To get the whole scene you usually have to put on a wide angle lens. But don’t if you don’t have to. If you have room to shoot from a distance, that’s usually a better option.



Aperture Priority Mode; ISO 160; Shutter 1/1000; F-stop 4.5; Focal Length 70mm on 70-200; No Flash.



This was one of those days when it’s hard to call what I do “work”. I have more “work” to do in the Bahamas in August! This shot was taken from about 100 yards from the subjects. I was standing in a flower bed. The compression of the long lens gives you a completely different perspective. With a wide angle, the ocean would have been a non-entity, too far off (small) to even be noticed. The sea was most definitely a big part of this scene so it was crucial to pull it in as much as possible. I intentionally kept the horizon just below the level of the canopies. If my position is a little higher, the canopies and sea line merge and the visual distinction is lessened. If I’m a little lower, I lose more of the ocean by putting more stuff from the foreground in front of it. Take your time on scene setters if you can. The little stuff makes a big difference.





The same thought was running through my mind on this one. The farther I get from that tent, the longer the lens I can use, the bigger that mountain becomes in the background. Fortunately, I had plenty of room to walk around at this setting (Aska Farm) in Blue Ridge, Georgia. I also wanted to show a good bit of that sky to give the viewer a sense of openness and remoteness. You can view this wedding featured on The Knot here. It was the first item on Google’s search results for Aska Farm! Cool! Unfortunately, or fortunately, it looks like this fantastic location is up for sale!





Keep your eyes open for balconies. This is the Piedmont Driving Club in downtown Atlanta. Yes, Anna, it is easier to make this place look good than others! The higher perspective lets you see the layout of the tables (thank you, PDC, for spotlighting each table!), the vast expanse of this fabulous space, and you get a feel for just how many folks are in the room. The bride and groom had just been up on this balcony getting this view so we wanted them to have more than just their memories to recall this scene. You can view this wedding featured on The Knot here.


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” - Isaac Newton

This is hilarious. David Jay critiquing Denis Reggie’s sheets. Click Here.

When you first get the fever for getting those amazing reaction shots, the tendency is to look hard for the nuance, the emotion, and the story that plays out on your subjects’ faces. But don’t forget the forest for the trees. Your job is to tell the whole story. And a huge part of that is capturing the big and the small. Let’s talk about the big this week.


It’s called the Scene Setter. You MUST show the location at every event you shoot. This is not a suggestion. Here are five scene setters from a wedding weekend in Nashville.





The Rehearsal Dinner. Sometimes you can get there before any guests arrive, and if so, do it.





The Rehearsal After Party at Robert’s Western World, a Honky Tonk in downtown Nashville. Keep your eyes open for cool location signs. The Honky Tonk was shoulder-to-shoulder inside which did not lend itself to a great SS. The sign shot became a better Scene Setter in the album.





The Ceremony. My buddy Kyle shot this one for me. The Scene Setter is one of the few times I pull out the fisheye.





The Reception at Cheekwood. This may be my favorite Scene Setter shot ever, just because of the way everything played so well together. It was a gorgeous night in early October–a clear top on the tent allowed us to capture that cobalt blue sky as sunset faded; magnificent trees lit by flood lights; spot lights highlighting each table; pink balls (what the heck do you call those?! that destroyed the eloquence of the narrative!); and a sit-down dinner. I’ll explain why that is important later this week.


My friend Jammey made the trek to Nashville to shoot this one with me. Thanks again, Jammey!





The Day After Brunch. This is the Father-of-the-Bride’s home.


I’ll explore the technique of the Scene Setter later this week.


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The next moment the day became very bothering indeed, because Pooh was so busy not looking where he was going that he stepped on a piece of the Forest which had been left out by mistake.” - Pooh, A. A. Milne

Excuse the tardiness of this Speed Week Leftover post. I had it planned out for last week, but we realized Friday morning that Sue, the complete T Rex, was on her last day at the nearby Gray Fossil Site. So I sacrificed this blog to take my girls to see something cool. Check out this video of Madelyn and Macy finding fossil bones.


Back to business . . .


If you’ve been hanging around in professional photographer communities and you wanna start a fight in a hurry, just start talking JPEG versus RAW. I’ve been on photography forums where guys have started fencing training because they were gonna resurrect the bygone custom of dueling to the death. All over image recording format.


