One of the many things that I enjoy about photographing weddings is the opportunity to see how creative the bride and groom have been with regards to their cake. I’ve seen a whole range from very traditional cakes through to a tower of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, with a lego bride and groom at the top.

You see, it’s not just the cake itself where the bride and groom can get creative; it’s also what they choose to put on top. A few of my favourites from weddings I’ve covered (in no particular order):

• Bride and groom figures in front of a cup cake – there were individual cup cakes at everyone’s seat at the reception in addition to the main cake.
• Individually made and iced cup cakes with a selection of designs – the bride had made them all herself
• A camper van with bride and groom – a remarkable likeness to the bride and groom. It fit in with their wedding colour scheme, and their honeymoon was travelling around in a camper van
• Ball and chain around the groom’s foot, with the bride holding the key – I’ve had a few enquiries as to where the couple got that cake topper…!

It turns out that there are actually several companies which provide cake toppers, whether they be off the shelf toppers, or custom ones for your day: CakeTopper.co.uk, NoveltyCakeToppers.co.uk and CelebrationToppers.co.uk to name but a few. From comments on a couple of the sites, it’s clear that they’re very popular.

My favourite is still the lego bride and groom on the Krispy Kremes though!

Unfortunately this will have to be a really quick post, as I’m in the middle of moving into London, but I just had to share the following, that I saw as part of a very geeky wedding:


do {
have_and_hold();
love_and_cherish();
} until (death==true);


That novel take on the traditional vows really appeals to my geek side. Prior to seeing this, the best geeky thing that I’d seen at a wedding was an inscription of “Wifi” (similar to “Wifey”…geddit?) inside the bride’s wedding ring.

I love being a geek!

One of the standard wedding photos that’s taken at most weddings is that of the bride and groom walking down the aisle. It’s something that as a photographer you get used to doing – it’s not the simplest thing to capture as the couple are constantly moving, but it’s not too tough. Apart from if you too are moving.

The way that I normally take the shot of a couple walking down the aisle at the end of the service is to get to the back of the church in the centre of the aisle with a zoom lens. This way I don’t have to move, and I have plenty of options for wide angle through to close up. As the couple then pass me, I step to the side, letting them past, which also gives me an option of getting a shot of the couple leaving the church. It also gives guests a chance to take their own photos of the happy couple without having me blocking the way. But why am I telling you this? Surely taking a photo of a couple walking up an aisle isn’t rocket science?

Try telling that to the hapless photographer in this video.

To have both cameras going under water is just unlucky – let’s hope the photographer had another backup camera. The person videoing the whole incident has the right idea; staying still and using the zoom. It’s never a good idea to walk backwards whilst taking photos in any situation, unless you have someone watching your back. For one thing you don’t have stability as you’re moving, but the main thing is that you are concentrating most of your efforts on what is in front of you, whilst ignoring what might be behind. Poor guy.

One of the things that I loved about photography when I first took it up properly was the ability to either focus on the detail in an image, or focus on the overall image. What better way to do the latter than with a silhouette; drawing the eye to form rather than intricacies.

Strangely, it’s mainly my earlier images, such as chimneys at sunset, and a person at night that use silhouettes. It’s something that seems to come slightly more naturally to me when I have a film camera in my hand. The most recent silhouette photo I’ve took was back at Christmas; a wintery beach scene, but before then, it a sunrise over the black sea a few years ago.

After seeing a blog post with some fantastic examples of silhouette photography, I’m determined to think as much about form as I do about the details.

As soon as I started doing wedding photography properly, I realised how much pressure there is on the photographer to get the right shot, to be in the right place, and in general not trip over things and break things. To date, fortunately I’ve been successful, with the worse thing happening to me at a wedding being my mislaying of my main flash. The couple didn’t even notice I was using my backup. However, because the work that I do involves the public, I have public liability insurance to cover me against accidental damage to property, or attendees at the wedding.

What prompted me to write this post was actually a combination of an article about a reception venue ceiling collapsing on the wedding party, and my parents’ surprise at my brother taking out wedding insurance (he’s getting married next year). Is insurance worth it for the providers of wedding services? Is insurance worth it for the couples getting married?

I reckon that it’s definitely worth it for the providers of wedding services…especially those who, like me, are registered as sole traders. If I did cause harm to anything or anyone, aside from feeling mortified about ruining someone’s special day, all of my personal assets would be up for grabs should I be sued. Insurance provides that cushion, and with specialist insurers (I’m with Photoguard, they often give good deals that cover both public liability and equipment insurance. Professional indemnity insurance is something I shall consider adding in when it comes to renewing my policy; to cover myself if there is a dispute over work that I have produced for a couple, or to cover myself if I wipe a memory card of all photos of a wedding. I minimise the likelihood of the latter due to swapping memory cards a few times during each wedding day.

