Hello, 2003! Allison and Kelley’s wedding was the third wedding I had ever shot. They got married at The Solarium in Oakhurst, one of my favorite little neighborhoods here in Atlanta.
I shot it with the Mamiya 645 I bought for photography school. It never occurred to me that a medium format manual focus camera wasn’t exactly the most efficient way to go about photographing weddings!
Worst of all was the handle mount flash I lugged around for nighttime photos. Imagine trying to manually focus a lens… in the dark… with gear that weighs 10 pounds (?) and sits as wide as your shoulders. Yeah.
But when I was digging through these photos I was happy to see that, in their own way, the images still hold up. I especially love the look of the film – even if these are questionable scans! What you see is as-is – no retouching, except for a couple of dust spots. Just the original film scans in black and white or color, according to the type of film I used.
It’s funny to think about the way digital photography has changed the way I shoot receptions. For one thing, I’m not counting frames. Now I can shoot 2000 images at a reception then pare it down to the best 10%, guaranteeing I get the best of the best. But even bigger, I have HUGE flexibility when it comes to the ambient light in the room. I probably shot these frames with ISO 800 film – fairly fast film, designed to handle lower light without the images being too grainy. But ISO 800 is still REALLY dark! Now, with digital, I regularly shoot at ISO 2000, and the photos are crisp and clear. Seriously, for me? Mind-blowing. How did everything change this much in only 8 years? I hope that in another 8 years I’m shooting at ISO 12800 without a second thought.
And here’s what I shot with:
