Wedding Photo Fun

Today’s Post by Mildred Alpern

I admire professional wedding photographers. They work hard at marriage venues, carry lots of equipment, constantly move about, patiently stage picture-perfect images to satisfy the bridal couple’s expectations of memorable moments. For example, the directions to the seated couple: “Put one hand on his heart, put one hand on her knee, look into each other’s eyes, smile.”

As a guest, I watched these movie-like blissful poses, but my intention was to capture the off-beat candids not likely to make it into the formal wedding book or the music video.

With two small cameras in my bag, a zoom lens on one and a prime lens on the other, I made the right choices for my favorite shots of the day: wedding guests’ shoes, including a pair of stiletto heel ”Ruby-red slippers”; a photographer chimping the bride’s blue eyes; and a garlanded aging dog plodding down the aisle as a guest nudged her toes into strewn rose petals.

Did I take any glamour shots, piggybacking discreetly on the several photographers’ efforts? Yes, I did. But I’ll save them for a future post.

All images were shot with the Olympus E-M5 Mark II; the shoes with the Panasonic Leica Summilux 25mm f/1.4 with exposure of 1/4000 sec at f/1.4, ISO 200; chimping with the Olympus M. Zuiko 12-100 mm f/4 Pro lens, with an exposure of 1/6 at f/4.5. ISO 400; dog with same zoom lens, with an exposure of 1/1600 at F/6.3, +1EV, ISO 400