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.

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.

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.

You do Weddings?!

Spooky Szn is here.