Wedding

Anyone who knows me or has read my blog will now that I do the occasional wedding, and that whilst I grumble about it I secretly enjoy creating photographs that I know will have deep meaning to someone for many years to come.  It is easy to be dismissive of Wedding Photography as a genre, but it is where many of us can make a living with a camera and lets be honest these are photographs that will be seen more and shown more that any art work that we will ever do.  Conversely there is a repetition to the process, the day follows a pattern as do the photos, and convention demands that I take certain shots.  There is a little space for self expression but not very much.

Once in a while, though, something special comes along that brings a new challenge and sense of achievement.  In October last year this was presented by the wedding of my sister in law, Irene to Donal.  They had first met many years ago when Irene was a student and Donal a history professor at the American University in Munich.  My wife even took classes with him.  A few years ago they bumped into one another again, a conversation became a romance that resulted in a wedding.  Heidi and I were astonished, we had Irene down as the resolutely independent single gal. However, there is someone out there for all of us, it is simply that sometimes the wait is longer than expected.

As the family photographer I was immediately on point with instructions to enjoy the day as well as take photos.  Hmmm, I have heard that before a few times, doesn't normally work, but this time it did.  We had a great day.

The wedding came with a few challenges.  First of all, although both live in Munich they are US citizens and that makes getting married in Germany very complex.  After a few months of creative bureaucratic blocking by the German authorities we all headed to Copenhagen, the Las Vegas of Europe, a city that only asks for a birth certificate and passport.  Irene and Donal were going to be married in the city registry office which does not sound like a lot, but we were in for a surprise.  This presented a couple of challenges for me.  Firstly registry office weddings are very short and there is a very limited time to take photos.  The other was created by the incredibly low light in the wedding room.  This meant working quickly in very tough lighting conditions.  Finally they wanted a relaxing day and not to be bugged all the time by a flash gun going off.

The key here was to go with the flow, grab shots as and when I could, almost like street photography.  Balancing flash and ambient light was harder than usual, too much flash and I would blow everything out, too little and I risked hand shake in the images.  Movement from dark to light also challenged my maximum shutter speed on the flash.  I lost a few images to over exposure when the camera stuck at 1/200 to sync with the flash - oh for a decent auto ISO on a Canon DSLR!

But it worked in the end and I ended up with a record of a very special day.

The wedding chapel was a marvelous space, brightly painted with Viking sagas, a celebration of Danish culture and history.  This is the waiting room

and a shot taken from the balcony of the chapel.

The wedding party, a very small group, Irene is second from the left, Donal on the far right.  On the left os my wife Heidi, the other couple are Donal's son and his fiance (they are marrying this week, fortunately not wanting any photos).

We only had 20 minutes or so, so I got busy and captured a few "moments".

Soon the official arrived, looking very solemn in her robes, but a really cheerful happy person who added to the experience.

As mentioned above the wedding room was dark, very dark, but so richly decorated.  Over doing the flash would have been a crime, this was not easy photography.

The only negative about the experience was the narrow spiral staircase that acted as the only access to the wedding room.  It was an old building, but there was no accommodation for any form of disability - we joked it was some kind of Viking test of resolve to climb the stairs, but it was genuinely difficult to go up and down.

These two capture their joy, it was simply a great day

Donal and son

I had to!  I saw the truck coming and quickly yelled at the couple to pose.  They were confused but obeyed, then looked over their shoulders and laughed.  It was a day that definitely called for a Carlsberg - well in truth anything but that watery crap, but anyway the motif was apt.

I had a chance for a few formals, not too many - they insisted on not being too formal!

I always create a book from my weddings and if possible like to have a shot of the rings covering the bouquet.  To soften the image I dropped the clarity slider in Lightroom way down, one of the few occasions when reducing sharpness works

A great day and a record that I know for sure will be cherished for many years to come.

Honestly, I have had enough of weddings now.  I am reasonably proficient as a wedding photographer, not particularly special, but able to do the job required.  I could be a lot better, but that would require doing more than my current 1 or 2 events a year and really upping my game.  My issue is not that I don't enjoy doing the work, I am just not learning very much any more.  If anyone asks I will say yes as I like to help my friends out, but I will not actively seek this type of work.  It is no bad thing to have a decent wedding portfolio, there is money to be made (I still have yet to charge), but it is a huge time sync, especially when already working a tough job.

The 5th Test

With the decision made to abandon the remaining projects to there own banality, I am still interested in making imagery that support s my development as a photographer and explores social documentary from different angles.  This short study is far from an in depth sociological investigation but it is an attempt to look at a conventional subject from a slightly different angle.

