Wedding #1: I don't do weddings

I have always said I will not shoot weddings. First: I'm not good enough. And second: it's not the type of photography I'm interested in. But what was I going to do when my good friend Jamie asked me to photograph her wedding? They weren't going to hire a professional, so it was my pictures or nothing. Of course I said yes.

The lighting was tough. Really, really tough. We were in shade but it was a bright day, and a lot of the pictures had half sun/half shade in them so they were pretty contrasty. At one point, as I took a quick peek at the dark images on my camera screen, I was so worried that I was going to completely fail that I switched my camera to automatic and fired off about five shots in the middle of the wedding, just in case.

When I got home and started editing I found that, yes, there were some shots that were pure garbage. But there were also a lot that were pretty workable. I have a lot to learn still, although I'm happy to report that my shots were much better than the automatic ones (I was reminded why I never, ever use my on-camera flash!) so I guess that's progress, right?

Here is a scene from the wedding. Pretty dark and lots of noise, but at least the sky isn't completely blown out, and I do love the emotion:

Here's a shot after the wedding was over and I could choose where to put them:

I'm so happy for them! And now I can go back to saying no to weddings! ;)