Here is the ceremony from Dara and Jedd’s wedding. It was really an awesome looking location overlooking the water by the site. Nicely decorated like from a magazine. One of the nicest ceremony locations I have ever shot at.
That being said, I was really freaked out when I got there and saw what it looked like. Outdoors, but everyone is underneath a roof, so it’s basically like shooting in front of a super-massive window. Since the camera is going to be shooting looking directly into a strong light source it’s hard to find a good balance between the brightness of the view and the shadows that everyone is going to be standing in. Plus the bride and groom are nearest to the edge of the balcony, so they are at the highest risk of being overexposed. I spent so much time just trying to find a nice compromise with the light that I broke from the photos early to make sure I got it right, which I did. It was a really small space and I basically could only position the 2 cameras in two specific places, so it wasn’t like I can just pick a spot to set up where the angle was such that not a lot of light was coming into the camera.
When everyone walked down the aisle I was literally hanging over the side of the balcony in order to get a good shot where I did not have to worry about the photographers getting in the shot. I have hung over so many places to get shots while doing weddings that sometimes I really feel as though I should become a stuntman.
Another issue involved in the ceremony was that it was raining all morning, so there was a lot of condensation in the air. After everyone walked down the aisle I then zoomed on over to put the camera on the tripod on the other side of the balcony, but all the moisture in the air expanded the base of the mount and made it hard to fit the camera on correctly because the base has some rubber on it. I had the other camera wide to catch everything fortunately, but it made it just made editing everything a lot harder than usual because it then became a matter of trying to back-time stuff and what can be taken out early on to make it fit in order to not have the same shot up for too long a time.