A week ago I was lucky enough to be invited to the 3rd day of the 5th Ashes Test between England and Australia.  Apart from being my first visit to an international cricket match, this was my first exposure to cricket beyond bashing at a tennis ball as a kid.  I enjoy watching a little cricket on the TV, dipping in and out of a test series, but am not a cricket fan in any sense of the word.  However, an Ashes Test Match was something special and I was very honored that my brother offered me one of two tickets he has managed to obtain - much to the disappointment of many of his friends.

The tickets were rather special as were provided by someone who worked at the Oval.  The result was that we were in a special section, adjacent to the members pavilion, about 10 feet from the playing field, and 3 seats away from the steps that the players used.  Just in front of us were the benches used by the substitute fielders and the big lenses of the professional photographers.  For me this was a day out, watch some cricket, drink a beer or two, and lounge in the sun.  I did not really expect it to be a photo op, but our location transformed that idea.  I took my OM-D and two lenses, a 12-35mm f/2.8 and a 45-175mm consumer telezoom.  This gave me a range of 24-350mm in real money, not wide enough to capture the whole ground and not long enough to really shoot the action, but a good compromise on weight versus quality.

If anyone reading this is a cricket fan they will know the story of the day, the slowest play in over 50 years of test match history.  Australia started with a massive total and it seemed that England had decided there was no way they were going to win and so set out to avoid losing.  This meant playing slowly and defensively, paint drying would be an apt metaphor, some of the papers suggested going to watch tin cans rust would have been more entertaining.  BUT, I still thoroughly enjoyed the day, the atmosphere was amazing and the sense of being at a major event lent an excitement that the cricket could not take away.  Jeremy and I had stayed up late the night before and so were not minded to drink too much, although that was not the case for the mostly white, male, middle-aged, and generally rather overweight crowd.  This competed with the Oktoberfest for sheer volume of alcohol put away.  

The net result was that I had far more time to take photographs than I had expected and so I started thinking about how I would document the day.  This yielded a good many photos from which I have selected 15 that tell the story of the day.

The first eye opener was taking our seats at 11am and noticing that virtually everyone was already drinking.  I generally have a rule of "sun past the yardarm" or something like that, but my brother insisted that we get into the spirit of things, so pints were duly purchased.  We had 3 during the morning session.  Which I thought was a lot, but not compared to our fellow spectators.

It was marvelous to be so close to the teams as they came and went, here the English batsmen head for the field - this is the most animated they ever appeared.

I really needed a wider lens to capture the sense of the place, but was able to capture a few iconic views, this is my favorite, the gasometer.  Note the guy on the roof line to the right. I have always loved the strange juxtapositions that city photography can generate.

At the other end of the scale, my zoom was not really long enough, most of the pros had either 500mm f/4s or 400mm f/2.8s with extenders.  The other issue I had was that at the long end I was shooting f/5.6 which on an m4/3 camera is more like an f/8 visually.  Thus it was hard to really do much action photography, so I concentrated mostly on trying to capture the sense of the place and the structure of the game.  It was also fortunate that the day was quite bright and so f/5.6 yielded a fast enough shutter speed.

I was quite impressed by what the camera could do with a cheap lens, the pros were using gear 20-30 times more expensive than I was, but I did OK - not great, but OK.

There was not much action, so a big tele probably would not have yielded very much anyway.  However, what was interesting was the periods during the 3rd umpire's decisions, the Aussies clustering together, whilst the English batsmen fretted.

Getting out does hurt, KP was not a happy bunny as he walked towards the pavilion.  It really is a long way to walk under the gaze of 18,000 people.

Aside from the actual play one thing I had not anticipated was how much time the substitutes spent on the field of play.  Both of the Aussies actually fielded for a time, toilet breaks I think.  However, they also ran onto the field frequently with drinks and other supplies.  One aspect of where we were sitting was that we could actually hear them chatting with each other and throwing gentle insults back and forth with the English bench.  Interestingly it really was a bench, a bog standard garden variety wooden bench.

Another aspect of the game that came as a surprise was how much activity there was additional to the cricket.  Every break had some form of on pitch entertainment, here Kevin Peterson is being interviewed during some form of award for scoring many runs - well not today.  Above and behind him are the corporate suites, rarely full, guess the free champagne and food was far more interesting than what was happening on the pitch.

There were a lot of cameras, I lost count of the TV crews working the event.

A rather interesting contrast was formed by an artist painting the scene, perhaps a reminder of the gentler times, when cricket was not such a media industry.

Later in the afternoon I was beginning to regret not bringing something to read as the play became progressively more tedious and the crowd turned to better things.  I suspect she was brought along by her increasingly drunk husband and brought her own entertainment.

Towards the end of the day the crowd became very bored and started to make their own fun.  This largely consisted of creating snakes.  A lady just down from me and working for Surrey, explained that this was banned and the stewards had been instructed to stop such behavior, which she seemed to think was a shame.  In the end they gave up, too many fans were involved in the game.  To a continual chant of "Feed the Snake", thousands of empty plastic beer glasses were stacked in towers and then connected into a snake.  This one is the longest I saw.  Apparently a long standing tradition at the ground.

