I’m the photographer at my daughter’s wedding

My daughter got married last weekend and I was the photographer. I wasn’t A photographer, I was THE photographer. When I got into this business it never crossed my mind that one day my daughter would get married and that she would need a photographer and that would be me. No doubt, it was a great honor and I was glad to do it, but it does put a bit of pressure on you at a time when you are emotionally vulnerable. The service was very small and delightful, and the priest happened to be the groom’s mother. As my daughter put it to me, “It’s a working wedding dad, everyone has a job to do!” I guess this is the new trend in modern weddings, it works for me and was easy on the pocketbook.

The shoot was challenging because of the lighting conditions. The ceremony was held at the family’s lake house at around one in the afternoon, the back yard was partially shaded by a big maple tree with bright orange leaves. We shot with off camera flash in a small softbox for most of the day, which worked quite well except for that “edgy, contrasty” look that I wanted to minimize for the final shots. I decided to go without flash for most of the ceremony only to avoid the annoyance factor of the flash. The bright background of the lake made for underexposed faces which had to be rescued with the Fill slider in Lightroom (thank goodness for that). Next time a small amount of fill flash would be perfect, I’ll remember for my son’s wedding in a few years. Indoors I was plagued with plenty of natural light and lots of incandescent. So the choice was orange or blue background light and a funny mix in between. Oh the joys of white balance!

At the end of the day I renewed my vows of never doing another wedding…that is until someone special asks