You do Weddings?!
You can already assume what this blog post is going to consist of, based on the title alone. I am pretty adamant about not photographing weddings for a couple various reasons. One main reason being, I don’t want to do the easy cash grab of being a wedding photographer. I have no hate towards wedding photographers, I just really don’t think it is the lane that I want to be in. Secondly, I don’t feel I have the proper equipment to shoot with for those very traditional and cliche wedding photos. Coming strictly from a street photographer aspect, I only primarily stick to using Prime Lenses (lenses with one prime focal length), whereas using a Zoom Variable Lens. At the end of the day, its the photographer that makes the photos great, not the gear, BUT you at least need the proper tools.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT30-II, XF 35mm F/2.
All ranting aside, two weeks ago I got to photograph an actual wedding. Well, more specifically, it was a convalidation. For those that are not familiar, a convalidation is a religious ceremony that makes a civil marriage valid in the Catholic Church. I was honored to photograph my cousins’ convalidation. I would normally deny photographing an occasion like this, but I have such a soft spot for family, that I could not deny! They only wanted more documentative style photos, so that alleviated me from the stress of all the other moving parts to having highly stylized photos. Not saying I was lazy and not creative, it just allowed me a little more leeway from needing to exert all of my creative prowess.
Shot on: Fujifilm XT30-II, XF 35mm F/2.
From an overall photography aspect, I did learn a lot from shooting this event. The lighting was not the best inside of the Church, so shooting in aperture priority mode was not getting the best results. I had to get down to the nitty gritty and shoot completely in manual mode. This was a great refresher to getting back to the true fundamental basics of photography. Shooting full manual mode means a bit more extensive post-production work on the photo editing. This was also a great way for me to hone in on my photo editing process. All in all, this was a successful shoot in my opinion. Am I still on the fence about shooting weddings? Absolutely.
Here are some of my favorite shots. ‘Til the next one, enjoy.
