A&B Wedding: Gray, TN | Boon Vong

This lovely wedding was out in the country in a small town in Tennessee

A 1940 Ford belonging to the nice owner of the property. Had quite a history to it, and made for a great "get away" car for the bride and groom.

Sunlight coming through the clouds finally during the setup. All morning had been overcast, which is a photographer's delight.

Many people don't know I typically carry 3 cameras at the same time for weddings. For the prep shots I worked with my usual 50mm Canon+Nikon, Nikon 105mm Micro VR, and the 35mm on the Fuji X100. I could see myself shooting with this all Prime set all day for some projects. These images show the different visual signatures, and color rendering of the different setups. This image is the Canon setup.

Nikon setup

Fuji X100 with the Astia image profile

Inside the house, the photos had a nice warm color cast about them, so I didn't bother tweaking the white balance to be "correct"

Fuji X100, Not a serious shot, I'm still "testing" the X100 right now, seeing how it fits in my gear bag as option #3

Fuji X100

Fuji X100

Fuji X100, For this image I color corrected it to give a more warm autumnal feeling. The X100 chose a more cool, bluish cast with the auto white balance. At the moment I would have to disagree with the rest of the photographers out there claiming the Auto WB is flawless. I do agree that one can just shoot jpeg with this camera. I didn't bring the Olympus E-PL1 with me, I still think that it produces the best jpegs out of camera.

For this Canon+Nikon image I left the WB to the less warm choice made by Auto WB. By my recollection the pastel colors and tone relationships of the various materials was actually like this.

Many also don't know that my main A camera is manual focus. The following two images are "accidents" and the type of wedding images that I prefer personally.

Regardless of how I feel about an image's spontaneous artistic value, I doubt many, if any, brides would be happy with these. I think they are interesting because it isn't often that digital comes close to the film, or "Lomography" aesthetic.

I also shoot 5D with a Steadicam Merlin, to further add to my aching bones. 🙂 It is awkward shooting photos with it, in between video, but it can be done.

It is even more awkward to shoot vertical orientation photos while the camera is still on the Steadicam Merlin. Video is nice and all, but I always opt for a still image first to summarize a moment.

The setting sun was especially pretty, with a cotton candy sky. Had the timing been better, and the grounds a bit higher, it would have made for some incredible formal shots. But, work with what you are given. This cinema quality light lasted maybe 4 minutes.

I also take random shots off camera. It's always interesting to see moments before everyone puts on the pose.

Sunset behind the cake

I didn't have a tripod, so this long exposure of 8 seconds was taken with the camera propped up on two chairs

It was getting late in the evening and we realized we didn't get any shots with the car. With virtually no ambient light around, I used an idea I had before, blasting the car from behind with another car's high beams