I’m not here to convince you one way or the other. I’m just gonna tell you what made me go JPEG after years as a RAW shooter.


I started out in digital shooting RAW cuz Denis Reggie did. Then one day I realized that when you compressed a RAW image, which you have to, it becomes roughly the same as the Large JPEG which is compressed in-camera. Now, sure, you have some options in RAW conversion that you don’t with in-camera processing. The point of this post is that there are trade-offs to this kind of control. For me, it’s about speed.


I mean speed during shooting, which is the point of Speed Week, but also post-processing speed. RAW conversion eats up valuable office time. You’ll have to decide if both of those losses of speed are worth it.


Think about the numbers you see in the images above and what they mean. They mean you have to stop and change cards 4 times as often if you shoot RAW. For a guy who makes his living on reaction, on capturing the moment, that weighs heavily on my decision. Especially if you shoot as rapidly as I do. I can gobble through 375 frames in no time. When I started shooting JPEG I was so liberated from the apprehension of that frame count hitting 0 at a critical moment that I almost wet myself with joy!


You DO NOT want to be down to 50 frames remaining when anything awesome is on the verge of happening, and it always is. You need to change cards and have plenty of memory to shoot without having to worry about it. Shooting with four digits of frames on a card will make you a better Photographic Observer. One less thing to worry about gives your mind over to what it needs to focus on. Watching, feeling, and shooting–not worrying about memory lockdown and the mad scramble for a new card as the moment vanishes into thin air.


UPDATE: Funny thing happened. I changed my camera to the RAW setting for the picture in this post. Well, I forgot to go back to JPEG and just shot a bunch of RAW images over the weekend by mistake! Ah well, the good ole days! I was just shooting a handful of stuff for some friends, so I didn’t even give the memory a glance!


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expected generally happens.” - Benjamin Disraeli

Well, here we go. About as practical as you get . . .





I’ve applied for a patent on this tripod untelescoping technique. It occured to me one time as I was loosening the grip on the leg to push it in, that if I did so while the tripod was upside down, gravity would push the leg in for me. Insanely simple, and I’m sure you already thought about this, but when you’re in a hurry, little things like this make a big difference. Turn that tripod upside down when it’s time to put the legs in.


Similarly, when you’re wanting to let the legs down during a ceremony and you don’t want to make a loud bang when they reach their max length, loosen the leg holders while the reduced tripod is on the floor, right-side up. Then, just pull the tripod up and the legs lengthen silently because they’re already on the floor! The photograph of me doing this technique wasn’t nearly as exciting as this one . . .





This technique is probably worth another blog post. It’ll be labled “PhotoJournalism Tips - Vitally Unnecessary”. Or “PhotoJournalism Tips - How to Use a Big Forehead”.





If you don’t have a quick-release tripod mount you need one. Tell your spouse I said it was worth the extra cash. Double check the thread size of the screw-in mount before you make a big purchase. Some cameras have bigger holes than others.


I use tripods twice each wedding day. One “scene setter” shot during the ceremony and one during the reception. I’ll make posts on these soon. Sometimes the tripod is not necessary for either. If you don’t have to use a tripod, don’t. They eat up time. Pack light if at all possible. Every piece of equipment you get out of the car reduces your speed. Don’t skimp, but don’t overload yourself either.

QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put inside boxes.” - Dave Barry

I can’t talk speed without talking doodads. Here they are in action . . .





For quick flash recharging you need an external battery pack that adds the power of another 6 batteries to the 4 that are already in your flash. That’s the Canon Pack CP-E2. B&H lists it as discontinued, but Amazon has it. I think Canon has introduced a newer model so do a little research if you want one. Mine are about 4 years old. BTW, the flash is a Canon Speedlight 580EX. OK, this post isn’t supposed to be about the main tools, but the accoutrements.


The other speed tool you see here is the Lexar 231 Media Wallet (to store CF Cards). I put the unused cards in a wallet on my left and the used ones in a wallet on my right. I’ve done it this way for years. I used to put unused film in a left pocket and used film in a right. That way you don’t even have to think about it. This wallet has velcro and a zipper that covers three sides of the wallet, like a suitcase. You can see in the picture that I usually use the velcro only on the left side so that I can get to those cards quick fast in a hurry. The one you can see here is actually pushed open just a bit. But I’ve never had a card slip out, even when it’s not zipped. I zip the right side cards up and velcro them. Those are quite a bit more valuable with irreplaceable images on them. They attach to the belt. I believe Lexar has discontinued these wallets, but you can get them here.