Finally it was over and we wandered through the ground a little.  Everywhere we looked was the debris of an 8 hour drinking session.

A great day out, loads of fun, and in the end an opportunity to practice a little alternative social documentary.  Sport is not my thing, personally or photographically, but large events of this type always offer up a different view of society.  Technically I continue to be impressed with what mirrorless system cameras can do, I would have taken better photos with my DSLR, but I would never have taken it with me...

I have varied the crops on these images quite strongly, thinking not just about the subject but about the picture.  I am increasingly finding that I prefer a more square frame to the 3/2 of a DSLR, the 4/3 framing of this system is pretty close to ideal for me.

I cannot really intellectualize about these photographs, there is no hidden meaning, except perhaps a simple comment on the excessive drinking of the 40 something middle class male, and for a change not this 40 something middle class male.

Sema & Ermis

Yet another blog post that is not actually about my course, although this one is firmly within the genre of social documentary.  Another event, not a wedding, but honestly without knowing I would have struggled to tell. Back in April, our next door neighbour asked whether we would be interested in photographing an engagement party for a Turkish  friend of hers in June.  I agreed, not really thinking too hard about what I was agreeing to.  Well, I now know a lot more about the engagement rituals of the Turkish community.

From the first meeting with the couple, it was obvious that Sema had a very clear idea about what she wanted in terms of photography.  It was actually quite refreshing to have someone provide examples of photographs that she liked, enabling Heidi and I to plan our work with them.  Too often people we photograph are very vague, sentences such as "you know best" or worse, we want  you to "enjoy yourself, just take a few shots, we'll be happy", don't help.  I know damn well that they want romantic beautiful images that they can share with friends and family and ultimately their children.  I value the few photographs I have of my parents 1960's wedding, who wouldn't.  Sema was very clear and Ermis, well, he was clearly going to do whatever he was told to do.  Perfect!

Because we knew exactly what she wanted I could plan my equipment and also the location we would use.  The plan was to meet at 1pm for a series of romantic images of the couple, then move onto Sema's home where the actual engagement would take place. And then the coffee, the party, the dancing, the ribbon, the jewelry, the cake, oh boy, we had no idea what was actually going to happen, but we were well prepared.  The day was dull, rain forecast for the whole day and getting heavier as the day went on.  Our original location was scrapped as it offered no cover, so a couples of texts set up plan B, the Munich Hofgarten, a place I was familiar with from its use as the location for Assignment 3 in DPP.

The dull grey skies and rain actually proved to be a blessing as it eliminated the shadows and yielded a balanced diffused light.  We had a large and colourful golfing umbrella to act as a prop and for additional shelter.  The garden was ideal offering lots of covered spaces and heavy tree cover.  The only problem with the weather was that it was cold and after about 90 minutes Sema was too cold to continue with the shoot, but we had enough by then.  I took a pretty standard wedding load out, 16-35, 24-70, and 70-200 f/2.8 zooms, plus my 135 f/2 for the more dreamy look.  A couple of speedlights and my 5D2 and I was ready to go, although a sore shoulder would be the price for all that kit and spare batteries, etc.  As always Heidi had my backup 7D with a 17-55 f/2.8 and acted as second shooter.  We have an understanding.

The day then started with a fairly standard portraiture shoot, an attractive couple letting me practice my skills on them in exchange for some free photography, happy with the results, but nothing particularly remarkable

Along the way we had some fun with the umbrella

Nice images, but could belong to any culture, however, the next shot is very specific to Islamic culture:

The blue glass object is a Nazar, a talisman against the evil eye. The couple wanted to be photographed under it to bring them luck and protection. This created some logistical challenges, resolved through the use of the umbrella and one of my shoelaces.  I took a variety of images, this one worked for me as it suggests rather than illustrates. As the day progressed I found many Nazar's attached to gifts and worn as jewelry.

Apart from the rather conventional portraits so far Sema wanted something a little more romantic and different.  Heidi helped to create a few poses and then I processed the images along different colour lines.  First of all I tried a little desaturation (well quite a lot actually):

The next one would be my choice from the set, a moment in time, not really posed, they were just larking around a little.  Focus is poor and I have gone for a rather traditional black and white process, a strong vignette framing the couple.

The next one, well this is a case of the customer is always right, even when they are not actually paying.  I did not explain that such methods could get me disbarred for life from the fraternity of serious photographers...

And all done in Lightroom, no recourse to the evil Photoshop CS

OK, that was the portraiture, a nice set, lot's of fun to make, but not saying a great deal about their culture.

