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Lesson Info

Shoot: Reception Details

so here we are right we're at the reception in what is the first thing you know first of all let's talk about what has to happen when we're here anything the couple spent money on is something that has to be photographed establishing shot again so a wide shot of the room who what when where why right where are we what are the details in the room so to your point establishing shot big shot of the room and then what do you do in a soon as you walk in the room so is a walk in the room I find the deejay because I want to get in sync on the timeline for the rest of the evening because you know sometimes even though we had that conversation with the bride she may not have had the conversation with the teams d j and so I just want to make sure he's aware that I'm here in the timeline that I have compare it with hiss and that way we're on good terms and he'll wait till he sees me for any big event to happen hang tight man is my buddy yeah the internet is abuzz right now I'm sure because you an...

d I both know that we were talking to photographers the one thing they tell us is that when they get to the reception they feel like they lose control the time lines all over the place and then the next thing you know they're staying there till midnight waiting for like the dollar dance or something eso once again you're going to hear this timeline I'm almost tired of saying it in our timeline eyes so imperative that's why we included that form for you guys when that form is there that becomes your bible for the event and we take that timeline we now walk up to the deejay introduce ourselves just like we would with the priest just like we would with um you know the church lady or whomever hey I'm taylor I'm sound I just want to check in with you before we get going tonight here's what my timeline looks like according to the bride dinner served at seven pm first dances slideshow etcetera etcetera with that being said give us like two good stories one where there was trouble thank god we talked to the d j and another where you know what's our normal scenario because we don't typically run into trouble because of this timeline document yeah I don't know that I can't remember a time where there was trouble just because we always kind of cover that but slideshow trouble we run into right so the garage of the bride forgets to tell the deejay that there's a slide showing that the deejay has to play music for it so that's why I tell the bride you have to tell the deejay to play five songs but they always forget and so that's one of the things we cover a soon as we go introduce ourselves to the deejay is hey did she tell you about the slide show no okay well we're playing a slide show right after dinner and we need you to play five songs michel boo blay john mayer that type of stuff usually ends up being perfect for it but it's important we coordinate with them especially if you're considering doing this sideshow so that he knows exactly where when it's supposed to be if we didn't tell him uh he would go off and do his own thing and he's also going to be making an announcement so we asked the deejay to let people know five minutes in advance that hey there's gonna be a slide show with pictures from today make sure you get up and watch and so if he doesn't like you he's going to make a crappy announcement or no announcement at all so it's important to get on his good graces to write right and something else to consider is the deejay is typically once you get into the reception I feel like the reception hall or the djs really marching to their own beat at this point even though you've been with the couple and I think it's very important to get into that room with the deejay band ah whomever and really have this meeting of the minds just to get in sync because the deejay yeah he knows he's got to do the book a garter toss but guess what the djs primary concern is dancing that's all he cares about he does not care about your timeline or your agenda or and so what I want to do is I want to go sit with that d j and k f y I do I'm out here at nine o'clock tonight coverage ends at nine I need to ensure that the dancers cake cutting everything I'd done before nine we can do it at whatever pace you want but they have to be done by the time I'm out of here having that conversation with the deejay is priceless to getting in sync so I hope that absolutely makes sense for everybody let's talk about when we walk into the room okay let's come back to mindset and a shot list and what we have to have I know my mindset when I walk into the room again and I we teach all our second shooter's theirs if they spent money on it photograph it and I'm gonna tell a horror story because that's the only way I know how to use one a lot of fun until they use all that sorry yeah what did you do it way over there the ceremony oh ok well yeah so you told it on there okay I must have zoned out all right so we all have those horror stories the lattice story is one of those it looked like a nineteen eighty lattice my bride was completely irritated that I didn't get that photograph of the latticed but it was just more like a a backstop and she spent money on it and I missed it and I never heard the end of it so we're going to miss shots just like you do but again your your rhythm your progression if you will has to be looking for things they spent money on napkins eminem's no matter how trivial it is get an isolated shot off that ah flash or no flash ah we try and shoot with no flash for us long as possible but usually by the time you get to the reception you don't have an option you have to slash so well in the van you wearing today is I would say indicative of some half the venues we go too there's a lot of venues by the time we get to cocktail hour it's five o'clock five thirty especially in the summertime there is natural light coming in the room and we will opt initially to photograph without any flash whatsoever right it just changes the look and feel of the image even if it