This card wallet is a no-brainer for me. If you’re right in the middle of something, you don’t wanna knock Grandma Rose to her undignified bum as you sprint wild-eyed back to your bag for more memory. You wanna be able to slip right into the very accessible card wallet on your belt and be reloaded in a matter of miliseconds. And think about it this way. The most valuable equipment you have is the memory cards with shot images on them. With a card wallet, they are attached to your person instead of in an unwatched camera bag somewhere.


And, yes, these belt-attached tools are an easier decision for us boys. We can hide all manner of craziness under a suit jacket. I stash all kinds of stuff on my belt - crackers, cherry coke zero, a pipe, the Lord or the Rings Trilogy, my 3-year-old, and a dictionary. And nobody ever notices! Gals are more likely to have to think about this one. Is it worth the loss of style points to have all of these contraptions attached to your hips? You’ll have to answer that one. And I’ll be the first one to tell you that personal style is important to your target market - the NetGen. I’m not saying I accomplish good personal style! I’m just saying we have to try!


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.” - Benjamin Franklin

It’s Speed Week here on Eric’s Photographic Observation Blog and I’m posting really, really practical advice on how to shoot quick-like. I’m a wedding and event specialist and as a photojournalist I don’t ask my subjects to wait while I get my stuff together. That would be obtrusive. Plus, the stuff I make my living on (reaction) can’t be put on hold, so I’ve gotta be ready in an instant. Here’s how not to waste time changing lenses . . .





Here you see my lens stash. That’s 4 lenses plus the one I have on the camera (28-70mm 2.8). Notice first: the lenses are not in a bag. Bags are great for transport between locations, but I get my lenses out and accessible once I set up shop in an area.


Choosing a stash spot is a biggie. It has to be protected, yet accessible. You see here that I’ve made a stash under my dining room chair. (I took this shot specifically for “photojournalism tips”.) Stash spots should always be on the floor. Gravity is an enemy to your equipment. Don’t let it destroy your stuff. Put your stuff on the floor. Put it under a structure like a chair or a table if possible. Tables are better because with chairs you have to dig under someone’s legs if they sit in it–which aint no fun. But sometimes you notice a chair that’s in a place where it won’t be used and that’s good enough. Some of my favorite stash spots during a wedding day are . . .

• under a table in the girls’ dressing area (Pay special attention to where your stash is. Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen recently declared a bride’s dressing room a disaster area and allocated enormous funds to cleanup at a wedding in Nashville. I once misplaced a second camera for an entire wedding when I first got into the business 10 years ago. I was on the verge of calling the police when it turned up under an unmentionable item in the girls’ dressing area.)
• under a table or chair in the vestibule/narthex/entry area to a church
• under the back pew or chair in the sanctuary or seating area (if it’s an outside) during the ceremony
• under the DJ/Band’s main speaker stand next to the dance floor. (the dance floor is where the majority of the action takes place. You want to shoot the majority of the shots toward the guests and include them in the background instead of toward the band. So I usually station myself with the band/DJ and shoot out toward the crowd.)

Why is under the table or chair a biggie? Because people will step on your stuff in an open area. If you don’t have a chair or table that’s usable, use a corner. (Never use a table or chair that is being used for eating because of the drink spilling and the feet kicking. Yes, that’s a no-brainer, but I told you this would be practical to the point of insulting your intelligence. )


Lenses are face down (except fot the telephoto which would tip over and cause damage). I do not use front lens caps or protective filters on the front of my lenses. I don’t want to waste the time in applying and removing front lens caps when I’m shooting like a madman. It’s really unnecessary. Put them face down on the floor and they are protected. Protective filters are a cheap piece of image degrading glass on the front of an insanely expensive and fine-tuned lens. The front of your lenses might, from time to time, get a smudge. You need to send your lenses in for professional maintenance and cleaning on a regular basis anyway. Those lenses have a glare-reducing coating that needs to be maintained. The pros a Canon CPS reapply that when you send a lens in for maintenance.


I do use back lens caps. Find out why and how to change em quick below . . .