This changed when we got to her parents home:

An Aunt from Istanbul made us very welcome with cheese filled pastries and small glasses of sweet tea.  We felt a little odd as we were strangers in the house and there to do a job, but they were so hospitable and friendly - we rapidly became a part of the celebration.

At this stage we were just Sema and her relations.  After an hour had passed Ermis and his family arrived, now the formal part of the day would begin.  We were about to witness and record a series of rituals that are centuries old.  We gathered that Sema and her family were pretty relaxed about doing things the formal way, however, Ermis's family wanted things done properly and so they were...

We had done some research, and so had a basic understanding of what would happen, but it was to be an interesting day.  First of all Ermis's relatives gathered in the living room for coffee.  At this stage there was a palpable tension in the air, everyonewas being terribly polite and reserved.

Coffee - this was the first and perhaps the best ritual of the day.  Traditional Turkish coffee is strong and thick, not for the faint hearted and especially not if you are the future groom.  Note in the photo below the one cup that is a different colour.

The key here is that Ermis must take the cup and drink it, enjoy it and finish it. the challenge is that in addition to coffee there is salt, pepper, chilli, pretty much whatever Sema wanted to add.  In fact she was being quite sparing, her friends upped the ante - he really needed a spoon to eat this coffee.  Anyway, this is a traditional test of his tolerance and love for his wife, whether she can cook or not.

Then came the first major moment of the day.  I think it is Ermis's uncle, not his father, but this was hard to follow as my Turkish is non-existent and my German poor.  In any case her father was formally asked for his permission that his daughter would become part of Ermis's family.  This was a very emotional moment and marked the point at which the couple became betrothed to one another.  The giving of a ring (first piece of jewelry) sealed the relationship.

At this point the tension lifted and everyone started to hug, Mother's ran from the room in tears and the first step on the journey to marriage had been made.  Normally this would then be followed by some time before the next step of actual engagement.  Yes, we were a little confused, we thought they were now engaged, but no, that would come later.

Many presents also arrived, primarily in the shape of food:

Next we all headed off to the local catholic church hall for the evening party.  Heidi and I thought we would be with them from 1 until around 6, no chance, this was quite an event.  We really had not idea, we just went with the flow.

A table had been laid out at the church hall for the couple facing the guests.  No alcohol at this stage and in fact the only alcohol present was a bottle of champagne that the couple shared.  They were following Islamic principles, but not too rigidly as we shall see.

I have also noticed that any Turkish event will somehow incorporate Ataturk the father of the nation.

Back to my comment about Islam, no alcohol OK, but those heels and skirts, these girls might be Muslim, but that was not going to get in the way of partying.  I found this all very interesting and quite refreshing, Islam is too often portrayed as rigid and cruel, the truth is far away.

Everyone then sat down to eat which we declined as we prefer to work and then eat later. The food really looked good, but one you sit down to eat it becomes hard to take photos, I have tried this before and it is frustrating to keep getting up and down.  However, big mistake, at this stage we thought we would go out for dinner when we were finished with the photographs, at 10pm we stopped in a gas station to grab two frozen pizzas on the way home.

Next came a series of group photos, dozens of them, every possible combination of family and friends.  Heidi had been warned that Turkish people love to be photographed, but oh boy...

The main event was, however, finally drawing near, the actual engagement.  Two rings were joined by a ribbon, these are the actual engagement rings.  The couple will put them on and then after some jollity and bribery someone will step up and cut the ribbon.  This then marks the point of engagement.  Later in the evening the ribbon is cut into strips and shared among the single girls in the room.  Whoever selects the "short straw" will be next to be married.

And I did mention, jewelry, well we have seen 3 rings now, then came the serious stuff, another fabulous jeweled ring and ropes of pearls.

Next, the dancing, starting with Sema and Ermis.

As I said at the beginning, I would have thought this was a wedding, if I had not been told quite emphatically that it was an engagement.  If you are wondering, well the wedding is next year and the invitation list is expected to be roughly 700 people, not sure we will be back for that one, not sure I want to or am even capable.

However, it will probably be quite a blast, the dancing was fantastic, the music loud and exotic.

It was now nearing 9pm, Heidi and I had been on the go since 12 and were getting a little weary.  We approached the couple to sign out and wish them well.  Cake, the cake, you must take photographs of the cake.  Actually two cakes, each of which took over a day to create.

Like I said, the wedding is going to be quite something...

What a day, really enjoyed it, a wonderful insight into a different culture hosted by a lovely and very hospitable family. The wedding genre is not fashionable among "serious" photographers, but this really is social documentary, a study of people forming society, a merger of two families.  This would have made a good day in the life of, however, it is not easy to integrate these events into the course, they happen when they happen and not always at a convenient time for me.

Sema & Ermis by Shaun Clarke | Make Your Own Book