gets into the night if we can shoot with our fifty one point two or you know go really down low and I have stopped we'll do that versus using flash if we can you can always do that you gotta open up right fast glass this's again where it comes into play one point two is our friend in this situation right we're not layering people that boca fact looks really good and just so you guys know it's not boki boca boca right so and I was laughing people say folke okay okay um so what I want to do is right now I'm not tethered I need to get tethered but what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna photograph some of these details without any flash whatsoever option number two before we would pull out flash once again my handy dandy video light seem alight twenty nine dollars being age pick it up to me this is just a no brainer I've got four of these in my bag and these were going to make my images you know look really good and I'm just gonna have my assistant overhead lighting that stuff who's photographing primary shooter or secondary shooter when we walk in depending on what's going on uh I'm going to start building the slide show in the sideshow typically we don't have reception detail images and I'm okay with that right that's not what needs to be in a sideshow I don't want to end this slideshow on a picture of the cake I want to end the slide show on a dramatic picture that maybe I got outside right some of our architecturally based image or if they have a cocktail hour he might be photographing the reception details while the second shooter would be photographing the cocktail hour and getting candid stone there exactly that is a time that we would in fact we would in fact split up with each other so right think here's my mindset I don't have we don't have couples putting a whole lot of images of the cocktail hour in their album but they still want to see him for some reason right we are we're all in that boat it drives us nuts were taking pictures that we know they're not going to use but ultimately they want him just so they know they were taken um and so I'm willing to let my second shooter go do some of that stuff the most important thing for me is doing the slide show and if you know if I don't have to do this sideshow that's that's fine too I'll shoot the room let's come back to that sometimes cocktail hour is in the same room a cz the actual reception and I got asked earlier would I clear the room you're not going to be able to clear the room that's not reality if you're doing a higher and event cocktail hour or a mid level event cocktail hour is separated from the main reception area in that case make it a priority to get in that room and I don't know if everybody remembers from day one on day one we talked about vendor referrals so we want a picture off the room with empty showcasing the detail print that image out and deliver that to the reception venue and you are going to make a lot our friends uh so those are the things we need to be able to do questions around that we've talked about talking to the cake lady always anything's not yet we'll go with the cake place insures the church and he would just we'll keep the train going meals yes that's what I want to talk about don't put it in your contract for crying out loud man really where what job have you worked I guess I'm spoiled because I come from corporate america at least my mind that maybe it's tainted is a better word I come from corporate when I signed on in corporate they weren't like yes we pay for your lunch you get a guaranteed hot meal and three fifteen minute breaks during the day that's absolutely preposterous to think you were going to request hot meals if you work with me or have worked side by side with me you know you're lucky to get a frickin granola bar if if I feed you so don't be a diva you're not going to request a meal in your contract most venues will ninety eight percent of the time have a vendor meal for the band for the deejay they know to do this let's say worst case scenario you don't r team what do we do we would snack on some hors d'oeuvres or go out when you have a cool yeah we have a cooler we could ask when you hated they provide men vendor meals that's everything right or we might even order from the hotel if it's a hotel will order from the restaurant have our sister go get it right or a cooler so is cooler ah and our cooler we have snacks throughout the day bottled water gatorade have a giant cooler on ice in our car uh and we're not expecting anyone to feed us if we get fed icing on the cake but god come on guys we're already getting paid to work this event to think that we can request a meal is ridiculous and I've seen a lot of your contracts and in the contracts there's an included meal and some of the girls shaking your heads oh for saying that yeah somebody had to make the call here man it's just like we're photographers not rock stars are going to start handing over a my rider and it's going to like south and cotton ones white eminem's weii saw someone's contract where it said they had to have a hot meal like they couldn't have a cold you know sandwich bender may they had to have a hot meal whatever the guests reading it's not uncommon like people would put that in their contract no that's insane so just buy your own damn meal you're getting paid for it all right so what else we got cake cut now hear the must have shots we know that we're gonna do a cake cut we know they were gonna do first dances we know that we're going to dio bouquet garner lighting on camera I'm gonna show you a couple of different lighting sources I'm gonna show you with a flash on camera I'm gonna show you how I run around with a video light and then I'm doing something new now with my lighting is I've got two lights on light stands with light modifier so I'll show you how I would use that as well so that's really the focus of this whole let's without being said let's start photographing here uh just doing some details so I'll start shooting first thing I'm a do on this particular camera I've got my uh twenty four