dispatches

Latest wedding video

John & Paul's Wedding from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Here is last week's wedding video. They didn't want my full treatment, story-of-the-relationship video, just a document of the ceremony for their friends to see online. I captured audio with a Zoom H4N, which I can't recommend enough. The sound is so much cleaner than anything from the cameras and their external microphones (which was my fail-safe backup option). Using my wireless receiver, I captured a direct feed from the church's soundboard. I had the unit perched under the roses and I got good ambient sound from there, 

I used two cameras for this, setting up one to get an overall view, and manning the other with the longer lens. With the 12 minute limit on CF capture, I had to switch back and forth between the two bodies to not miss anything. Having separate audio capture made the post much smoother, and with Pluraleyes it's a cinch to sync it with the video streams.

A wedding video

Caryn & Rhetick's Wedding Weekend from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

A video documentary of Caryn & Rhetick and their wedding in British Columbia's Pemberton Valley.   This was fun to do. As with every video project, I learned to make do with what I had, and mourned what I wish I had done but didn't. Most of this I shot on the Canon 5D, though I had a second camera (a Canon HV-30) that rolled through the ceremony. It was also my first field test of the Beachtek audio splitter for the 5D, which worked like a charm, but made the camera that much more unwieldy. With control of audio it means I now have to monitor audio--one more thing to keep on top of. Someday it will become fluid and unconscious.

If you're having bandwidth issues, the YouTube version seems to be easier to view.

Gotta brag

 

Here's an unsolicited email I got today from my last wedding client:

We just took a look at the photos and WE COULDN'T STOP!! Ed kept saying, "WOW!" and "THAT"S AMAZING!" and "OH, PERFECT!!"  I don't know if I mentioned that his first job was as a photographer. After winning several awards for his commercial photos of his dad's mining ventures, he went to work at Moulin studios in SF, CA and has done everything from ads and Ice Follies to weddings and his own personal photography. I also like to shoot and Ed thinks enough of my work that he bought me a digital M8 last year. I did some photojournalism in my youth, but it was too stressful and I went back to the beach before ever starting a career... Anyway, we both think these are the best wedding photos we have ever seen, and we aren't just prejudiced towards the ones of us! We love the shots of the kids and the folks at the river and the music shots; everything is just beautiful!

Flickr set here.

Why I do weddings

I have a few stock phrases when I talk about my wedding photography. Like, I do few enough of them that I really like it when one comes along. That I know I'm not burned out so long as I still get teary during the ceremony. That I feel like a privileged witness able to burrow deeply into an intimate and emotional event. All this is true enough.

Here is a non-obvious answer. Getting paid for the gig raises the bar, creatively, professionally and interpersonally. I am in the middle of these really personal, intimate moments, with people I hardly know, because that's the contract we made. There's no other way in which I would be in that spot. And no other access to the possibility for stunning images.

Wedding photography, really, is better done by women. Yet I appear to have an ability to be a non-threatening male witness with a group of women as they “prep” the bride by, say, taping breasts and dress together so that nothing pops out. Those hours of rising tension before the ceremony are my favorite part of the wedding day. I can feel the buzz of emotions around me, and I love that I am embedded in that swirl.

It is eight hours in (and four to go), at the start of the reception, where I don't know anyone and I feel so completely like the geek with the camera, walking up to strangers to take their photos, that I remind myself, this is a job. This is why I'm getting paid. Buck up and keep at it.

On Flickr is the first look at the Valentine's Day wedding of Susannah and Bill.

How to disappear

About four hours into the day, the bridesmaid turns to me and says, “You're so easy to have around. It's like you're not here. How do you do that?”

Now I have two huge cameras on me, and I'm the only male in the room of a bunch of women getting dressed and ready for a wedding. By the time she asked me that, I had taken around 600 photos of these women.

“Well, I'm comfortable in my own skin. So I'm probably comfortable to be around,” was the answer I came up with at the moment. I've been thinking about that question ever since though, because it's a key piece of my photographic process.

Photography is only a little bit about cameras and lenses and technique. The skills to use that equipment have to be completely fluent and unconscious, of course, but I do this stuff every day. I respond a lot faster than I can think about it, but I'm paying constant attention to the equipment side. If there is backlight, I'll adjust the exposure compensation. If I move environments, indoors to outdoors, the first thing I do is reset my ISO. I'm always watching for compositional possibilities, imagining what the scene would look like if I were seeing it from that direction instead of where I am, and if the image in my mind is better, I'll move myself over there.