Is it worth it for couples getting married? I’m not so sure. It’s something that seems to have crept in as the price of weddings has increased over the years. Yes, there are many things that can potentially go wrong; suppliers going out of business, damage to wedding dress, loss of rings, illness etc, but some of these will be covered by the suppliers’ own insurance. Certainly the loss of photos is something that occurs as a line item on a lot of couples’ wedding insurance options.

I guess it all boils down to a question of risk and how you respond to it. I tend to be naturally risk-averse; doing all I can to mitigate things that could potentially go wrong. Hopefully this should be enough to mean that I never have to claim, but I know that if the worst happens, I’m covered. Will I get wedding insurance when I get married one day? Probably!

As soon as I mention that I do 3d photography, people ask me how I take images in 3d. Well, from the start of my exploration of 3d photography up until now, I’ve used a Loreo 3d lens in a cap. This is a lens that fits onto an SLR, with prisms inside to split the image. This leads to two portrait images being created on every landscape frame; two views of the same scene, but from slightly different angles.

I have 2 Loreo lenses; one fits my Canon FD cameras, and one Nikon DX format lens. The reason that I’ve chosen this method of taking 3d images is twofold:

1. I get all of the capabilities of an SLR, save things such as manual focus. The larger sensor and the ability to use off-camera flash are two of the many advantages over using a compact 3d camera such as the Fujifilm 3d camera. With my current D700, I can manually configure the internal lightmeter so that even though it doesn’t recognise the lens, it can still help me to choose the correct shutter speed and ISO, knowing that the aperture is f11, and the focal length is approximately 70mm
2. As the two images are taken at exactly the same moment in time, I can end up with “bullet-time” 3d images with objects suspended in mid-air – anywhere. This is possible with a pair of synchronised SLRs, but it’s not really pragmatic to carry round a stereoscope rig like this; realistically they’re best in a studio situation. The “flip-flop” technique of taking one image, sliding the camera around to another position, then taking the second image can’t capture motion in 3d

So, Loreo lenses are the best choice for creating 3d photos? Not necessarily. They’re best for the kind of photography that I do (mainly situational photography; capturing moments) however there are some negatives too. I’m getting a little tired of the fact that all of my 3d photos have to be portrait orientation, when most 3d viewers (such as the Fujifilm photo frame, 3d tvs and Vuzix iWear glasses) are landscape. It’s possible to get portrait lenticular prints…but then that highlights the other negative aspect of the Loreo lens; the ghosting at the join. If you look at any of the images in my 3d photo gallery in stereoscopic view, you’ll see that between the two images is a smudged area. When combining the two images by overlaying one over the other, this shows up as ghosting around the edges, so it’s necessary to crop the image (sometimes quite dramatically) to remove that.

I’d love to be able to create higher quality 3d images whilst walking out and about. There’s high quality stereoscopic equipment available for studios, but I want to be able to carry something with me; one body with two sensors (or ability to shoot onto consecutive frames of film), with synchronised lenses. Looks like that’s just a pipe dream though.

At the weekend I had an opportunity to try out my Nikon D700 at a wedding for the first time. I was a guest at the wedding of one of my university housemates, however I couldn’t pass by the opportunity to stretch the capabilities of the D700 a bit. As a guest, I didn’t really want to take a massive camera flag, so I restricted myself to just the camera body and a 24-70 f2.8 lens.

It was great to let my hair down a bit at the wedding and meet up with all of my old uni friends again, but I also enjoyed (and was amazed at) how amazing the D700 is. I previously haven’t had any reason to properly test the low-light capabilities, whereas at the wedding I didn’t have a flash, so it was necessary. The reception venue (the Sir John Moore foundation) has a rather dark cellar bar where there was acoustic karaoke into the early hours of the morning, yet I was able to get a few quality shots, handheld, using just the ambient light. I wouldn’t have dreamed of attempting shots like this one without a flash with my D50, yet I opened the aperture to f2.8, whacked the ISO up to about 4000, and was able to get a reasonably fast shutter speed.

I also took the opportunity to take a few 3d photos (I couldn’t resist taking my 3d lens), but I didn’t focus too much on that aspect of the photography, as I wanted to focus on familiarising myself a bit more with the different locations of buttons and functions on the D700. It takes a while for it to become second nature to change a setting without looking at the buttons, and although I’m now totally happy with the D50, I’m still learning a bit with the D700.

