Weddings are magical experiences and I have always felt honored to act as historian with a camera to record such all important events. Taking my cues from news reporters – I worked at small town publications while coming of age in Louisiana – I operate as a journalist reporting a news event and I avoid barking commands to create fictional stances. I have always felt that subjects look far more relaxed and believable when they are not actively aware of the camera or attempting to somehow “look natural” for the lens. They never do.
Moments discovered, witnessed and documented make the ultimate timeless record for the couple, their families and future generations. Staged photographs seems almost inappropriate on a day that’s all about truth and reality.
For the past few years, I’ve been hired by NBC to photograph its highly touted and much watched TODAY Show wedding as it happens live in front of millions. There is always a special energy with the added excitement of live television production. The whirlwind pace begins quite early as my team arrives at Rockefeller Center studios by 3:30 a.m. This year’s wedding couple was delightful though I was unable to speak with them until the very day before their big event because the groom is a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. He wasn’t able to leave his unit until just before the wedding so I planned using my best judgment for covering festivities without the usual input of the couple. As it turned out, they were quite photogenic on the very same frequency about photography, so our coverage was spot on.
The Day of the Wedding
We generally have a time window of several weeks to make final delivery of wedding images. But for this wedding, the assignment is much like a news event, meaning we needed to immediately deliver images to the TODAY Show team so they could post our still shots online within minutes.
Since the wedding was also being broadcast to viewers, the TODAY Show team set up professional, broadcast level lighting that I was able to use for my coverage. (Thanks, NBC!) On the other hand, one of the biggest challenges is staying out of the way of the TV cameras especially HD cameras with their very wide view. Since I’m normally the only or one of the only people with a camera at a wedding, I don’t usually worry about this. But again, I worked closely with the production team to know where they’d be and where I could stand to make sure I got the shots the couple and the TODAY Show wanted.
Once those logistical challenges were addressed, I proceeded to shoot like it was one of my regular assignments. I’ve always found that the key to getting great shots is to follow the pace of the day intently, not to ever interrupt the flow, and to simply memorialize the event as it develops.
My Workflow
Given the frenetic pace of the TODAY Show wedding, I needed to make sure I was using high-performance gear that could keep up with the speed of my shutter button and the demands of turning high-quality pictures around quickly. I use Canon EOS 1D Mark IV digital SLR cameras which accept both CompactFlash and Secure Digital memory cards. I wrote my images to Lexar Professional 600x CF cards and Lexar Professional 133x SDHC cards concurrently, and they easily kept up with the speed at which I was shooting. I set my cameras to capture full RAW files on the CompactFlash card for future use in album printing, and to make medium-size Jpegs on the SD card for the immediate need for web coverage.
After key moments like walking down the aisle or cutting the cake, I’d hand over my SD card to a runner who’d go to a workstation, upload the images through a high-performance Lexar Professional Dual-Slot USB card reader, make a few tweaks in Lightroom, then send the images to the TODAY Show team. Since time was of the essence, and viewers and website visitors wanted to see images moments after they were taken, it was imperative for me to have the fastest, most efficient workflow possible.
The End Results
At the end of the day, my team was tired but extremely satisfied with the images we delivered. The day had been non-stop but the couple had a beautiful wedding that they will remember forever. After all, it’s not every day that the world gets to see such a lovely couple get married before their very eyes!
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