First Wedding Shoot - Part 1

Back in December my sister asked me to shoot her wedding, which was about 6 months away.

At the time I knew just enough about wedding photography to know that I was completely unqualified to shoot a wedding. So of course I agreed. In the next series of posts I will recount my journey over the last several months and the steps I took to prepare for the wedding.

Two Bodies

The first thing I did was look for a few good photography books to learn more about wedding photography. One of the books I picked up was The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 1, by Scott Kelby. It's more of a tips and trick book than a detailed how-to, and there are a lot of little gems in there. On of the first things I noted in this book was the importance of shooting with two bodies at any event that has lots of action happening in various locations. You put a wide angle on one body and a telephoto on the other and you're all set to catch the whole scene, and grab candids of people in the kind of natural happy moments that happen at weddings, sports events, etc.

But I didn't have two bodies. I had one. The Canon 5D Mark II. The 5D is big and heavy, not really a take-anywhere camera. I'd been wanting a cheap lightweight SLR for a while, and now I had my justification. So I started trolling the used camera shops in Tokyo and eventually picked up a brand new Canon Kiss X2 (aka 450D, Rebel XSi) still in the original packaging for great price. The Kiss doesn't shine a candle to the 5D, but it takes reasonable pictures in good lighting conditions and would have to do as a secondary body.


The next step was to learn how to shoot with two bodies. It's easy when you get used to it, but it does take some getting used to. You need a system. I'm sure there are many techniques, but here is what I came up with. I decided from the beginning to keep the long lens on my right shoulder, and the wide lens on my left. This was completely arbitrary, but I figured it would be good to develop a habit of grabbing the camera on my left for wide shots, and the one on on my right for long ones. Then I started practicing.

IMHO, the best practice for for shooting fast moving events is to shoot kids. So I grabbed both bodies, put a wide angle lens on one and a telephoto on the other, and took my kids to the park. After two hours of shooting my wife and our two kids (5 and 2 years old) running wild at the park I was tired, physically and mentally. I'd missed several shots by getting confused and grabbing the wrong body, I'd banged my cameras into each other and into playground equipment, and somehow I even got sand in my eyes. I got home and looked at the 300+ shots. There were some pretty good ones, but it was clear that I needed a lot more practice.

Over the next few months I repeated this exercise several times, with different lens combinations. Eventually I improved, and also settled on lens combo that I thought would work for the wedding:

Left shoulder: Canon Kiss X2 w/ EF 24mm-70mm f/2.8L
Right shoulder: Canon 5D Mark II with EF 70mm-200mm f/2.8L IS USM


I thought briefly about doing it the other way, to use the 1.6x effective focal length multiplier on the Kiss give me a longer lens, but I decided against it. I was pretty sure that two thirds of my shots would be with the long lens, and I wanted that lens on the superior body. Another technique I worked on before the wedding was remote flash. I'd used continuous lighting in the studio, and on-camera flash with omni bounce out of the studio. I often bounced the flash off of walls or ceilings, but that was as advanced as my flash lighting went. For the wedding I knew I needed more, and I found it on Strobist. Read more about my remote flash experience here.

Next time: Getting Ready for Group Shots