How My SIgnificant other did photographign my mom's wedding

I know I said this would be out two to three weeks after the wedding, but life has taken a hold of me. None the less, I am finally making this blog! 

I just want to say starting off the bat, my significant other had to learn all his photography skills in 4 sessions within a month. To say it was stressful was an understatement. Although it was my mom's wedding and very lowkey wedding, I still wanted all photos that day to be as good as mine. I did not want anybody to be really able to tell what ones he took and what ones I took. 

I also had something to prove. At my mom's bachelorette party my relatives that were there made some... um... interesting comments about my mom's choice to have me as their photographer. They said things such as "You should have your uncle do your photos that way you get photos you can actually  be proud of and can print later" "It would be better to have a professional do your photos" and many other comments. Now I will not bash my uncle as I don't believe in bashing or bad mouthing other photographers. I will say he is a decent nature/landscape photographer (that is his specialty), but that doesn't mean I am not a professional photographer (spoiler I am a professional with a legit business), but hearing these comments made me want to be on my A game more so than usual. 

I wanted to blast everybody out of the park as much as I could. Some of you may be wondering why didn't I have my second photographer photograph instead of my significant other? That is because my mom wanted to keep numbers down and didn't want any "stranger" at her wedding. So that is why I had to train my significant other. 

Now onto the part you have all been waiting for, the reveal. If you want to check out the blog with how his practice shots were like and more on the actual training aspect click here ------> (click me!)  

We will go in order of the day starting off with the getting ready shots: 

Below you can see the getting ready shots. I love this first one especially he really mastered getting my head in tack sharp focus and then letting the rest be blurry. I love how he was being creative with this perspective with the shot below as many (especially beginners) might not think of taking a shot like the one below. It was perfectly exposed. I love this photo overall!

I did not give him any direction on how to take photos during the getting ready shots. I just told him to get photos of me, doing everybody's hair and makeup and whatever he thought of to take photos of during the time I am busy. He did very well taking this portion of the wedding. 

My one criticism for the photos above is the one in the middle. He cut off her toes in this picture which is a no no in photography, but overall he did well. 

After the getting ready shots I took over the photography for a bit and got the detail shots, my mom's and step dad's first look, bridal portraits and some bridal party pictures. Once I got all those photos done, I had my significant other do the rest of the bridal party photos as I was a bridesmaid and needed to be in the photos. If I wasn't in that shot, I took the picture but majority was taken by him. 

I don't have too much to say to these photos as I set all the manual settings for him and I did the posing before I hopped into the photos myself. One criticism I have is I wish he would of tweaked some small things in some of the photos. As Although I posed people, people inevitably move once posed and I cannot see what everybody looks like once I get into my space. Such as in the photo above on left side I wish he had the bridesmaid on far right switch which hand had the bouquet so there wouldn't be any big gaps between the flowers. 

My other (half) criticism is that especially the horizontal photos were a bit tightly cropped. None of the photos had anything (like arms) cropped out that shouldn't be, but I would of liked to see it a tad zoomed out. Now the reason was why this was a half criticism is because it was not really his fault for most part. We had a very very small area to work with, he actually was standing on the end of a dock to take these photos (and one time almost fell in!) so I don't know if it was something he could of helped or changed. 

Lastly, the ceremony photos. This was the most stressful part as although I could set up his initial exposure, he had to change lens after he got photos of everybody walking down, due to limited space. With the change in lens he would have to change the settings to get the right exposure. Although I taught him, he is still a beginner and with the short ceremony time he had to do it fast. 

We will start with the walking down photos: 

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He did pretty good, exposure was good, followed rules of thirds, etc. Then came the bride: 

The two photos above I love especially the left one. I like how there is foreground that leads to her dress then leads your eye to my mom's face. The focus is a bit on the softer side (especially upper right), but they are alright overall.  Lighting is good, everything is good. My main criticism comes to the next photo below: 

I am not really sure what happened here as when he did these shots for the bridesmaid he did not have any problems. But with this he cut off a good chunk of her dress and my mom was not straight up and down, he took it a tad crooked. I was a tad disappointed in this photo as this was the only on in tack sharp focus of her walking down. But it is what it is and I do have to keep in mind that he is very new. 

Now onto the last of the ceremony photos. 

The ceremony was a very small space and I think he did well in the small space. framing and focusing wise I think he did awesome. Where I think he missed his mark was that all of the ceremony photos were really under exposed. It took a bit more editing than I would like to do on a photo to get these to look like they do above. I will show you one unedited photo to compare so you can see what I mean. (luckily I shoot in raw!) 

As you can see it is a tad under exposed, but thanks to my editing skills I was able to fix it for the most part. After the ceremony I took control of the rest of the photos. 

In conclusion, I think my significant other did extremely well especially with very little training and going from literally not knowing how to press a button to take a picture to learning everything I know that I have learned in three years and learning it in four hours worth of training. Although he made mistakes, it is not the end of the world. Even I don't catch everything nor do I exposure perfectly every time. We are human and are not perfect every time. 

Will my significant other ever become my second shooter? I don't see it happening. Photography is not really his thing (interest wise)  and that is okay! that is what my actual second shooter is for!