The back lens caps are important because the back of the lens is actually more important than the front. Look at the connectors, the attaching mechanism, and all of the funky stuff that that cap protects! And, unfortunately, I know from experience that a back lens element with smudges is worse than a front lens element with smudges. Protect that back glass!


Here I’m chaging from a 28-70 to a 50 1.4. (Yes, I used another 28-70 to shoot this image.) The first thing to know is that you must turn the camera off before removing a lens. If the camera is on, the digital imager in your camera acts like a magnet attracting dust and crud of every shape and size. It is an electronic device and those things are dust magnets. Turn it off and you’ve disabled the magnetizing. Do not keep a lens cap on hand for the lens that’s on your camera. The back cap of the lens that’s going on your camera goes on the lens you take off. Always keep a bunch of extra caps in your bag, but not in your stash.





Now put your just-used lens securely back in the stash, under a protective structure, face down.


Here it is plain and simple . . .

1. Turn the camera off.
2. Take lens off the camera and place it face down.
3. Take back cap off the lens to be used and put it on the lens going back in the stash.
4. Put the new lens on, turn the camera on, and shoot like there’s no tomorrow!

I noted in the first image that I do keep a front lens cap on the fisheye. The front element of a fisheye is convex and picks up smudges like a champ. Plus I don’t use it very often–literally like a handful of shots on each event. Sometimes I don’t even use it. So that one front lens cap aint gonna slow you down that much.


I hope the attention I’ve given to this insanely simple task points you to how important speed is to a photojournalist. You can’t stop the action. The cool stuff happens whether you’re digging in your bag like a hedge-hog or not. You better be ready at all times.


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“It’s a good thing we have gravity, or else when birds died they’d just stay right up there. Hunters would be all confused.” - Stephen Wright

Another thing to keep your eye on behind the scenes of a processional is patterns. The cast lines up without you having to ask them to. So take advantage of it. It’s a great time to get shots of little ones like I mentioned yesterday, but today you see a bit of a different take on it. If the flower girl is lined up next to the big girls throw a telephoto on and put her on one side of the frame to show her cuteness and size.


This was a 70-200mm zoom at 90mm. 1/60 second. Aperture priority 2.8. 1600 ISO. OK I fudged a bit on the rule I mentioned the other day which is don’t let your shutter speed drop below your focal length. Here my shutter is 60 and my focal length is 90. Rules are made to be broken. And I’ve gotten pretty good at hand holding a telephoto at about 60th of a second. It’s also because I was shooting at Aperture Priority. My camera chose the 1/60th. Why didn’t I go manual and lock the shutter speed just to make sure? Because I was shooting several subjects in varying degrees of light very quickly. Other subjects whom I was shooting in the same lineup would have needed 1/250th of a second. That’s the fun of photojournalism. Everything changes on you in a split second. So I let my EOS 1D Mark II select the shutter speed for me on this. It’s faster at it than I am in a crunch. Just keep an eye on it!





1600 ISO. 185mm on a 70-200mm zoom. Aperture Priority 2.8. 1/85th second.





1600 ISO. 200mm on a 70-200mm zoom. Aperture Priority 2.8. 1/100th second.


Telephoto lenses really help to isolate subjects by cropping out (and blurring out) anything that would be a distraction. Throw a telephoto on and the details you want to highlight are not crowded out by anything that would take away from the image.


A lot of planning goes into things like shoes, flowers, and dresses and this is the perfect time to give them a look. Especially if there are long songs before the processional really gets going. Everybody’s just standing around waiting. Doesn’t mean you should be.


If you look back over the images I’ve posted this week you’ll notice that I’ve used three types of lenses on my “Behind the Processional” stuff. The bride and bride & Dad shots were mid-range, the little ones were wide-angle, and today was telephoto. Really good storytelling gives you all of the perspectives. I change lenses quickly and often. I’ll post something very practical soon on stashing and changing lenses in a hurry.


Hey, let me know from time to time if anything you’ve picked up here has been beneficial and how. The feedback helps!


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be happy. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all to matter, to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.” - Leo Rosten

There’s a lot going on in this shot. A bride looking a bit nervous, a ring bearer concentrating hard on his job, a coordinator’s hands guiding his departure, parents enjoying the proceedings from behind. It all helps tell the story. The main subject here is obviously the little guy, but each element is a descriptor of the moment. Wide angles are great for describing the overall feel of the moment. You need to get in close on your subject, but not so close that you lose everything else.





