Korenza and Carlos (and Solies)

Korenza and Carlos got married last Sunday.  Why they couldn’t have waited two weeks until I got home I don’t know.  By now though, I’m used to the world not running on my schedule so it didn’t surprise me.  I missed quite the wedding, at least by everything that I’ve seen.

As always there’s a story.  But it’s not about them, it’s about Ann.  

So Sunday morning I wake up to the following e-mail from Ann:

“Oh geez, somehow the rumor got around that i could take Carlos and Korenza wedding photos!!  

“Geez what am i going to do?  I told them i am totally new at the camera.”

I chuckled when I read it, sent her a light e-mail, thought little more about it and went into work to get a couple of things done.  I got back well in time for Ann’s breakfast and started thinking of what could I possibly tell her that could make any real difference.  Anyway, I didn’t think much about it because we had a week to figure stuff out and get some ideas in Ann’s head about how to best photograph the wedding.

Well, Ann got up and we started talking photography and she sent me some photos she took on Saturday from a bike ride by Delta Ponds in Eugene.  As usual, she had some really stunning images, like the one below, that she couldn’t believe were anything other than, to use her words, crap.

After chatting about a few of her bird images, and me drawing diagrams on some of them to explain why I thought they were good, she said that it was time to deal with the inevitable.  Apparently the night before, Carlos and Korenza asked her to photograph their wedding.  Ann was terrified.  Believe me, I know how she felt - photographing weddings are horrible and you feel like if you mess up at all, you’re going to ruin the wedding.  I kept trying to calm her down, telling her that we had plenty of time, asking her some easy questions about her thoughts, where it’s going to be and stuff (it was at Jim’s house).  

Ann kept going on and on about “What if it rains!” and I kept responding about don’t worry now about if it rains.  At one point I went online to check the weather.  I pulled up the wrong site and grumbled about it, Ann asked what’s wrong, “Oh, i wanted to get the 10 day forecast to see what the weather is supposed to be for next weekend and I clicked the wrong site.” “Why are you wondering about the weather next weekend?  The wedding is today!”

OH CRAP!

No wonder Ann was so nervous!  First thing I did was check the hourly weather report - 50% chance of rain.  Which of course invoked the, “What if it rains?” question yet again.  Pony boy that I am (someday I’ll tell you the joke) I said that meant that there is a 50% chance it won’t rain, and that it will be overcast - perfect light to photograph a wedding with!  I told Ann to give me a few minutes to do some online scouting.  

First off I sent her a screen clip of photographer’s ephemeris, a great photo tool, to show her where the sun would be around wedding time (4:00 pm).

I told her to have them stand in open shade and not face into the sun (so they don’t squint).  “What if the ground is wet?”  “They get their feet wet!  Do they want nice wedding photos or not?  Remember - you’re the photographer, you’re in control and you get to tell them where to go.  Screw their shoes!”  

Ann was getting increasingly nervous and trying to absorb too much information.  I kept telling her that all she needs to do is get 3-4 really nice photos and they’ll love them.  And then I’d start telling her way too much information.  Every once in a while I’d try to step back and say stupid things about keeping it simple and don’t do anything you haven’t done before, which would have been smart things to tell her except for the fact that I'd then go back to complicating things for her. 

This went on for about 2 hours.  I’d send her sites of photographers I’ve seen that do weddings, she’d come back and ask me questions that I knew she already knew the answers to  (she'll deny it, but she knows all about apertures and shutter speeds and iso the implications about using any particular setting for each - she just doesn't trust herself).  Eventually she asked me to send images of exactly where I’d place people for photographs in different situations.  I’d then make up images like this one, that she could store in Evernote and have on hand in case she forgot something.

If you can’t figure that image out it means have people stand on the dots - you stand where the base of the arrow is and point the camera in the direction of the arrow.  

Ann really really wanted to be prepared and I think nerves got the best of us.  I suggested some things that were new to her, she didn’t trust in her own skills.  At the end of it - Ann had way too many notes to do her any good and I had forgotten to tell her about a couple of quirks with her camera that sprung up during the shoot.

But you know what?  It didn’t matter.  Last night I was watching a video lecture by a photographer and he spent a few minutes commenting on the silly quest for technically perfect images.  He basically said that it was a fools’ quest.  The quest should be for images that are alive.  And if the image is alive, people don’t see the technical imperfections.  And if a photograph is technically perfect but isn’t alive, it’s dead and people don’t care about it.  Sure, it’s great to have images that are both alive and technically perfect, but really only one of the two matters.

Well, that’s what Ann captured.  She captured love - of Korenza, Carlos and their daughter Solies; of the people there who love them.  She captured moments of laughter, joy, tears of joy and glances of affection.  She captured the beauty of the people, the event and the moment.  Korenza and Carlos were lucky they asked Ann to shoot their wedding.

Now Ann gripes that she shot 500 photographs and not very many of them are worth looking at.  But she posted over 200 of them online for folks to look at and all of them look just fine to me.  I wonder how many of the others are just fine, and what gems did Ann miss?  What Ann doesn’t realize is, every wedding photographer shoots 500+ images and they only show about 100 of them.  Why?  Because it’s hard!  Everyone has lots of bad images in a wedding shoot!

Anyway, I’ll be helping her with some of the post production because she doesn’t have a lot of practice with it (really, that’s what all the photos for the blog have been for me - practice for when it matters!).  She’s sent a couple already and they’re in this post.  Didn’t take much work to get them from nice to really nice.

Ann won’t believe me when I tell her she did a great job.  What do you think?