from the Mendenhall Inn to the DuPont Country Club
Monday, July 07 2008
It was a crazy busy weekend!
On Saturday, my hubby and I attended my friend Jacky's wedding to Chris. They had a beautiful ceremony at St. Thomas the Apostle Church and followed it up with a reception at the Mendenhall Inn in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. Although I brought my camera, I ended up hanging out with Peter and my former co-workers (I transferred to a different school in my district at the end of the 2006-2007 school year) more than taking pictures.
And yesterday, I shot my first wedding! Don and Sue Engler, who I met last week, invited me not only to come shoot with them, but to use their gear as well. The actual wedding day went a lot faster than I thought it would - I arrived at the DuPont Country Club a little after 1 PM so we could take the pre-ceremony portraits. Despite the cloudy and somewhat rainy morning, the sky started to clear after I arrived and quickly turned into a beautiful, although quite warm, afternoon.
Not only was this my first wedding as a photographer, this was also the first Jewish wedding that I had ever attended. I looked up Jewish wedding traditions on the internet so I would be prepared to shoot every important part of the ceremony and so I could have a better understanding of what I was looking at. I guess that's the teacher in me - I don't just want to show up and do, I want to show up and perform and you can only do that if you are prepared - to me, research is part of being prepared.
I shot the entire day in Manual (with a Nikon D200) and found myself switching they camera settings (ISO, shutter speed, and aperture) quickly and accurately with few issues. I think I got some fantastic shots, but I'll know later in the week if I get a chance to stop by the Englers' to see the final images.