This is one of my favorites. Flower Girls are brave little creatures. Look at that aisle. Look at the distance through which one must traverse smiling, walking slowly, distributing pedals, and not bumping into the cutie next to you! If you’re a 4-year-old, that’s an intimidating vision. You can read it in their postures. This is scary!


Distances are always exaggerated by wide angle lenses if there are lines that lead from foreground to background. (20mm, Manual Mode, 1/60, 2.8, 1600 ISO, with fill-flash) The line begins with the girls and the aisle seems to lead into some distant luminous oblivion! I used a little fill flash on this, bounced off a wall behind me. I intentionally did not get down on their level to shoot this one. To do so would have made them larger in the frame and shooting from above kept them small relative to the rest of the scene. DO NOT always fill the frame with children. Leaving space around them illustrates their size. It helps us remember that they are little people living in a big people world.


Flower girls are brave little creatures!

Sometimes I’m restricted and have to shoot from the aisle on a processional. Several years ago it was the opposite. This shot was taken on one of the first occasions when I couldn’t shoot from the aisle. (It was a gorgeous old church in downtown Atlanta.) I had no idea what I was missing . . .


What I found when I got to see behind the scenes was that some of the coolest and most touching moments happen as the gals (and sometimes the guys) are preparing to make the walk down the aisle. It’s always a poignant moment for Dad. These are his last few moments of being the man in her life. I’ve seen a flood of emotion literally send some Dads into convulsions at this moment. My favorite time is when the bridesmaids have all walked in and the doors are shut right before the big entry. That’s where we are in the shot above.


It’s just the two of them (and me and the wedding coordinators!). It’s quiet for the first time all day. For that matter, it’s quiet for the first time in three weeks! He’s getting his last look at his girl.
Pride - I remember that first bike ride.
Deep Breath.
Joy - Man, the first time she laughed! I bounced her on my knee singing Jingle Bells!
Breathe man!
Anxiety - Where do I sit?
Jealousy - He better take good care of her.
I think I can breathe.
Regret - I was harsh at times. I hope she knows how much I love her.
Love - she’s mine. But not for long.

A thousand unbelievable and irreplaceable memories are zooming through his mind. I don’t even want to think about it. I’m a Dad too.


This is one of those times when I feel absolutely blessed and humbled to be able to do what I do. I get to see this moment, experience it, and record it. It is really one of the most intimate things I’ve ever seen.


I felt the full weight of fatherhood when they first put Madelyn in my arms almost 9 years ago. I don’t mean weight in the responsibility sense alone. I mean weight as in “this beautiful little life is mine to treasure for a time”. It was an absolute surprise to me. There was a cognitive recognition of all that fatherhood was supposed to be, but I had never FELT IT until that moment. I had no idea that it would hit home and hit so deep. We have physical bodies that experience things differently when we touch.


This is the other bookend to that physical moment when they first put her in your arms. It hits deep like that first time. She’s standing close. She’s holding your arm now. She IS beautiful.


This is it, Dad. She was yours for a season. And that season is literally seconds away from ending. This treasure is being passed from your hands to those of another man. She’s standing so close to you. She’s holding your arm. She needs you now. She’s proud to be yours. This is it, Dad.


You can see this Dad soaking it up. He’s drinking this moment in. And hopefully, if we photojournalists do our job well, he won’t have to struggle to relive this moment as his memory fades. (This is the time when experience and skill are your friends. As you get better, you’re not sitting there trying to think about which lens to use. How about that shutter speed? Eventually the technique becomes second-hand and you don’t have to stress about the mechanics. You anticipate, see, and shoot. It is and isn’t that easy. And that kind of experience is what should drive the fees you charge. That kind of experience and skill is most definitely worth something. It means getting this shot or not getting it.)


This is one of the reasons I’m adamant about a hands-off approach to wedding photography. It’s one of the reasons I want to spread this message to other wedding photographers. I’m a Dad. I don’t want a photographer making me pose at this moment. Be there. Record it. Don’t let me forget. But don’t mess with me now. Let me look at her one last time.


QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Father! - to God himself we cannot give a holier name.” - William Wordsworth