Re: [Leica] Wedding Photography

[Ted Grant <tedgrant@shaw.ca>]

Hi Justin,
Hopefully you realized much of that was tongue in cheek or a grouping of
worse case scenarios. :-)

Yep over a very long career I've shot lots of them, going back to the days
of using 4X5 Speed Graphic, big Multi-blitz strobes on every shot and two
weddings a day! :-(

One in the morning, usually a Catholic, and a Protestant in the afternoon.
On each we carried 4, 12  X 4X5 sheet film magazines, in other words 48
sheets of film and that was it,  as they were  programmed for an X number of
photo situations that fit in a pre-ordered size album. However, the company
I worked for at the time cornered the wedding market for the city and on
some Saturdays there were 20 photographers shooting weddings for the same
company.

I hated everyone as they were on Saturdays and what I really wanted to shoot
was the local pro football games. ;-) Or other sporting events.

When I went on my own that's when the "35mm shoot it like I was doing a
photo documentary" began and many of those worked extremely well. Although I
still didn't want to do weddings, so I thought I'd scare them off by asking
for cash, and I'd give them all the film at the end of the day. Shoot over,
have a nice Honeymoon, out of my face.

The charge for that was $1000. which at the time was a big chunk of cash,
not by today's standards though.  I figured that would scare them off, nope
only more asked! So I upped it to $2000. and the same "here's the film give
me my money" deal.  Slowed down the requests, but they still kept
coming..... So it went to $3000.00 same deal, I shoot it my way, you pay
cash, I give film and they were out of my face. Yep and there were a few.

And I shot just as you describe, available light, is there any other? And
when I got to a point where I really didn't want to do them at all, I asked
ridiculously high fees and it finally got them out of my face.

The other side of this is, I've been hired at times to document a wedding in
B&W while a wedding commercial guy did his thing and I shot everything that
went on throughout the complete day. Did I have fun? Did I get some neat and
completely different photographs of the bridal party and day? You betcha!
And without one iota of mental stress as I was flying it as what I am, a
photojournalist and it was great without any of the wedding photog
responsibilities.

There are guys and gals who shoot weddings, love it, do beautiful
photography, make a ton of money and it's good on them. However, they'd
probably hate doing the kind of assignments I do in various parts of the
world. :-)

But it's to each his own, as that's one of the wonderful things about
photography, there's a discipline for each of us with our picture taking
machines allowing to do what we love with great passion.... being a
photographer. :-)
ted




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