Illumintations

[Almazar80]

So it was almost the end of the year. A family friend asked me to take videos of their daughter's wedding. I wanted to be of assistance, but I was not really experienced doing anything of this sort. So reluctantly, I took videos with my camcorder and my NEX-5n. It's frustrating when altar servers block your shot and you can't really move (it's a religous ceremony, first and foremost - besides, the photographer was angling for shots). I know what shots I wanted, missed out on quite a bit. And the dim light at the reception resulted in grainy videos. So, after this experience, no more wedding videos for me until I learn how to do it right.

Anyway, I took a picture of the wedding candle, shown here.



Somewhat agonized by my lack inability to get all the footage I wanted, I went out of the church and saw this. (I posted this elsewhere, but it's part of the story).



Well, it was like watching the Bruce Willis movie with the meteor fragments hitting the earth (or at least I kind of felt that way). Still, it was a welcome consolation to the earlier moments of frustration.

Happy new year to all!

[David Kilpatrick]

A good shot - sad to hear people made it difficult for you. Here in Scotland nearly all traditional older churches have a gallery, so it is often possible to get above the service and this is of course ideal for video. Modern churches don't.

David

[Almazar80]

A good shot - sad to hear people made it difficult for you. Here in Scotland nearly all traditional older churches have a gallery, so it is often possible to get above the service and this is of course ideal for video. Modern churches don't.

David

Our local church is relatively modern (well, 1970's modern) but it's one of those churches that has the altar area in the center. You have two aisles that lead to the altar, so wedding processions usually are to walk down the aisle by a wall and then to one of the center aisles. It's a smallish church, so there's not much room for the wedding party to begin with. The pastor also does not want flash photography or too much movement on the part of photographers during the ceremony (which as a photographer, I find limiting, but as a parishioner, I fully agree with). I was just disappointed that I was not able to capture the event fully for the young couple, but they're still married and happy. Which is the really important thing. I can imagine people who get paid to do this must do a lot of preplanning and have multiple cameras set up to capture the moment. Alas, it is a society in which everything seems to be captured in detail.

The larger churches in my area have a lot more room to work with. Our church, as beautiful as it is inside, can be a challenge, especially for a video neophyte as myself. The ceremony was great, however - the limitations on image making made the wedding more solemn. Which is, I believe, as it should be. Thanks for the comments.

[mvanrheenen]

I like the second shot, it almost seem like a vision of post nuclear earth. Kind of creepy feel to me. Reminds me of some scenes of Terminator 2, where Linda Hamilton has a vision of a nuclear explosion on a playground or something like that. Nice work!