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Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow
Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow
Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow
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Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow

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In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow, photographer and bestselling author Roberto Valenzuela uses wedding case studies extensively to teach you in great detail the entire Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system that he introduced in Volume 1.

Drawing from his highly successful career, Roberto shares multiple case studies from numerous real-world weddings, covering the entire wedding timeline, from the beginning of the day when the couple is getting ready until the last portion of the reception.

Roberto goes into deep technical detail regarding how to apply the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system to help you excel at photographing weddings for your own clients. Copiously illustrated with nearly 700 photographs and illustrations, the book covers:

    •   The five key elements of assessing the getting-ready rooms
    •   The four types of wedding party group photos
    •   Roberto’s system for ceremony coverage, TARPP (The Action/Reaction Position Plan), which details the 10 crucial positions for the photographer to use to create the best and most cinematic story of the ceremony
    •   The “situational approach” to bride and groom portraits
    •   The three main locations for family portraits, and how to photograph “elevated” family portraits in each of them
    •   And much more!

Also included is Roberto’s invaluable advice concerning such topics as equipment preparation, wedding psychology, lens selection and usage, and the importance of including imperfect but “fun” photos in your wedding photography (your clients will love it!). In Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1, you learned the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components system, which provides the foundation for your wedding photography. Here, in Volume 2, you’ll learn how to execute that system to perfection.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

    Introduction
    Chapter 1: Pre-Wedding Workflow Practices
    Chapter 2: Implementation of the Wedding Storyteller Skill Components
    Chapter 3: Working the Getting-Ready Rooms
    Chapter 4: Bride and Groom Preparation
    Chapter 5: Preparation Details
    Chapter 6: Wedding Party Portraits
    Chapter 7: The Ceremony: The Action/Reaction Position Plan (TARPP)
    Chapter 8: Bride and Groom Portraits: A Situational Approach
    Chapter 9: Elevated Family Portraits
    Chapter 10: Reception Lighting and Execution
    Conclusion
LanguageEnglish
PublisherRocky Nook
Release dateJan 15, 2019
ISBN9781681983561
Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2: Wedding Case Studies and Workflow
Author

Roberto Valenzuela

Roberto Valenzuela is a photographer based in Beverly Hills, CA. He has been honored by Canon USA as one of the few chosen photographers to be part of their prestigious Canon Explorers of Light program. Roberto believes that it is not talent but deliberate practice that is at the core of skill and achievement. He has traveled to every corner of the world motivating photographers to practice and break down the various elements of photography in order to master them through goal-setting, self-training, and constant dedication. He is the author of the best-selling books Picture Perfect Practice, Picture Perfect Posing, Picture Perfect Lighting, and Wedding Storyteller, Volume 1: Elevating the Approach to Photographing Wedding Stories. www.robertovalenzuela.com Instagram: roberto_photo and robertoweddings

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    Very interesting experience from a a class photographer. Very well explained. Reading the book gives a great confidence to approach the next or book your first wedding.

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Wedding Storyteller, Volume 2 - Roberto Valenzuela

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.

chapter 1

PRE-WEDDING WORKFLOW PRACTICES (optional read)

The lessons you remember most are the ones you learned the hard way. Trust me, you will always remember them. The greater the hardship, the more memorable those lessons will be. But does it have to be that way? Why can’t we just read about other individuals’ unfortunate learning experiences and apply them to our own businesses so that we don’t have to go through the misery ourselves? Believe me, losing a memory card filled with your client’s wedding photos is not an experience you want to have.

For this reason, I will do my very best to go over some simple but very effective business practices that will significantly help you not make the mistakes I have made. Pay attention, and be sure that you follow my suggestions. You will be thankful you did one day. To quote the wise words of guitar legend Jimi Hendrix, Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens. I hope you listen.

SENSOR DUST

The electronics inside the camera act as a magnet for dust particles. Even the simple motion of zooming a lens in and out can introduce dust onto the sensor. No matter how careful you are with your equipment, nobody escapes a dirty sensor. This matters, because a wedding is a high-volume job, and photographers shoot thousands of photos at a single wedding. Can you imagine having a dirty sensor throughout an entire wedding?

This is my nightmarish story. During a lavish wedding assignment in Beverly Hills, I was lazy about checking and cleaning my sensor after coming back from a trip to Europe. Although my main camera was clean on the outside, it was actually filthy inside. I thought it was fine. During the initial upload and first-round edits, I noticed black spots throughout all of my photographs. The spots were small, but they were definitely there.

Most clients cannot wait to see their photos and show them to their friends and families, so turnaround time is tight. I decided that I couldn’t possibly open all 600 photos in Photoshop and manually remove around 20 noticeable black spots on each of them. Can you imagine the effort? So I crossed my fingers and hoped that the bride and groom would not notice them. I was very wrong. And yes, they asked me to remove the black spots from nearly all 600 photos. It took me over 30 hours of tedious work to get this done, and I was furious! It would have taken me just 15 minutes to clean the sensors. It was a tough lesson learned.

Figure 1.1: This is an example of a very filthy sensor. It would look awful even to have one or two dirty spots, let alone 20 or 30 of them. Remember that if asked by your clients to eliminate just one dirty spot from a photograph, you still might have to open up all the photos one by one to remove the dirt spot manually with your chosen editing software. There is software designed to remove sensor dust from your photos. If all else fails, that would be a less-than-ideal solution, but it’s better than nothing.

