Huey’s Wedding

First a word of wisdom from the Proverbs of James (this has nothing to do with the wedding by the way):

What I did today I shall blog later.
What I did yesterday I shall blog now.
What you call procrastination I call a strategic delay.

Let’s rewind to June 11th, 2004…  oops, I mean 2005.  It was Huey and Debbie’s wedding day and at their request, I became one of their photographers.  My scope was limited to taking pictures during reception when they go around the tables.  Cutting of the cake and everything else will be covered by the main photographer.

A couple weeks later, Huey amended that plan to include pictures of everyone who attended the wedding, but not necessarily mug shots.  Uh huh… as if I can keep track of anyone, seeing that I remembering names poses quite a challenge already.  I ended up just asking people for their mug shot as they come in anyway.  Despite my systematic approach in blockading the door with the effectiveness of a police line, I still noticed some undercover ninjas managing to sneak behind me.  Anyway, here’s one of the mug shots:

Then the wedding party decended down the stairs.  I noticed Pastor Sam checking his tie in the mirror, and I instinctively held up my camera and snapped.  In trying to capture the moment, I ended up with camera settings as far off as the moon is to the sun, so I ended up with:

Thankfully I shot in RAW, so I was able to salvage the picture with a little digital magic:

Amazed?  So was I.

Anyway, then came the ceremony.  The backlit background and the vicinity of the first row of seats offered no room for photographs without also capturing some audience member’s mesmerizing widow’s peak.  I didn’t want to be a copycat and duplicate the main photographer’s work, so I decided to crawl bootcamp style under the bar and to the left side, where I was able to capture this shot:

Then as I squatted in the front row, someone must have decided to head to the john because I saw a basket sitting on the floor with no one around.  I thought it would be neat to take a picture of this:

After the ceremony and at the announcement of food, the vultures headed upstairs for this:

Hmm, I’m salivating even looking at that picture.  Anyway, while waiting we decided to take some Happyfish pictures.  We started with the all-girl pic, but there was a disturbance in the force…

After settling down, we were able to take some nice, classy group photos such as:

Then we headed down for the reception.  That’s when I realized the main photographer was taking off before the cake cutting!  Oh oh, flashback to the nightmare of red-eyed monsters.  Anyway, after taking over main photographer duties, I first went around the tables with Huey and Debbie.  Of course, no reception is complete without some wacky games, like eat the ends of the noodle until the lips touch:

I have no idea what that dude in the middle is doing… practicing or catching his breath?

Afterwards came the cake cutting.  Thankfully there were no red-eyed monsters, but we did get one big, hungry cake monster who gobbled the cake in one byte!

Then after some speeches and toasts, Debbie changed and it was time to make an exit.  The guests formed two lines.  This is great, I thought, because I can try experimenting with various shots and angles and see what happens.  Yeah right. Before I finished my thought, Huey had already carried Debbie in his arms and darted toward me at 120 MPH!  If he had gone any faster, his head would have speared straight into my lens!  Thankfully I was able to pull off a couple of shots before Huey was literally 2 inches in front of me:

Then they were married and lived happily ever after.  Hmm, where have we heard that before recently?

So, being a wedding photographer isn’t as easy as it seems.  It’s fun, though, especially when you have the privilege of bossing people around by saying lines such as “Official Photographer Business! Ma’am, please step aside, thank you!”  Then you just flash your badge of authority–the overweighted camera–and all is forgiven.

For more information regarding this topic, in the form of pictures, you can visit The Happyfish Picture Gallery.