Wedding photography: Being a Subject

This weekend I attended the wedding of my great friends, Nathan Hanagami and Erica Chan (now Hanagami, or Chanagami?). It was a beautiful day in Seattle (Issaquah), WA. Apparently there are no sunny days there except for the one weekend we were there, and we were sure grateful for it.

Nathan and Erica had gotten two photographers, Jody and Jen, to do the wedding pictures, and they were quite good. This is the first time I’ve really been on the receiving end of a photoshoot, and definitely the first time I’ve been part of a wedding shoot. And actually it was a ton of fun. Initially the thought was something like “we’re taking pictures from noon to 5 pm? Gonna need a redbull or two before the actual wedding.” But this isn’t your hellish portrait sessions with your great aunt when you were five. Put five man-children, a beautiful day, a swanky country club and golf course, a glass of scotch and a chill photographer together and you’ve got an afternoon of goofing off, being vain, being indulgent, and relaxing before the party starts. The photo shoot was one of the most fun times of the weekend for me.

I couldn’t help but keep my photographer’s hat on for some of that time. I kept feeling guilty because for one, we should have been more focused on being the subjects, and two, when a good shot came up I was quick to whip out my iPhone and almost became a competitor to Jody’s camera. But out of all that I got the sense of how a photographer gets their shots, gets their subjects to try to do the pose, walk, and look they want, and really got a sense of what the pace of a photo shoot might be for pro wedding photographers out there. For one, he took far fewer shots than I normally do. Either all of his setups are so practiced that he gets the good pictures right away, or I am overdoing it and overthinking when I do my own shoots. Also, what I imagined to be a typical photographer is probably not realistic either. I’ve always pictured a high fashion photographer, flamboyant, mustached and accented, circling a model constantly and badgering her to be fierce and make love to the camera. None of that for any of us. In fact, not having to pose or worry about a picture for long periods of time made the shoot less stressful. I think it was enough to walk around a bit, chat a bit, then decide to take the next shot, when the time seemed right.

Ultimately I hope Jody and Jen were able to capture the real emotions of that wedding day because the times were great.