Eric Murano

Now this wedding was the first of my free weddings. I’ve been looking for couples that weren’t going to hire a photographer and that were willing to have me shoot for free with no expectations. I want to do this to get some deep end experience. It’s also a way to really decide whether I want to do this for a living.

I have shot a wedding solo before but that was for a good friend of mine. That edgy stress wasn’t really there for that wedding and I knew that I needed to experience shooting a wedding with strangers to get the true real life experience.

I won’t go into too much detail about the day but I will say that it was quite stressful. The couple and their families were wonderful! They were extremely understanding and were wonderful to work with. The stress I’m talking about is the thing that most photographers refer to when they say they won’t shoot weddings. Everything goes by really fast and you don’t have a lot of time to set up the shot. You have a short window in which to get that shot right otherwise it’s gone forever.

The church had a nightmare lighting scenario: bright beams sunlight coming in the windows on the east side that was much brighter than the rest of the church. The couple were standing right in one of the beams so half the bride was blown out while the rest of the scene was exposed correctly. I’m not blaming the church though. If I could have gone to the rehearsal the day before then I would have realised the problem and asked the celebrant if he could place the couple steps towards the altar. That would have placed the couple fully in the shade.

The lighting in the church wasn’t to blame for the next shot. When the bride was walking in the church with her father I was shooting from the altar area down the aisle. The background was much brighter than the bride and father so obviously metering off the two people was important to get right. I had spot metering switched on and I was metering off the bride’s face. How ever every shot I took was washed out! I tried frantically to get the shot exposed correctly but the window closed and I had missed the shot.

The church was very small and I felt self concious about walking around and getting in the way. There were no side aisles so if I wanted to move from the back to the front I had to move through the centre aisle, something I hate doing more than once or twice during a ceremony. Again, I would have been prepared for this had I gone to the rehearsal, something I could have done if I was a full time wedding photographer.

One last thing that I regret messing up was not shooting the bride’s grand mother pinning a family heirloom on the bride as she got out of the car. The bride’s mother told me to get that shot because it meant a lot to the grand mother. After the shot of the bride and groom in the car I ran to the church to get in place for the walk down the aisle. I had totally forgotten about the heirloom shot! Luckily the bride’s brother was there and he took the shot as he had brought his SLR. Now I’m glad the shot was taken but if the couple had been paying me for the shoot I wouldn’t have been forgiven for missing what was arguably the most important photo of the day!

This experience has really made me think twice about how I’m approaching this career change into photography. I haven’t completely written off the idea of becoming a photgrapher but I have realised that I need to take it a little slower than I have been. I’ve not been shooting a lot lately because I want to have public liability insurance before doing any more free family portrait shoots. Money has been tight and I’ve vowed not spend anymore money on photography until my current debt has been paid off. While this is responsible budgeting, it has left my photgraphy muscle unexercised. That’s a very bad place to be when shooting a wedding.

For the foreseeable future I’ll be focusing on family portraits and landscapes.  Landscapes because that’s what I love and family portraits because I still want to practice dealing with people.  Plus I’ve grown to like people photography.  I’ve gotten over that initial shyness and am able to, at the very least, tell people how I want them to pose, even if the photos aren’t always the best.

This week I’ve been listening to my back log of the ASX podcast.  I’m not going to be investing any time soon but my house mate is actively investing so the interest has rubbed off on me.

Usually the subject matter on the podcast is about either how to invest (not what to invest in) or why world events like the depression and GFC occur.  It’s an interesting listen even if you’re not interested in investing in the share market.

The people that talk on the podcast have all been in the industry for decades and all, I would assume, are very successful at investing in the share market.  Despite that, no two speakers seem to have the same philosophy on how to invest and why things happen.  You’d expect that since they’re all successful that they’d all share the same view of how things are.

They do have some things in common, but for the most part their advice, their process and their beliefs are different and sometimes contradictory.  One pundit says to prefer shares that don’t pay dividends but use their profit to increase the equity of the business.  Another pundit says not to invest in a company unless it pays dividends.

Now when I listen to each speaker, I resonate with what each says.  I can see where he’s coming from and I have the confidence that his way is a good way to do things.  But if I can agree with two opposing ideas, isn’t that paradoxial?

Yes, it is.  But that’s ok!  I heard a long time ago (from a pundit) that accepting paradox is a useful trait to have.  Most of us, when presented with two contradicting lines of thought, become paralysed and eventually polarised to one of the choices.

I’ve noticed that the photography scene is very much like the investment scene in this regard.  I have read many blog posts, listened to many pod casts and learned from a number of working photographers and what I’ve noticed is that what one photographer says is an essential thing to do, another photographer will say is a waste of time.

