On two jobs I worked with my wedding associate, Jenny and one I did completely alone. I'm pretty confident I did a good job and am getting some nice results. I am basing my style on two main themes; firstly, trying to make the photography tell a story of the entire day from start to finish, with a mix of journo-type and more set-up formal shots and secondly, by being sympathetic to ambient light by using it alone, where I think its good and balancing it with flash where I think it needs some help.
Two jobs were licenced venues and the third was a church wedding. Receptions varied from marquees in a country manor house grounds to a seaside hotel and a golf club. One was an incredibly passionate religious service, the others were purely civil services.
I found that my camera handling and general understanding of exposure, flash and camera limitations got me out of most tricky situations or let me adapt fast when things suddenly changed. I also placed more trust and faith in my D300 on these jobs, knowing that I only had one full frame body, so couldn't shoot exclusively with that and I was very pleasantly surprised by its performance. My chosen lenses also worked well and I was very impressed by my first professional outings with Sigma's 85mm f1.4 as well as my regular wedding workhorses, being Nikon's 14-24, 24-70 and 70-200 f2.8 zooms. The Nikon flash units also sparked faultlessly with no delays caused by overheating or recycling times. I am convinced that much of the time when problems are experienced, photographers are simply taking too many images and/or making the guns work too hard by not properly considering the ambient lighting.
I will report much more fully on each when I get the time as I still have huge amounts of editing to do. In the meantime, here is one shot from each job that is perhaps less conventional.
