There are times when I feel my photography experience is put to the test. Creating wedding portraits for Michelle and John was one of
those times. John had expressed to me how important photos were to him and Michelle and that they wanted to hire us to create some great portraits for them and capture the reception events. He had set the expectations high and I knew he was counting on me to give him something awesome.
Since they had a sunset ceremony on Coronado Beach, and had a photographer already for that as part of an elopement package they had booked a long time before the talked to me, I knew that it was going to be dark by the time they got to the reception at Paradise Point Resort. That’s typically not a big deal, I can work in the dark and set up lights to create a background separation and depth to the photo, it just takes a longer time and we have to move slower to set up and test lights to get the shots right.
When Michelle and John arrived at the cocktail hour, I asked them if they wanted to get started right away on some portraits. They wanted to relax and enjoy the company of their guests, so we agreed to wait a few minutes. After checking in a couple of times and being told that they did not want to start on photos yet, I began to worry about how little time we were going to have. It was then that I heard the banquet manager say that they would start with dinner in 5 minutes. Now I knew I was out of time, but at that moment Michelle and John wanted to start on their photos. With only 5 minutes it was going to be pretty hard to get any shots. Just walking to the location and back was going to take 5 minutes. So I decided to take a 10 minutes to give my self a little bit of time, knowing it was going to upset the banquet manager.
I moved as fast as I could, set up lights and hoped that I had my settings right on everything. I did not get everything that I wanted, but with the time given I think that it we got some pretty good stuff. When I returned to the ball room the banquet manager told me he was upset that I held them up. But I knew it was coming so it did not surprise me. It was a decision that I did not want to make but had to make to make sure my client got some of what they wanted.
