First Dance Documentary Wedding Photography Aberdeen
10th June 2019
First Dances and Lens Choices
Looking for a documentary wedding photographer near Aberdeen?
Show me a quick slideshow of your documentary wedding photos please!
Since moving back to Aberdeen and starting to shoot Scottish weddings again, I've been thinking a lot about the lenses I use at weddings. Although (hopefully!) I'm long past the phase of obsessing about my gear (also known as GAS - gear acquisition syndrome) I do care very much about my photographs. I also care about my body, and after many years of mostly using two HUGE lenses for most of the day, I did start using dinky little prime lenses a while ago, along with the 'big guns'.
The smaller lenses have some huge advantages for a documentary wedding photographer, or indeed *any* photographer who's likely to be on their feet for 12 hours carrying a pair of cameras...
They're a little more discreet for a start - people generally stop noticing you much more quickly with little cameras and lenses. When you're carting about a pair of big zoom lenses you attract attention which is the last thing a documentary photographer wants to be doing. A wide angle like the 35mm allows for storytelling photographs including several different stories, or elements within one image. A longer lens like the 85 or 135mm gets us up close to the subject, isolating them from distracting backgrounds - just great for capturing emotion and fleeting moments.
They're sharp as tacks. So long as they're used properly, the resulting images are just beautiful. Distracting backgrounds disappear into creamy, blurred balls of light. Thy're great in low light - their large apertures allow for fast, accurate focusing in low light. And although I still use a lot of flash during an evening reception, their low light abilities mean this is a choice rather than a necessity.
Perhaps most importantly, I don't feel like I've been at a particularly vicious one-to-one gym session all day by the time the first dance comes around! With two small lenses weighing less than half of one big zoom lens, I'm still fresh as a daisy by the end of a long wedding day, which means better photos and a happier photographer.
Good prime lenses don't come cheap though and after a good few years of heavy use at weddings, my two favourites recently needed replacing - I'd hoped to get away with repairing them but really, I need my kit to be absolutely reliable, all the time, so I just went with new ones for my three favourite focal lengths (35, 50 and 85mm).
I'm massively enjoying the 50mm lens which came as a bit of a surprise to me - I've had about six over the years in various guises and never really used any of them very often.
So in the future, I fully expect the big lenses to spend more and more time in my bag rather than hanging off my shoulders sapping my energy and shouting "PHOTOGRAPHER" at wedding guests :-)
Looking for a documentary wedding photographer near Aberdeen?
Show me a quick slideshow of your documentary wedding photos please!
Since moving back to Aberdeen and starting to shoot Scottish weddings again, I've been thinking a lot about the lenses I use at weddings. Although (hopefully!) I'm long past the phase of obsessing about my gear (also known as GAS - gear acquisition syndrome) I do care very much about my photographs. I also care about my body, and after many years of mostly using two HUGE lenses for most of the day, I did start using dinky little prime lenses a while ago, along with the 'big guns'.
The smaller lenses have some huge advantages for a documentary wedding photographer, or indeed *any* photographer who's likely to be on their feet for 12 hours carrying a pair of cameras...
They're a little more discreet for a start - people generally stop noticing you much more quickly with little cameras and lenses. When you're carting about a pair of big zoom lenses you attract attention which is the last thing a documentary photographer wants to be doing. A wide angle like the 35mm allows for storytelling photographs including several different stories, or elements within one image. A longer lens like the 85 or 135mm gets us up close to the subject, isolating them from distracting backgrounds - just great for capturing emotion and fleeting moments.
They're sharp as tacks. So long as they're used properly, the resulting images are just beautiful. Distracting backgrounds disappear into creamy, blurred balls of light. Thy're great in low light - their large apertures allow for fast, accurate focusing in low light. And although I still use a lot of flash during an evening reception, their low light abilities mean this is a choice rather than a necessity.
Perhaps most importantly, I don't feel like I've been at a particularly vicious one-to-one gym session all day by the time the first dance comes around! With two small lenses weighing less than half of one big zoom lens, I'm still fresh as a daisy by the end of a long wedding day, which means better photos and a happier photographer.
Good prime lenses don't come cheap though and after a good few years of heavy use at weddings, my two favourites recently needed replacing - I'd hoped to get away with repairing them but really, I need my kit to be absolutely reliable, all the time, so I just went with new ones for my three favourite focal lengths (35, 50 and 85mm).
I'm massively enjoying the 50mm lens which came as a bit of a surprise to me - I've had about six over the years in various guises and never really used any of them very often.
So in the future, I fully expect the big lenses to spend more and more time in my bag rather than hanging off my shoulders sapping my energy and shouting "PHOTOGRAPHER" at wedding guests :-)