INTRODUCTION

I was traveling on the bullet train from Kyoto to Tokyo, Japan. During the two-and-a-half-hour trip, I couldn’t help but let my mind ponder how best to approach the second volume of the Wedding Storyteller series. That is where it began. The first volume introduced you to the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components. This system, if applied well, offers you a well-rounded approach to photographing weddings using your preferred photographic style and with an elevated skillset.

However, to visualize this system in action, it is necessary to proceed section by section, from start to finish, throughout the course of an entire wedding. This allows you to become aware of how the mechanics of the system function and flow from one photograph to another. There is a major difference between understanding a concept and being able to apply it by means of the marvels of muscle memory. When you have achieved the latter, that is when you have truly mastered a craft and reached the level where you no longer need to consciously think about each step to accomplish a task. Instead, you go through the steps subconsciously.

The primary goal of this book is to teach you those second-nature technical abilities as you learn how to take well-executed storytelling photos.

Why is performing through muscle memory so crucial when photographing a wedding? Because, unlike most other disciplines of photography, the nature of weddings is very unforgiving. Moments that are deeply important to your clients happen quickly, constantly, and without warning. And they happen only once. I like to compare wedding photography to dodgeball. But instead of trying to just dodge the balls, it is your job to catch every single ball coming toward you from every direction. When you catch one ball, there is no time to celebrate. You must quickly free up your hands because the next ball is already on its way at full speed. You are lucky and happen to look behind you at the right time and catch the ball. However, almost immediately, there are three more balls coming at you. Each missed ball symbolizes a moment that you should have captured. Each captured ball is a beautiful memory that your clients can relive in their heads and hearts for the rest of their lives. Inattention for just a moment, and your clients will never be given the chance to relive that memory because you missed it. How would you feel about that?

Those highly emotional moments require a photographer with a very fine-tuned awareness of their surroundings in order to capture them. It should also be noted that the most memorable moments are usually not the obvious ones. Why? Because when people feel the presence of a photographer pointing a giant camera and lens in their direction, they subconsciously put their guard up and try to rearrange their facial expressions so that they can smile—an artificial smile, actually. Rarely will a person let their guard down and express deep and vulnerable emotions when they know they are being watched by a giant telephoto lens pointed at their face.

Beautiful moments of vulnerability are often captured by skilled photographers who perform from muscle memory. Their cameras are truly an extension of their eyes, and operating all the camera buttons, options, and settings is so intuitive, so second nature, that it is almost as if the camera magically changed to provide the photographer with the perfect combination of settings to best capture that fleeting moment.

During my first full wedding where I had the responsibility of documenting the event, I had to deal with so many technical issues that I just wanted to quit. For starters, I did not clean the sensor or the camera lenses before the wedding. Thus, later I had to manually remove in Photoshop countless black spots present throughout all the photographs. I also did not know what the role of my second shooter/assistant should be. We did not have a plan, so we did not work together as a cohesive unit. The result was photos that did not mesh together, and we kept getting in each other’s way throughout the wedding. When trying to add fill flash at the outdoor ceremony, I had no idea that the camera would automatically change the shutter speed to the sync speed of 1/200. To obtain a proper exposure, I needed a shutter speed of around 1/2500. I was so busy and flustered by all the various settings I needed to adjust to keep up with the changing conditions that I never realized all the photos I was taking were so blown out that one could hardly see the groom’s black tuxedo! I missed most of the ceremony photos because of this problem. Who knew you had to turn on the flash and then immediately push the “high sync speed” button to make sure that the camera doesn’t change the shutter speed to 1/200?

I have many more examples of what went wrong, but the last one I’ll share with you was an issue with shutter speeds. I underestimated how camera shake would be affected by what I thought was a fast-enough shutter speed. For example, I figured that shooting at 1/125 would be fast enough to freeze most action in the bride’s getting-ready room. Unfortunately, 90% of all the photos of the bride getting ready came out blurry from both client movement and camera shake. I was overwhelmed with frustration.

It was my personal goal to write this book in such a way that after reading it and practicing the concepts, you will be able to fully and competently concentrate on the storytelling aspects of the wedding. Do not make the mistake of taking any wedding for granted. They are long and very challenging events, requiring that you be a highly able multi-tasker and able to keep your cool throughout the wedding. The last thing you want is to be flustered and sweating profusely, giving your clients the impression that you do not know what you are doing. Remember this: Once you lose your client’s respect or confidence, it is almost impossible to get it back again. I do not mean to alarm you. I just want you to realize how serious and challenging photographing a wedding day is. Therefore, read carefully, practice what you read, get your hands under the hood, and become so familiar with your equipment that you don’t even have to think about it.

If you can achieve that goal, you will experience the amazing world of wedding photography, a world that I am very happy and proud to be a part of. Wedding photographs are always among people’s most prized possessions, and being trusted with creating those photographs is not only gratifying but a great honor.