The Mark II has a silent single shot shutter function. The Mark III does have a relatively quiet shutter on normal mode, but in a small, quiet chapel, it might be annoying. The Silent Single Shot Drive Mode is incredibly quiet.

 

Those two things along with the extraordinary ISO range, blazing fast AF, that incredible highlight priority option and 10 FPS when you need em makes this an awesome (albeit expensive) addition to my arsenal.

 

The benefits of the 5D? Lighter, full frame sensor as opposed to the 1.3x of the Mark III and significantly cheaper. (Did I mention lighter?)

 

I do agree that technology is not going to make the photos look good persay, but it does make the Mark III a much more flexible camera than the 5D in MOST circumstances you are going to encounter in wedding photography.

 

So...get both! ;P

Great info everyone. Incredibly helpful. I think I am going to see if I can make these flashes work before I sink more money into it.

 

Ellis especially, thanks for the usage info on the pack. I will however say that shutter speed matters in one way: max sync speed.

Aha! I knew I was being somewhat unclear. My concern with flash is that I generally like to shoot a very shallow depth of field (5.6 or less) That can be tough with strobes even at 50 ISO at 1/200 on my 5D. I would use ND gels, but I end up losing the effectiveness of my modeling lights in the process. I cut my teeth on available light, so I find strobes to be very foreign and disorienting. I want more WYSIWYG and Continuous lights seem to provide that.

 

I am less concerned with color matching issues because I will have the option of using gels to match color. Not a problem.

 

It seems that the 3x4 can be used with continuous lights, though the 5' softbox cannot...very shallow and the heat would destroy it I am sure.

Hey everyone,

I am a natural light headshot/fashion photographer who is looking to supplement

my work with some continuous light work. I've been using some flash, but I

don't like the depth of field limitations and it startles some of my clients!

(2 Profoto Flash Heads, an Accute 1200e)

 

I already have a 5' Photoflex OctoDome and a Profoto 3x4RF Softbox with

Speedrings for the Profoto flashheads. I would ideally like to be able to use

these Softboxes, if I could use them with these speedrings, that would be

AMAZING. I see that Profoto is coming out with a ProTungsten Unit sometime soon

(B&H is listing the price starting at over $600.)

 

Any thoughts on the best route for me with these softboxes if I want continuous

light? Can I even use these softboxes with continuous light?

<<Ladders are for painting houses. Do what the rest of us do, borrow a chair on which to stand.>> Bwahahah...seriously though...falling off a chair at a wedding makes you look like a real butthead. Answer me this: When is the last time you tried standing on a chair without thinking or actually saying, "Whoa whoa whoa!!!!" and wiggling...I also think it's hot when a chair actually collapses under you and the whole wedding stops to see who is on the floor, bleeding.

 

I recently bought a LADDERKART at Adorama and I have been knocked out by it. It's like $60, but it's well-built, folds up nicely and doubles as a cart for up to 250lbs. One of the main things I like about it though is that it has side rails that you can anchor your ankles against as well as lean up against the front so you can get much more stable than with a regular ladder. Nice big rubbery wheels that roll beautifully. Oh and it has a REALLY nice squishy handle. I highly recommend it.

 

Good luck!

Santa Barbara? *wink*

 

Anyone ever have the chutspah to try outside Disney Hall? That would make for some fantastic backgrounds. I bet security/LAPD would be all over you in a matter of minutes, but it might be worth a try if you warned the clients that it would probably be the case. Might even get some shots of the cops chasing the bride and groom. Priceless...the farmer's market nearby should have some amazing opportunities as well.

 

Laguna Beach...go down to Aleso Beach which is south of the main beaches a few miles. There is a huge stretch of hotel beach there if you walk on Aleso Beach even further south, around the cliffs (not as bad as it sounds) Rarely occupied, all sorts of rocky outcropping and waves crashing and whatnot. Huge expanse of beach. Quite beautiful.

 

Venice would just be too insane to try and shoot there. Maybe the Newport Pier? Ventura is a gorgeous place if you are willing to travel a bit.

 

Just some thoughts with some tangential familiarity with the area.

I saw the following video a couple of months back on this forum and about pissed my pants.