One photographer swears by using a light meter and reflectors.  Another doesn’t even own either.

I respect both photographers, immensely.  I see their work and I am blown away but the quality.  Yet they use totally different methods!

Of course, one is a model photographer and the other is a wedding photographer.  You could argue that a wedding photographer needs to travel light and cut down on the toys.  The model photographer needs to more control as agencies have specific imagery in mind.  Wedding client usually don’t have specific ideas, they just want you to capture the moments.  That’s not to say that wedding photographer is of a lesser standard, it just means the focus is on the content of the photographs.  Even so, the standard of wedding photography is quite high!

But most of the time I can’t find reasons why two professional have different views.  It’d be nice to know why their philosophies are different to make it easier to choose which philosophy aligns with my own preferences but it’s not always possible.

So, as I said before, it’s better to just accept that experts have different views and that each one has validity and that there’s probably a good reason for the difference.  It probably does condense down to a common idea but it’s not economical for you to try to find that common idea.

I try to pick small ideas from the experts that suit me.  The biggest thing I got from the wedding photographer I mentioned earlier is “pack light”.  Don’t take so much stuff.  But I still take a reflector with me to shoots even though he doesn’t like using them.  The reason is that the lesson I learned from him was not a specific thing like “reflectors are too big to carry to shoots and don’t add anything”, it was to only take what you need and that you can make fantastic images with less than you think!

The thing I want you to take away from this is when you’re learning about a new craft you’re going to be bombarded with many opposing views from people that use those principles successfully.  Take the  advice that speaks to you and incorporate it into your strategy.

I’ve been super quiet on this blog since my initial post spree after installing Word Press.  I’ve been quite busy with organising my photography business’ website and with teeing up some TFP/CD shoots with the families of friends.  I have been trying to write posts.  I have 5 drafts of varying subjects sitting in the admin section of the site but I just can’t seem to get enough time to finish any of them!

The first bit of news is that I’ve finally uploaded a bare bones website to http://www.ericmuranophotography.com.au/ . It’s only one page at the moment and it’s quite plain, which is on purpose.  I did spent a bit of time on trying out different layouts for the gallery and pricing pages and also for the home page but I was taking too long and I just needed to have a site up.  I’m starting to hand out business cards with the web address so I needed something there so that when the first person goes to the website, they don’t see a ‘Coming Soon’ message.

To display my portfolio photos I bought a licence for Slideshow Pro, which you can find at http://slideshowpro.net/ .  I got this because it does what is called the “Ken Burns Effect”, which is a video that pans and zooms still photographs as a slide show. There’s a stand alone version that you can install straight away and configure using an XML file.  If you have the Flash builder software you can buy the component version.  This allows you to use Slideshow Pro as a component in a Flash application. There’s an add-on called Thumb Grid that I also bought and that lets you arrange the thumbnails in a grid of definable width and height.  I’ll be using that in later revisions of the web site.

The site will evolve from here with the first port of call to install a non-Flash based slide show app.  If a non-Flash enabled web browsers hits the site right now, the user will see a place holder where the slide show should be.  I want the site to work in web browsers that do not have Flash installed.  For that I’ll use a javascript based gallery that has fade transitions but not my beloved Ken Burns Effect.  It’s called Smoothgallery and you can find it at http://smoothgallery.jondesign.net/ .  It’s javascript only so browsers without Flash will render it.

I also want the site to work in web browsers that do not have javascript!  I realise the site won’t have any animations then but that’s ok, at least one image is displayed.  I might even make a smart phone version of the site, the kind that only allows vertical scrolling.  I need to research smart phone web site design first.

The point is that I want the site to be accessible no matter what plug ins or scripting is enabled on the web browser. The ability to work in web browsers with varying functionality is called ‘Graceful Degradation’ and it’s something I think is missing in a lot of photographer’s websites.  A lot of these sites are completely Flash based and that gives the designer of the site a lot of creative control over the content’s animations and placement on the page.  The issue is that the Flash based version of the site is the only version they have.  If you don’t have Flash, you don’t see the site!  I know most people install Flash but I don’t want to force a potential customer to install Flash in order to view my site.  It’s not good practise to place barriers between your site and the people you want to visit it.

I’ll also be adding full galleries to show off my portfolio.  I’ll focus on the family portraits I’m taking but I’ll also have a miscellaneous gallery that holds all the photos that I’m proud of but aren’t family portraits, some what like my deviantart profile.  At some point I might have have a gallery for my landscape photos where you can buy a mounted print of them.

I’m quite excited about this small but significant milestone.  The site will improve by increments and it will be interesting to see if it helps me develop my business!