Welcome to Gotshoo?, proudly serving the inter-tubes since 2000. Gotshoo? is the personal of Chris Scheufele, that's me. I live in Springfield, Illinois with my wife and two dogs, Buddy and Clancy. I work during the day as an IT consultant and play at night with a freelance company called After Hours Development, and put together cool projects like Spfldbloggers.com
When I am not tinkering with computers and code, I am taking pictures trying to keep up with my daily photo, or riding my bike, or playing with the dogs.
A majority of the Shoo milestones have made it to the blog in one way or another. Somehow, I totally ignored publishing anything here on our 2nd anniversary which was 11/10. It’s been a busy weekend and I did send her a message on Twitter and Facebook, so I think I covered the bases for social media.
Happy 2 year anniversary to my beautiful wife!
The flowers I sent Mrs Shoo.
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?
Congrats to Dave & Ericka, thanks for letting me photograph your wedding.
Yesterday I attended two weddings. One was DJ’d by a guy, good friend of the Shoo’s actually, that was completely digital. The other was DJ that was completely analog, they had about 4 large cases of CD’s.
As a computer guy, I was amazed by the digital guy’s setup. One laptop, an external Western Digital hard drive with all his music, USB Mix board running to the amplifier to two large speakers, he also had projecter with screen to project images and videos corresponding to the music. I believe he was using PCDJ to control all of the music and video playback.
It was a great setup.
The bride forgot to include “first dance” song on the list of songs they wanted to be played at the wedding. It was actually a pretty obscure song. All the DJ had to do was connect his phone to his laptop and bridge a connection to the internet. In a matter of ten minutes he had the song ready to play.
Man, I love technology.
The other wedding I attended was completely analog. If someone wanted a song, they either had it or you were out of luck. Which was disappointing because the groom’s parents were hard core Rolling Stones fans. Not one Rolling Stones song was played… not even a “Start Me Up,” more like a “Shut Me Down.”
If you’re interested in the digital guy, check out DJ Bando Productions.
As of the 10th, Mrs. Shoo and I have been married for a whooooole year, and what a year it has been!
I could list out the usual first year trials that a couple goes through, but it would be easier to say that we’re still happy and in luuuv.
A look back on memory lane:
More photos from Will & Jessie’s wedding. Click the blog title to see more.
2008 has been a full year for weddings. Wonder what 2009 will bring?
At the wedding, I got to do a little impromptu photo session with friends that I hadn’t seen in years. If you recognize them, starting from the left, Brian (engaged and finishing school at SIUC), Keith (Sr. in HS), and Neal (teaching at a college in Boulder).
It was great seeing these guys after such a long time.
More wedding photos coming, Flickr isn’t playing nice right now and it’s time for bed.