That's maybe 20% of the job. The rest is presence. I'm engaged with my subjects, not so much with what they're doing, and not even so much in conversation. I often don't say a lot. I'm just there. Sitting on the floor half the time, or scrunched up against the wall in a really awkward position. Watching what's going on. Sensing how I fit, if I need to give someone near me some space, or if I can be closer. It's that hypersensitive energy thing that I can't really explain, and I couldn't tell you how much is innate and how much is learned behavior. I'm one of those people for whom, if there are small children (or cats) in range, they will soon be crawling over me unbidden.

I'm engaged in what is happening around me in the moment. And I'm engaged, as a witness, to what is happening inside me as I hang with the scene I'm in. It's from that dual attention that I work the photographs. And I have to keep it up for 12 hours. Weddings are about the hardest gigs I do.

When I photograph a wedding, I want it to be from deep inside the event. And afterwards, I need about a day to not talk to anyone before I am fit for company again.

Fan mail

I delivered the wedding photographs last Saturday, and boy, did they gush. I asked Katy to put her thoughts in an email for me. Here's what she said:

"I originally asked a friend of mine who is a professional videographer and amateur to shoot photos of my wedding.  She very artfully and quite forcefully told me that I needed to hire a professional!  She was right - having you shoot our wedding really drove that home.
I was referred to several photographers and looked at their websites.  I noticed that the general feel of wedding photos is very "fuzzy" and romantic.  As soon as I saw your website I thought "Wow. He is taking pictures of the wedding, rather than shooting ideal photographs of people in love (not that these are exclusive!)."

"You told the whole story of our wedding day; from the small moments like Rob's family making a train of coolers to the big moments during the ceremony when light was radiating behind the bride and groom while we exchanged our vows.  Your photos captured some of our friends and family in the best, truest sense of who they are.  They were not merely wedding photos, but great portraits of the people we love.  You had a sequence in which you shot, following the slow build-up of excitement, the tension in the moments just prior, the sacredness of the ceremony and the glory and fun following our vows.  There was a beginning and an end, and a thoroughness of capturing the people, the environment and small details that spoke to the quality of the day; the bus that delivered guests, champagne bottles splayed over ice, flowers co-mingled while being arranged in vases, a homespun sign flapping in the wind.

"Viewed as a whole, your photos have the structure of a story, while each one gives insight into the characters involved and illustrate the feel of the event.  They are a pleasure to view, as they remind my husband, friends and family of the many delightful moments that unfolded throughout the day. Your pictures reveal the depth of caring between him and I,  between us and our friends, and between family members.  And they are simply beautiful."

See more wedding photos in this Flickr set.

What's with that naked man?

Yes, there is a story behind the 20 June Daily Photo.

We're at the outdoor dining table during a wedding weekend that I'm photographing. We're at a remote lodge in the Trinity Alps of northern California. Both the groom and bride are snowboarders and gnarly outdoor types, as are many of their friends at the wedding.

“Turn around, there's a naked man!” says Robin. I take off after him, with the camera. People are cheering, and it's partly directed at me. I'm twice the age of the streaker, and I'm gaining on him.

Apparently, there's a tradition with this group of friends who lived in a house together. Whoever loses whatever game is at play has to do a naked lap around the outside of the house. This naked man lost the horseshoe tournament, which is when I caught up with him lapping the camping area.

The connection is everything

Chase Jarvis has a pair of entries on his blog about connection. Not his name for it, he couches it in terms of conversation and verbal skills. He posits an interesting thought experiment to try (my name for it--I hope to God nobody actually tries this). Go up to someone, without saying a word. Start taking their photograph. Work it, like you would with a subject you're supposed to do a portrait of. But don't say a word.

You can see how tense and awkward this would be. Just imagining it gets the point across.

The point is how necessary good communication skills are to every aspect of photography. The technical minutia of photography is the easy part. It's just a skill set. The crucial element is your ability to connect with the diversity of subjects and clients and situations that a professional photographic life is going to throw at you. The crucial quality is curiosity. About everything. It's why I think the best education for a photographer is not a technical school, but a liberal arts background.

Now Chase is a classic extrovert. He is one of the more energetic and charismatic photographers out there, and he's found his natural niche in advertising photography. I'm a classic introvert, as are a lot of people attracted to photography. I'm a very social introvert however, and I like being around people. I just need recovery time afterwards. The day after the wedding that I shot last weekend, I needed to be alone and not talk to a soul. I grunted to salespeople, trying for as little connection as possible. My photographs were all of haystacks and rocks. I needed to recharge, so that when I picked up Robin at the Spokane airport I'd be happy, and not annoyed, to see her.

My great strength as a photographer is that I can disappear into a situation, and photograph it from within. My entire work life and artistic life is dependent on deep connection and communication with my surroundings, and working from that place. Much of that is verbal, of course, and I'm a pretty verbal person. But it's only one surface to an interaction.   

I actually could imagine Chase's homework assignment working, if one were deeply enough connected for words to be unnecessary. But I know that Chase is talking about more than words.