It’s official, I am now an experienced wedding photographer. What that means? Is open to interpretation.

I’ve been to a ton of weddings, which is usual for anyone in their twenties. I know the whole rig-amoral of ceremonies. Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran… the whole gamut. Just based on religion, I could probably give you within a 5 minute window how long the ceremony is going to last.

But being a photographer at a wedding opened a totally new perspective.

It felt like a game of Duck Hunt, gun ready, finger on the trigger, shoot the duck. The one thing I worried about was setting up my shot at the right time. I tried not to leave my finger on the trigger and just shoot a barrage of machine gun shots.

And I wasn’t worried about posing people. I did a few posed shots, but I left it to the subjects to pose themselves. It seems to be a popular perspective with wedding photographers to pose couples in unnatural poses. “Look at him in deep emotion” – translation: “This is your ball and chain for the rest of your life.”

It’s just not my style. Luckily, the couple had requested nothing like that. They’re also good friends of the Shoo’s and had seen a lot of my photography on Flickr and knew this was my first wedding.

Now please don’t get the opinion that I know (or even think I know) everything about wedding photography; or even photography at that. Far from it. There are plenty of pro’s out there. I am just you’re amateur photog who borrowed some nice lenses to take some pretty pictures for a day.

Of course I learned a ton from this experience. I had some great shots that would have been even better if my lighting was better. RAW editing fixed a lot of under-exposed photos. Shooting people with squinty eyes in the sun is also a big no-no.

I had a great time. I won’t be open Shoo’s Wedding Photography Studio tomorrow. But who knows?

I wonder if we can get Buddy and Clancy into bride and groom doggy costumes?

A few weeks ago, if the green foliage didn’t give it away, I took some family portraits for our neighbors. I haven’t had all the time in the world the last few weeks with house projects, work, and extracurricular activities to finish editing.

And to be honest, at first I thought everything was out of focus and the color was terrible. All the photos originally came out looking very pale because of the green background. So I had some apprehension digging in and seeing what mistakes I made.

But after further inspection, I found some really great photos. It was just the color and cropping that needed tweaking. And I shot everything in RAW, so it was really easy to go back and change the temperature and exposure of the photos.

I guess the hardest part was working with a 2 and 3 year old. Man, they keep you on your toes.

The fireworks downtown may have not been the greatest, but the Motor Boat Club had a great show. Above are some of very first shots of fireworks with my SLR.

It took some practice, but I dialed into 800ISO, 3.5 sec exposure with a f/11. Of course I also used a tripod or everything would have been scribble lines.