…to the McBurney household.

Here’s what arrived in to the studio this week.

This is pretty sad as I don’t usually get excited about camera equipment however, I am genuinely excited about the new Nikon D3S. It is the undisputed king of low light shooting and is perfect for my style of low light ambient wedding photography.

I’ve already used it this week on a couple of outdoor shoots and at my wedding yesterday – the results of which I’ll be posting on Tuesday.

Needless to say, the camera’s performance is outstanding! The 14-24 lens will be a great addition to my camera bag.

If anyone is interested – I have one Canon 5DMK II body and the excellent 24mm f1.4L II USM lens that I’ll be putting up for sale this week (now surplus to requirements). Please drop me a line for details. Thanks.

Following on from last Thursday’s post here’s my original contact sheet with my initial selections marked in red.

Every wedding is different – different lighting, different people, different responses, different moments. So whilst this particular mini-story may not happen at every wedding, moments like these do transpire at every wedding, and can happen at any time. The photographer has to be alert to what’s going on, respond and make photographs accordingly. To do this well you have to be quick and not draw attention to yourself.

For as Cartier Bresson said: “Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.”

So, what interested me here was the developing situation with the little flowergirls. As the bridesmaid was trying to fix the bows on the back of the little girls dresses you could sense the excitement and anticipation as the little flowergirl on the right turned around and smiled. I simply loved her expression.

The car pulled in to the church driveway and I made a couple of exposures. This image made the cut.

As the car pulled in I turned around and noticed the flowergirl on the right bending down and straining to get a good view of the bride arriving. This image remains one of my all-time favourites.

I turn around and see what they see – the bride and her Father looking back at them smiling through the car window.

In a few seconds, the girls have now moved ever so slightly with the girl to the right now standing upright, and bringing her hand up to just below her chin – almost in a pensive manner. Again, not noticing the camera I make another exposure- this time a vertical composition in response to their almost symmetrical position. The other frames don’t make my selection because the dynamics within the moment had changed.

The car door opens and the bride looks back at her nieces.

I move inside and shoot this view side on as the bride composes herself. Again, this image has a triangular composition that makes the image interesting to look at.

The last of my selctions is probably my favourite image and doesn’t need any explanation :)

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt

Elliot Erwitt also once remarked in the book ‘Contact: Theory’ that, “Contact sheets should be as private as a toothbrush and ought to be guarded as jealously as a mistress.” and that “a dozen contact sheets tell far more about a photographer than a dozen “good” pictures taken by that same photographer.”

He also suggested that careful examination of a dozen random contact sheets would be equal to a complete (photographic) psychoanalysis of a photographer.

Now, whilst I’m not particularly ready to undergo any kind of ‘contact sheet psychoanalysis’ I do think it’s a good idea to share with you a developing situation at one of my weddings and show you how the creative mind works. :)

Hopefully, it should also give you an insight into how my eye happens to see pictures in an unfolding situation.

Editing images should of course be a private task for the photographer but one also that shouldn’t be rushed. My editing workflow is usually in three parts – all undertaken in Adobe Lightroom:

1. I reject the absolute trash. In film days this would typically have been the very first and last frames on the roll. These days it’s normally the flash misfire shots or frames of my feet where I’ve checked the camera settings on the morning of the wedding :)
2. I then run through all of the images quickly – looking for my gut feel from the photograph. What mood does the image convey? Is it an interesting photograph? What content and form does the image have? Within that I will mark up my initial selections and then I’ll close the file.
3. I always return a couple of days later and with a fresh eye review all of the images again to select the best.

On Thursday of next week I’ll post the above contact sheet with the eight frames I marked as possible keepers along with some of my thoughts as to why they were chosen.