m.sawyer photography
Matt Sawyer is an analogue landscape, fine-art, and portrait photographer from the middle of nowhere.
wedding: jeff & melissa (and lessons learned)
Well, I am happy to report another successful wedding shoot. Both Jeff and Melissa confirmed they absolutely love their photos upon first viewing them tonight (along with some tears from Melissa). This was probably the biggest and definitely most traditional wedding I’ve shot. As such I was a little nervous when, the day before the wedding, I noticed they requested over 90 combinations of group shots.
Group photos are probably the hardest part of the wedding for me to shoot. They are probably better suited to the loud, extroverted photographer who has the whole gaggle of subjects in the palm of his or her hand. I am much more a pensive, cautious photographer and this probably doesn’t make big groups of people too comfortable or at ease. Well, I’m getting used to it, and the groups mostly looked at ease and happy in the photos.
Another lesson learned regarding focus problems with fast (i.e. shallow depth of field) lenses: I’d seen this before when I’ve used fast lenses such as the 17-55/2.8, and again this time with the 24-70/2.8. At first I thought possibly the lens was back focusing (and it’s difficult to determine this until the wedding’s over and you’re looking at the photo at 100% magnification). But I believe I have realized something in this. Because I am so used to spot metering and only using the central AF point, I’m holding my AF lock too long (to make things worse, not using a tripod either, I know, I know). I confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the lenses on a portrait session the following week. With these portraits I was very careful about AF lock and recomposing, and voila, the photos came out razor sharp (well, except for one of them), and I’m still talking about shooting wide open.
So the actual lessons here: 1) use a tripod for group photos 2) instead of using only the center AF point on portraits/group portraits, use all of them or at least the center line, 3) if not using a tripod, don’t wait forever to trip the shutter after AF lock, because it’s bound to be out of focus. Simple and seemingly obvious lessons I know, but when you’re in the moment it has seemed easy to forget about.
If a long time pro is reading this he or she is probably either laughing or scoffing at my shortcomings. Well that is why I’m willing to learn, pick myself back up, and keep going and improving at every step of the way.
