First Wedding - Ugly venue :-(

[gs.davies]

Hi all, shooting my first wedding on the 30th April. I've been along to check the venue out for light, position, nice places to do the formals and bride/groom shots and rather unfortuanately for me, the church is a rather ugly 1960's building in a lurid creamy yellow colour... Eeek!

Obviously, I can't work miracles given the surroundings (after all, I didn't book the venue!) and I'm planning on trying to keep the money shots nice and tight - there's some open space opposite and I should be able to lose all the distant surroundings with shallow DOF.

Any tips that anyone has for dealing with this situation are gratefully received.

Thanks,
Gary

PS. yes, I've read ALL the advice about shooting weddings, and YES, I'm crazy enough to want to do it

[OsmosisStudios]

black and white. They'll become your best friends if youre having trouble with the background colours.

[wulf]

I'd shoot in colour - you can always tone down the colour or convert to monochrome if necessary. As you mention, a narrow DoF will work wonders (although it does depend a bit on the colours people are wearing).

Wulf

[Stina3246]

The only thing I can add is make sure you shoot in RAW. I did a wedding in a room that was entirely baby poop green. It was aweful and everyone came out looking sea sick. I shot on Auto white balance but was able to change the white balance in post so the skin colors looked much more natural. Good luck!

[gs.davies]

Well, I got the job done, and here's the learning..

1. Check EVERY single piece of kit. The only bit I didn't check, failed. Luckily it was only a radio trigger for the flash and I only really needed it for the details before the wedding. Bounced the flash instead and make a nifty excuse that the brolly wasn't going to give me the light I like.. ;-)
2. Shutter speeds.. The entrance of the Bridesmaids I shot at 1/30th.. Oops. It looks like they were in a hurry. Shutters need to be around 1/60th
3. Yes, that ugly old venue looks much better in black and white, and when processing, play with the red, orange, yellow and green channels
4. The 'brightness' control is a very friendly way of throwing a bit of 'exposure' back into a slightly underexposed shot without introducing a ton of noise into the bargain.
5. The group shots are crowd control, no more and no less. Ban/discourage guests from taking shots until you're done
6. Charge based on the epic amount of post processing you're going to have to do...
7. I've also decided that all other jobs will be delivered at Web Res files only with watermarks. I can't control people getting lousy prints at the supermarket from my beautifully exposed High Res files and then complaining.
8. Following that, I've had some RA-4 prints made on Fujiflex and put them next to the crappy supermarket copies. It's a VERY powerful selling tool. There's margin to be made here. Lots of it.
9. If people don't want high quality prints, they don't need a photog who has invested time and effort in his gear and technique. Anyone with an iphone and instagram can do the same job. For free. A super quality glossy prints wows EVERYONE, all of the time.
10. Don't panic, if you want a shot, ask for it. Oh, and if you've invested in a meter, USE IT, it's no use in your bag when you're trying to expose that hyper-white dress correctly using your camera spot-meter!!

Good luck other wedding shooters embarking on this crazy journey!
GD

Gary Davies Photography