Experience as wedding photographer...

Thank you to Sie Sing for inviting myself and elsf to Kuching to help photograph her sister's "wedding". Why "wedding" is in inverted commas? Well, it was not really a full wedding ceremony. There was a simplified tea ceremony in the morning, followed by a simplified celebration dinner in the evening.

I borrowed jyon's 400D for the weekend (thanks jyon!) and attached the 50mm f1.8 lens there for portraits and low light natural pics. On my own 350D, I attached the 18-55 kit lens and the 430EX with home made diffuser for portable lighting capabilities and general shooting. My Panasonic rechargeables can be thrown away already. The recycling time is just too slow and the batteries seem to run out of juice too soon.

Well, shooting an event all by yourself is really difficult. With everything happening so fast and sequentially with no repeats, it is difficult to capture everything properly. Some of my pics turned out blur (motion blur) and out of focus (mostly with the 50mm). Fortunately, the group photos, family photos and couple photos turned out OK. I will be passing the DVD of photos to Sie Sing tonight.

Grappling with 2 cameras is not easy. I slung my 350D around my neck, and the 400D was over my right shoulder. With this configuration, I kept pressing the buttons on the 400D against the side of my body, so the white balance and auto focus kept on changing! Fortunately, it did not really affect the shooting process.

During the morning, things were less hectic as there were less people to contend with. And everything happened in a systematic fashion; relatives took their turns to drink tea and present ang pow. But no thanks to my slow-recharging Panasonic batteries, the flash did not recharge on time for some of the shots. Moreover, the 400D was screwing around with the exposure, either locking it too high or too low (I must have ter-pressed some buttons!). But after reviewing the shots, I thought I did manage to capture everybody.

But in the evening, I did not really go around the place (9 tables of the restaurant floor) to snap photos of the guests. My attention was focused mainly on the main table and the stage. I wanted to snap more of the couple and the parents as the photos will be for them and not for the guests. Well, thanks to Canon's orange colour cast, most photos without flash turned out orangey, while those with flash were well balanced. Overall, I think I scored 30% in this shoot, which is not bad for a first-timer I guess.

I hope to have more experience shooting events like this, but clearly having just one photographer is not sufficient to cover every aspect! Even if armed with 2 cameras, I'm just limited to one angle at any particular time. Having an extra photographer covering another angle will be more convenient and less stressful!