USC Theme Wedding shot by Dan Pettus

I find it interesting how many people are into sports! This wedding had a set theme with USC colors: red vests, red flowers, red everything! When I showed up to unload all the equipment for the photographers, I knew right away it was going to be a fun wedding. Everyone was already getting drunk, yelling, and having fun. For this day, we did not need any flash, that was one less thing that could malfunction during the wedding. Everything was outside: the ceremony, the DJ, the tables, the dance floor, etc.

It was a traditional wedding. The bride was separated from the groom until the ceremony. We had Dan (head photographer) with the bride in the dressing room. Then we had his second shooter with the groom in his dressing room. Inside, we did have to use our external flashes for the dressing room stuff. We did mostly candids of the groom getting ready with his father and friends.

“You don’t really pose too many shots for this part because it takes away from the reality of the tradition,” says Dan. It’s some good advice being that I didn’t really think about that, I am so used to posing everyone.

Dan had me switching back and fourth between rooms, running equipment, mostly switching cameras. It was interesting. Even though it was a crazy crowd, the bride still managed to be a little nervous when getting ready, so we had to try a little harder to get her up and moving for the candids. But, with the groom’s side, we had to beat them off with a stick! They wanted so many posed pictures with friends and family. Then we told them that we were doing candids so they understood.

It was time for the ceremony and what do ya know, the priest was in the spirit too! He was also wearing red. This time, we changed things up a little bit. We were shooting in 3 different spots, Dan was up front, our other photographer was on the side, and I was in the back with the telephoto lens on the Mark III. For about 5 minuets, I shot some from the back, then I ran over to the dinner tables, shot those real quick, then over to the cake, did some fish-eye shots, and some wide angle shots. After that, I was just in time to shoot the bride and groom walking down the aisle getting red flowers chucked at them.

Then, it was time for family portraits with the bride and groom. We only had 10 minutes to shoot that, but the good thing was that we did not have too many family members or too many combinations. They just wanted about 5 different group shots and that was it. After that, it was time to shoot just the bride and groom. We spent a good 10 minutes on that, then they were off to the party. What was interesting about this wedding was that there were no speeches just eat, drink, then dance the rest of the night away! So, we took our time to eat (one of the best steaks I’ve ever had) then got back to shooting. Our next step was to shoot the first dance, after that, it was all party candids.

Another day of running around equipment, and capturing the moments of a crazy family. I hopped back into my Jeep and drove another 50 miles home again to Orange County.