Early afternoon in Meligala, the bride drives around the church three times as the custom commands. The groom is waiting patiently in front of the church with a bunch of flowers in his hands. The bride arrives, the car stops and through the open window the smiling face of the bride appears. The wedding ceremony will start in a few moments. Photographers and guests are waiting for the meeting out of the church and they applause for the couple. They enter the church and the mystery begins. The couple is happy and it is showing as they keep smiling and whispering. Their smile makes everyone else smile too.
I will not bother you with many details about the shooting. I was a guest and I saw things with less anxiety and nervousness. There was a crew of 3 for video and photographs, all well equipped but with a photo set-up I have came across only once before. The photographer had one Nikon at each side with "spider" clips, one Telephoto for the portraits and one for wide angle and standard shots (I guess that was a Tamron AF SP 17-50mm f/2.8, but I didn't see it very well). He used NO FLASHGUNS, but just 2 continuous diffused lights on high stands (at about 3200 Kelvin if I had to guess). There were 2 people for video shooting with HD video cameras and one of them used a rail for low angles!
The photographer was never standing still, always looking for new angles, good angles, every angle he could think of. I think he really did a good job, but I only saw two samples (which were very good and atmospheric).
What I followed was the old advice for on-board, one-flash shooting with an ISO boosting of up to 800 with flash and up to 1600 without. The church was really big and the ISO came short without flash, needing some photos to be boosted up to 3 stops, not a really good post process. I took my test shots without flash anyway and tried to balance the light later, but I am not very happy with it.
And these are the next top models of the family. Can you hear me Vasiliki?
