Wanna be a wedding photographer?

    Anyone out there interested in becoming a wedding photographer? One thing I would recommend to anyone that is interested in shooting weddings, assist someone first. It’s a great way to try new things without any risk. You can learn a lot from assisting and it’s very low pressure.

    If your dream is to be a wedding photographer then there is plenty of room for you in the Ottawa wedding photography market. There is always room for new wedding photographers with passion. If your dream is to make lots of money and you want to shoot weddings obtain your dream, you will fail. Brides here in Ottawa are looking for wedding photographers who are passionate about shooting weddings. They want photographers who love what they do.

    Do you want to be a wedding photographer? If you have a serious interest in photographing weddings I would love to offer you any help and advice I can to help you make it happen. I believe competition in the Ottawa wedding photography business is a great thing. It forces photographers to continually better their skills and techniques. It pushes us to keep improving our product. The photographers with the most heart survive. Don't let anyone tell you there's no room for another wedding photographer in Ottawa.

    Below are a couple shots I took while assisting at weddings. The first shot was at the ceremony in the west end of Ottawa. This was taken using very minor fill flash from quite far away. I shot it using my 70-200mm lens. The light in the gazebo was indirect and quite soft, a quite flattering type of light. After I recovered a bit of highlights, played with the colors, dodge and burned and sharpened and blurred areas of the photo in Photoshop.

    The second shot was taken at the reception. This is one of my original dancing shots. I remember trying so hard to find a formula for getting crisp dancing shots with a well exposed background. This shot was taken at 24mm at 1/30th of a second, f2.8, ISO was somewhere around 400, and my flash was around 1/8th power. They were dancing very slowly so this helped a lot. If people are dancing faster I boost my ISO a bit and use a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion.

    Again, to anyone who is serious about becoming a wedding photographer in Ottawa, I would be happy to offer any help I can.

Yves and Rachelle's Wedding

     I remember this wedding very well because it was one of the hottest days of the summer in Ottawa. We were sweating bullets on this day. It was a great time though. The church was a beautiful cathedral in the heart of Ottawa (the name slips my mind). After the ceremony the bridal party all had bubbles and as the bride and groom exited they all showered them with bubbles. That's when I got the first shot. I got low so I could catch the sunlight shining through the bubbles. That is one of my favorite wedding shots in my portfolio.  

    The second shot was taken at the wedding reception in a banquet hall here in Ottawa (the name also slips my mind), these two were having a blast together and they made my job easy by just having fun together. This shot was totally candid. I had to put my ISO up a bit so I could increase my shutter speed to freeze the motion without getting too much motion blur. My aperture was open at 2.8 to let in as much ambient light as possible and then I used a flash at around 1/2 power to help freeze the motion more.

    Thanks Yves and Rachelle, I had a great time at your wedding!