millimeter one point four lens and I am going to shoot wide open on this mass here hold on and so here I've got the cake right so I wanna isolate each one of these details I've been told to slow down my shooting so I can get you guys seeing this online and so there's a shot of the cake you can see the light but the string lights behind and that's the kind of stuff I'm doing so of course I'm going to take sin concept right tight middle wide as best you can take his many shots uh of the of the details as you can now I'm going to get in a little bit tighter so I don't burn myself okay I'm focusing on the flowers one point four now you're seeing that side of the cake now I'm going to go I don't know if some of you have seen this I go right over the cake right and I take a shot like that and I like that shot I don't know if we're showing five ninety five up on the screen but I like the way that shots looking it's a different perspective if I want to come in again and maybe change my angle okay I think that's a really cool shot that's a neat detail shot that we're able to showcase of the cake so now maybe I'm done with the cake I move on right I'm not gonna obsess here and and spend all this detail around something I'm just thinking about the album now I'm going to come in right and of course you know we've got this set up here we'll gets what I want to get one wide shot of the entire table so maybe I come in and I do something like this maybe I come in and I come up top okay if I can I'm gonna get on a chair then I'm gonna get in again and I love angles on this stuff right so I don't particularly care to shoot it this kind of stuff straight on I like very shallow depth of field okay yes I'll move food if I need to get put in the strawberry and focus okay I like that kind of stuff maybe we've got some champagne here maybe it's a nice bottle of champagne so I'll always check right if it's the cheap stuff that I don't want to photograph that necessarily I'll find an artistic way to do it if it's an expensive bottle of dom then I'm going to photograph that that um right again it's all about little things like this right so I'm putting the cork and focus everything else soft and again I'm just thinking about the album guys right maybe I take this and I don't know do we have place card settings no ok so I would take place card settings if we had him set this up with the glasses of champagne and I'm just working these details guys okay and then so that's it for this this table here okay so I've covered each thing on this table now I'm going to walk around and look at some of these other tables what's here that they've spent money on that is my driving force so they spent money on chairs ok so they had to pay for the chairs so now I'm gonna take a big shot of the table different angles I'm going to come in and get a shot of the table setting right some nice hotels have got chargers things like that then I'm going to sit down always put the chair back when you sit down remember people have spent a tremendous amount of time setting up this table making the investment in it and they hate photographers when they show up in the room move a chair move place settings and then don't put him back be sensitive to what you know people their time and that they've invested so now I'm going to take some pictures here of just this uh place setting remember anything they've spent money on my camera's having fun focusing on a white plate here we go okay all right take a picture of this book I want plus one by accident sorry okay now I've been asking to see the lens exchange between us tio okay you guys want to see the lens exchange where can I get a camera that's somewhat tight all right so you're gonna come here because I'm right handed all right so your second shooters right have to be able to work together on dh exchange gear with you so there's something everyone on my team has to know how to do this this is learned on the bag taylor's about to hit me glass with the red dot up so she's holding in her hand okay red dot up all them red dot up so that I can come in and grab over the top I want to be able to come in and grab this with my right hand she's gonna grab with her left hand but notice with my left hand I'm pressing the release button on the lens on the camera so that's releasing the lens she's gonna grab I'm going to grab good I'm still looking at you guys I come right in done I never broke eye contact with you that's because of the way she's handing me that and in real time this would look something like this done okay so that's how quickly we're changing gear so imagine if you're talking to you to the friends okay guys here's how we're going to we're going to come over here let's go do this and I'm done that's it that's how quickly we have to be able to exchange gear because equipment cannot get in the way of the shot and so I don't know if that impresses you are not everybody was asking us in the chat rooms to show you that and so that's how our team is trained to exchange equipment so let's come back to the table okay what I'm what I'm gonna do is I want this table shot here okay let's adjust my settings right and I might come over here get that top down shot and so I love shots like this right show us six fifteen I love getting shots like that when I can because it's a different perspective from an overhead down you don't particularly see that and so be conscious when you're standing on chairs because people may not like you standing on their chairs at the venue but it definitely provides interesting perspective for the table settings so we've isolated almost everything on this table if they had menus placements here we take pictures than the menus if they had a guest book we would take pictures of the guest book anything they spent money on is what we do now we did this all with natural light okay we could just as easily come in and added video light toe like some of this stuff up so that being said ladies questions someone had asked earlier how do you get all of these shots and get the wedding party all of this before the