FIGURE 1.1

How to Find and Remove Sensor Dust

It’s easy to notice how clean or dirty your sensor is. I make a habit of checking my sensors the day after each wedding. During the rush of a wedding day, you are constantly changing lenses both inside and outside, whether it’s windy, rainy, or sunny. You don’t have time to think about doing things carefully to avoid dust entering your sensor. As you would expect, the day after the wedding, my sensor is very dirty. Therefore, either I clean the sensor myself using a sensor cleaning kit, or I take my cameras to the Canon CPS (Canon Professional Services) center and have them do a thorough, professional cleaning job. Going to Canon CPS is a much better way to avoid possible damage to the sensor, rather than making a mistake by doing it yourself. If I send my cameras in for cleaning, I also usually bring in my most used lenses, just to be sure that the fragile focusing mechanism is spot on. I have discovered that zoom lenses are more susceptible to focusing damage than prime lenses. Below are the steps to check for sensor dirt.

Camera and Software Steps

Step 1: Set your camera to Raw and ISO 100, and choose a lens. I prefer prime lenses, such as the Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro, for these tests. However, any prime lens will work.

Step 2: Set the camera to Aperture Priority mode and choose the smallest aperture possible, such as f/32.

Step 3: Flip the focusing switch on the lens to manual focus and turn the focusing ring all the way to infinity so that it throws your photo totally out of focus.

Step 4: Take a photo of a white card (Figure 1.2). If you don’t have one, use a white piece of paper or a white wall. Don’t worry about camera shake. You want the photo to be out of focus.

FIGURE 1.2

Step 5: Open the photo in Adobe Photoshop. Because it’s a Raw file, Adobe Camera Raw will open the file.

Step 6: Once the photo opens, you might not see much of an issue at first (Figure 1.3). Notice the camera settings on the top right. Also, note that all the sliders are at zero. At these default settings, the photo will not reveal the hidden dirt on your sensor.

Step 7: Make the following adjustments to the Raw file (Figure 1.4). Slightly bring up the exposure. In this example, I increased it to +1.5, but other photos might be different. Next, desaturate the photo all the way to –100. This will remove distracting colors. Next, bring the Dehaze slider up a bit to around +10. Note that if the Dehaze slider is brought all the way left to –100, it will blur the sensor dirt spots and you will not be able to see them at all. Okay, here comes the fun part. Now that you have completed all of these tasks, prepare yourself and bring the Blacks slider all the way left to –100. Crazy, right? How bad is it? Bringing the Blacks slider down to –100 completely reveals the dirt in your sensor in all its glory (I’m being sarcastic).

FIGURE 1.3

FIGURE 1.4

Figure 1.5: This is what my sensor looks like after having my sensor professionally cleaned. It is almost flawless. I just noticed a single, tiny spot after the cleaning. At this point, I might try to get rid of that small, leftover spot with a cleaning air blower designed for camera lenses, LCD screens, sensors, etc. Also, a company called VSGO makes some great sensor cleaning kits. Whatever it takes to clean your sensors before a wedding assignment, do it!

FIGURE 1.5

CHECKING EQUIPMENT

It is important to check your equipment for possible damage after a long day in the field so that you can find and fix potential issues before your next wedding assignment. I do a quick check of the most obvious moving parts of all my gear. It takes me less than 30 minutes to check all my equipment after an assignment.

I have found that cameras are fairly sturdy and usually okay. But lenses and especially flashes are the weak link. Very sensitive electronics are located inside these heavily used and abused pieces of equipment.

A few years ago, I was preparing to shoot the family portraits indoors after the ceremony. I had just one flash because I had sent my second shooter with my camera bag to photograph all the details of the reception. The reception and my location were not close to each other. Unfortunately, I did not check my flashes before the wedding. The flash I pulled out to take the family photos inside the dark church was unknowingly damaged and would not fire. Trying not to panic, I had a choice to make: Either I run to the reception room to find my second shooter and retrieve another flash, or I just take the flash off my camera and shoot without it. I couldn’t leave everyone sitting there waiting for me, because it would have taken a good 10 minutes to rush back and forth. I asked if the family wouldn’t mind taking the photos outside with natural light, but evidently it was tradition for them to have formal photos taken inside the church by the altar. I had no choice but to increase my ISO to 6400 and shoot away. The photos were noisy, and the low quality of the files became even more evident when they were printed.

In fact, equipment becomes damaged more often than you may realize (Figure 1.6). This is a photo taken recently during my equipment check from my last assignment. It looks as if one of my brand-new flashes was battered and the glass cracked. During the equipment check, I noticed that the flash did not fire and that I could no longer zoom the flash head in or out, a feature I use very often at weddings.

FIGURE 1.6

Equipment Checklist

Cameras: I check that my camera’s mirror moves and down, and that it can take a photo.

Lenses: I check that I can achieve focus on Auto Focus (AF).

Flashes: I check the following:

•That the flashes fire

•That I can zoom the flash head

•That they can sync to each other for wireless off-camera flash capabilities. This also ensures that all my flashes are on the same ID number and the same Channel. It can prove to be very tricky to try to figure out this ID and Channel procedure during the stress and speed of a wedding.

You just want everything to work. Therefore, it is far better to be proactive and have all these elements dialed in at your office or in the comfort of your home, rather than assuming that everything is fine and not checking your equipment at all.

MEMORY CARD SAFETY MANAGEMENT

Memory cards (Figure 1.7). They are the most delicate of storage devices. They are tiny, razor thin, and easily breakable. I am always nervous knowing that all of my clients’ photographic memories rely on such delicate cards. If you lose the cards or they somehow get corrupted, you will more than likely have a lawsuit filed against you.

FIGURE 1.7

People stop being so pleasant when you, their photographer, have somehow lost their wedding photos due to negligence, technical corruption, or any other reason. To them, it’s all the same. They don’t have their wedding photos, and it is you who will be held responsible. I’ve been there, and trust me, it’s an ugly situation.

There are several different schools of thought about the

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