In all, it was a fantastic day; topped off by using a fantastic camera. They say a bad workman blames his tools…I don’t think good tools always get the credit they’re due. The Nikon D700 really is a great camera.

Often I find that I want to take a sharp photo, but the light isn’t really sufficient for the job. Recently on holiday, there were several situations where I yearned for the low light capabilities of the D700, but I was only carrying my D50 (purely due to the weight of the two).

The rule that I try to follow is that the minimum handheld shutter speed that I use is 1 over the focal length of the lens, so 1/200 if I’m shooting with a 200mm lens. However, that’s not always practical, and it’s certainly not practical to carry a tripod or monopod everywhere. There are a few techniques to minimise camera shake though, without necessarily whacking up the ISO, and these are good practice in general; not just low light.

• Support your camera properly – I see a lot of photographers holding a camera a bit like a sandwich; fingers on top, and thumbs underneath. With SLRs it’s slight better, as most have a hand grip for the right hand. The left hand should be predominantly under the camera. When holding compact cameras, I create an ‘L’ shape with my left hand, with my index finger horizontal, then rest the camera on that. For SLRs, I keep the weight of the camera on the heel of my hand, leaving my fingers free to zoom and focus.
• Draw your elbows in – I generally tend to do this anyway for any photo I take. Pull your elbows right into your body to give a good stable base.
• Stand well – the photographer’s stance should be such that if someone came and gently pushed them, they wouldn’t fall. It’s all about making sure that in general, you have a stable base. It’s not always easy on rough terrain, but it’s helps to minimise general swaying.
• Breathe – it’s much the same as shooting so I’ve heard; relax the breathing, then when you’ve exhaled the whole breath, gently squeeze the trigger.
• Brace the camera – sometimes a handheld shot is just not going to work; for me it’s any photo with a shutter speed less than 1/30. In those situations, I try to find something to hold the camera against firmly; normally a vertical support or something similar. Night photos in cities that I’ve taken without a tripod have always been braced against something
• Use a beanbag – beanbags are great; they’re versatile in that they can be used as a cushion for your head, but also they can provide great stability, as they mould to the shape of the camera/lens. When bear-watching in Romania, I was lent a beanbag for use in the hide, and it was much better than bracing that I’d previously been doing.

So, there are actually quite a few things that can be done. A lot of them are just sensible in general to be honest.

Short post today. I’ve been exploring 3d communities online, and I’m hoping to get a few contacts for printing of 3d photos, so I’ve just signed up at s3ddatabase.com that’s just gone live. To be honest, there hasn’t been anything to bring different 3d suppliers together yet, so we’ll see what happens.

Yesterday I made a big, big mistake. For several months I’ve been skeptical about 3d tvs – saying that I think they are the equivalent for images of surround sound for audio. Yes; impressive, but an extra that many people just won’t be interested in for their day to day living room viewing. I happened to be walking past a Sony shop yesterday, and chose to go in to have a look at a 3d tv and experience it. Big mistake.

I haven’t seen tv quite like it. Ever. I saw it, and I wanted it. The model that I saw was the HX803, playing on loop a variety of 3d content. It was the sharpest 3d that I’ve seen, and I was blown away. On reflection, I think that Sony were quite clever with the way they demo it; they have a chair about 3 feet from the screen, and a cardboard surround around the tv. This makes it a more immersive experience than it would be in a living room; closer, and without the distractions of objects directly behind the tv.

So, I like it. Am I going to buy one? No. Well…not yet anyway. And here’s why:

• Price – The price for me is prohibitively expensive; £1800 for the TV, then an extra £200 for a 3d-ready Blu-ray player, and glasses at £100 each. They’ve got a bit of an offer on for the accessories, but you’re still talking £2000 for a tv. My last tv was £25! As for the expensive glasses; I might as well just fork out on some Vuzix Wrap glasses that allows me to view 3d content anywhere.
• Content – At the moment the range of 3d content is pretty narrow. It’s obviously a bit of a chicken and egg situation; there needs to be demand for 3d content. Things shot in 2d, and transformed to 3d just don’t work for me, and shooting in 3d is quite expensive. Not all content works in 3d; I think nature programs will be great, but I don’t think things like soaps will work. Also, I want to be able to use my existing 3d content and see it on tv – that might be enough to get me interested.
• Future promises – This is probably the main reason for me. Just around the corner is glasses-less 3d tv. Why would I splash out on this, when I know that something far superior is going to be here in a few years…by which time the problem of content will be a distant memory.

These reasons don’t stop me from loving the 3d tv. I’m a lot less skeptical and cynical about the idea…I’m almost at the stage where I think it’s a bigger shift in the way we’ll view things than normal tv to hd tv.