reception how do you and how much time do you spend in here total I guess in the room beforehand I could probably knock out this room in about fifteen minutes I don't need more than fifteen minutes in an empty room I have no idea what you're doing in the room if you need more than fifteen minutes and again you've got to understand what drives my behavior there's probably true artist out there that are cringing right now and maybe the way I work in my work flow and I get it I have respect for you I'm a business person business first and foremost and I know I'm not going to sell this amazingly artistic cake picture to my bridegroom that they're going to put on a wall it's not gonna happen at all so what I'm doing is making sure I get the images I need of the cake that are complimentary in the album you know what I know they're going to spend money on the artistic and creative images that we create outside so if you're obsessing about like your cake pictures and making sure the flowers were just in the perfect spot and you're looking for just the exact perfect compositional elements to be around who that's exhausting I would never do that man you've got to focus on what matters and what sells and don't listen to me listen your client's listen to their dollars because they're going to tell you what they want fifteen minutes so couple folks were freaking out when you jumped upon those chairs and said it was a man to freaking out that's all the math of it said has a venue ever freaked out on you when you have jumped up on chairs and don't worry about getting stuff dirty the other one was how do you get your feet not in there yeah my feet were in this particular one so you've gotta have you've gotta have really long arms to do it and uh so here a couple of things you've got to use common sense if it's a very high end venue and there's like white table or chair covers things like that do not stand on the table right on the chair that's common sense has to prevail if they're just standard chairs things like that I will always stand on top of them get up and down take off your shoes if you have to be respectful in that situation that being said um you know this almost happened to me this was about four months ago I um I move very quickly left and right and you've watched me on camera I don't pay attention to what I'm doing sometimes I'm only paying attention to what's in front of me and we were in this this was probably probably like a sixty thousand dollar weddings seventy thousand dollar wedding in saying that was a very expensive wedding and they had this like five tier cake it was on a roller stand uh for the cake and I was moving back and forth very quickly and I moved back I kept going back and I hit the card almost at full speed and my second shooter happened to be behind me and thumped me in the back as I was coming into the cake there like sal watch out smacking the back but I still hit it the cake cart started sliding across the entire dancefloor heading towards the band station and it was almost like you know we're like no right I mean we had to run and grab it stopped it that cake almost fell five minutes before the bridal room walked in the room I don't think I would have ever been invited back to that to that venue so the the truth of it is man this crazy stuff happens to all of us including us so pay attention where you're moving I guess all right karen loudon said how do you shoot above face set up with the food and it I find it really hard to make this look good it is one point to uh very very shallow depth of field I tend that's a good question I want expand on that we don't spend a whole lot of time photographing food uh just because the cater that's not what I'm known for right so I don't want to photograph food and um put that on their website photos courtesy of salvador cicada that's not really what I'm looking to do I take a couple of creative shots of like orders things like that but I don't spend a whole lot of time shooting plated food either so if it's a sit down dinner I'm not going to photograph plated food and definitely if it's a uh buffet you know take one or two shots just so the couple sees it but I mean how interesting can you make a giant thing of peas look I don't think that's very interesting and do you not shoot it all when people are eating no great question I stopped shooting when people are eating let's expand on that as well the days of the nineteen eighties when you would gather the table shots and have half the table going the other and stand up very traditional informed we don't do that anymore those days are gone when dinner starts we do not disturb people by photographing them no one's doing anything with it it's not going in the wedding album uh don't waste your time don't waste your battery power and just let your guest be you know uninterrupted that's what they wanted that part of the night can we expand on that a little bit more so that's thirty minutes that you are doing what thirty minutes have everyone's eating that what what are you doing well either eat right take a break or ninety percent of the time I'm building my slide show so that thirty minutes is when I get to build my actual slide show without that I wouldn't be ableto build it but you know the couple gets that you've been working with them since nine thirty ten o'clock in the morning uh no one's losing their mind because I took a thirty minute break or an hour long break just you know be alert be listening so that when the dancing starts or something starts you're not in another room somewhere be proactive talked to the d j if you've talked to the d j what will end up happening is he will know to get you this is a horror story I've heard over and over again from photographers you step out of the room and the deejay continues on with whatever events he's doing and he never looks to even see if you're in the room and we make sure that the deejay knows hey man we're stepping out there feeding us dinner in the hallway please don't start anything until we're there this is where communication really helps you okay