 

http://www.videobycarol.com/Home_Page/MissionNotImpossible.html

 

I say this:

1. Don't EVER wear shorts.

 

2. Don't have "just a drink or two" at the reception.

 

3. Don't ever shoot without a contract.

 

4. Have as much sex as possible the night before the shoot...Mary Ball, your poor husband! :)

 

5. Do your best to make sure the bride looks better than any of the bridesmaids in your photos.

 

6. "I never go see a church before hand. I feel a wedding photographer has to be prepared whatever the circumstance." Kari - that's like an athlete not warming up before a race. It's great to learn how to be flexible in a pinch, but a smart photographer learns how to avoid pinches before they happen. If you have a chance to see the venue beforehand, GO FOR IT!

 

7. Along with Jen Seay's extra memory card, never leave home without ANOTHER extra card and battery AND...*tadaaaa* a backup camera.

 

8. Don't ever refuse a bride's request for a nude photo. If it turns out badly, just say you screwed up the exposure or something. I recently saw an amazing, hilarious shot of a bride's father helping her hold up here dress while she was sitting on the toilet. Freakin brilliant and she was laughing SO hard in the photo.

 

9. Really important: don't ever get in the middle of an argument at a wedding. Family crap piles up deep...you step in it, you may end up over year head before you can back out.

 

10. DON'T SHOOT IF YOU DON'T LOVE IT!

 

9.

Did she mean boudoir photography? I bet she was wondering if you might do some sexy semi-nudes or nudes for her fiance as a wedding gift? I bet you anything this is what she was referring to...

This was from a summer wedding in the Berkshires. Just starting my wedding business.<div></div>

Eric,Thanks for the offer!I live about 5 blocks from Adorama and about 50 other photo shops in NYC, so perhaps someone else on this forum can use your gels. I appreciate the kindness though.

 

Nadine! You are right. He doesn't shoot weddings, but I find that a lot of his other information is spot on from my experience. I definitely am just looking for partial corrections. I am not too nitpicky, but I just want to try to do less in post and this seems to be one more way. I use very long exposures compared to most people for my reception shots particularly. I like a lot of kinetic energy and a sense of context rather than nice shots of people dancing in the blackness of outer space. It's a hold over from my rock and roll shooting. I think it can be a lot of fun and clients really seem to enjoy seeing it. Can you believe I've made the mistake of dialing in the background? Easier with RAW now, but sheesh...learning experiences.

 

Thanks!

Aha...white balance a digital thing? Just a heads up: digital cameras have white balance now just like video does. It is one nudge in favor of using digital: you don't have to swap out film to adjust to different lighting circumstances. You can change ISO, Color Temperature in the camera. If you are using RAW format, rather than JPG, you can even change the White Balance AFTER you get your images in your computer without any loss of data!

Aha...white balance a digital thing? Just a heads up: digital cameras have white balance now just like video does. It is one nudge in favor of using digital: you don't have to swap out film to adjust to different lighting circumstances. You can change ISO, Color Temperature in the camera. If you are using RAW format, rather than JPG, you can even change the White Balance AFTER you get your images in your computer without any loss of data!

Thanks everyone for your input. Just to be clearer, I am simply trying to colormatch the light output from my on camera flash as close as reasonably possible to ambient tungsten light. I am getting sick of either having great skin tones and a rich, red muck behind my subjects or a well white-balanced background and blue faces on my subjects. This happens at weddings and if anyone has ever shot rock and roll photography, the same would be true.

 

One solution is just to make the shots black and white or just limit the exposure time and thus the ambient light, but I think having the option of bringing the blue flash closer to the tungsten color temperature would be extremely helpful. I did find a great resource on this after I posted this:

 

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101-using-gels-to-correct.html

 

He encourages use of CTO gel which warms the flash up about right.

 

This guy has a knockout blog on how to shoot with on camera flashes from DIY equipment to answers for the above.

 

Thanks for all of the input!

Hello all!

 

I want to use a small strip of gel on my Canon 580 flash to more accurately

match the flash color to an incadescent environment.

 

I am finding now that most indoor shoots have a very reddish/orange background

hue from the incandescent lighting in the background especially when I shoot

with longer exposure to capture some background.My subjects in the shots tend

to have a bluer hue relative to the background and I find it really distracting.

 

What gel(s) would be most effective in this case? Other soluctions?

 

Ryan