Early this fall I was asked to do a family portrait by one of my co-workers. She wanted some outdoor shots with the changing leaves so we went to Bonneyville Mill Park one Saturday afternoon. A lot of the leaves were already past their prime but we did alright. The two boys were fun to work with. I shot everything in RAW for this project so I could play around with DPP3 a little more. I was pretty happy with the results and the family seemed to really like the pictures so I would say it was another successful adventure.

Here you can see a few photos from the portrait session:

At the end of this past summer break I took on my largest photography project to date. It was the rehearsal, ceremony, and reception for our friend’s daughter. I, along with my beautiful assistant (wife), travelled down to a town near Indianapolis for a day and a half. It was nice that we knew the family so we didn’t feel like we were shooting our first wedding all by ourselves. It also worked out that we had shot the engagement pictures of the young couple so we had a chance to get to know them a little bit. They are both pretty easy to get along with and as far as I know, nobody said that they hated us as photographers…

I used my Canon 350D along with the 28-135mm IS lens most of the time. My wife borrowed a friends Nikon equipment. I got to use the proceeds to buy a 430EX speedlite (flash), a bracket, a cord, and diffusor which really came in handy.

Since I’m still not a master photographer I spent a good amount of time editing pictures in Photoshop. But I think that might be my favorite part of the whole process and I think I got some pretty good results so it was all worth it. Having so many pictures really helped me streamline my workflow. I worked out some custom actions which really saved me some time.

Overall, it was a good experience. There weren’t any real problems and I learned so much that I could probably write a book (or at least a pamphlet). We found out that it was even more work than we thought but I think it would get a little easier each wedding we shoot. I’m not quitting my day job to be a wedding photographer but if someone asks and the conditions are right I would do another one.

Below you will see a small sampling of the final product: