Galen and Jagoda Got Married (FINALLY)!

After five years together, Galen and Jagoda got married on September 26. I, for one, have to say, "it's about damn time".  Prior to the wedding, Galen told me that he was going to give me his flash and let me play with it.  He claims that it is a really nice flash, but to be honest, I have no idea as I have NEVER used a flash before and wasn't sure what to expect.  Well, actually, that's a lie. I thought that a flash would let me take pictures in low light, holding the camera, and with shutter speeds fast enough to actually capture things without constant blurring.  I was only sort-of right.

I didn't get my hands on the flash until a few hours before the wedding and I didn't even know what type of flash it was.  Add to this that Kyra and I have a newborn and I didn't even get the chance to do some quick Googling (er, Binging) on how to take flash photography. Really, I just didn't think it would be too hard.  Point camera, turn flash on, and BOOM flash lights up subjects and you get a pretty picture.

Boy, I was doing something wrong, and after hours of playing, I'm still not sure what. I felt that I had very long exposure times and I had to crank the ISO pretty high to avoid constant motion blur in most of my pictures (indoor at least. Outside we had pretty decent light for most of the wedding so those were nice).

I would like to provide some context behind each of the shots, but the whole thing was a constant experiment, trying to take the same photo with 5-6 different settings, and then looking through them to see which one worked best and why.  Adding to this, several pictures were taken by other people wile I was tending to baby Andrew, or Kyra, or the bride, or the groom.

Oh yes, lessons.
1) Do some reading/research on how to turn the flash on and get it to work. This is a lot easier when you have the flash at home with you and you have some time to play. Some of them, well, this one at least, had about 10 buttons, dials, and knobs.
2) General rule, your subjects need to be pretty close. I tried "sniping" some photos and it didn't work at all.
3) I got better results when I used the exposure meter/lock. Basically, I told the camera to read/lock the exposure, this caused the flash to go off very briefly providing the camera with the approximate lighting conditions for when you actually take the picture.
4) Use some method to defuse the light.  Flashes are pretty bright/harsh and if you point them directly at the subject you get really odd contrast so you need some way to defuse the light. Most flashes come with a chintzy piece of plastic that works decently well, but you don't have to stop there. In a few of these photos I tried bouncing the flash off the wall behind me which works pretty well when you have a white wall and your subject is really close. I can tell from personal experience that it doesn't work so well when you have glass windows behind you.
5) Low light (well, at least THIS low light) creates a really warm look. A little too warm in my opinion. In most RAW files, the subject's skin was orange/red so I ended up reducing the temp a fair amount on the indoor shots to make people look like people, rather than Oompa-Loompas.
6) If you have a newborn, take lots of photos of the baby, and try to get at least one incredibly embarrassing photo of your wife to post on a blog she will probably never read :)
7) Don't hire me to do your wedding photos. Hire a professional who knows what he/she is doing.

So, without further ado, I will post some of my favorite photos below and maybe give a sentence or two about why I chose to put them here.  There are more pictures on my Facebook page, you know, cause it's Facebook and I need to tag people.

I like the color. I feel that the green provides a great contrast with Amy's dress. I also prefer candid photos over posed.

I know I know. I complained about not liking low light because it makes things look too warm. However, I like this photo BECAUSE it looks nice and warm.  But trust me, I had to cool it off quite  bit to get here.

Of course I like this photo, it's my wife and my kid damnit! 

Awwwww

Look! It's me! I'm not sure who took this, but I like it because I'm selfish.

This was taken outside, under a canopy so the light was really well defused and the grey brick background made for a fantastic exposure.

Again, I'm a fan of green. The other thing I like about this is the composition. I like the space between the subjects and how they each fill the outer third of the frame. Interesting note, Kyra doesn't like this shot specifically for the reason I like it.  She says that her eye is drawn to the center and that having the subjects on the edges is a little distracting.

THE BRIDE!  I told Jagoda that I was going for an ass shot. Instead I got the "you can do it" girl WITH the ass shot.  You go girl!

Awww, how cute. The fun thing about this shot is that it was taken during the maid-of-honor's toast and it was of all three of them.  However, when I put it on the bigger screen I realized that including the MoH was distracting, so, I cropped her out.

Obligatory "terrible" photo of Kyra. Why is this here? Because I think it is funny and she will probably never see it.