Assistant/Second Camera for Another Wedding with Dan Pettus

Let me start by saying, wedding photography is a lot more fast paced. Instead of a client working around the photographer’s time, the photographer works around the clients. There is no time to switch lenses on a camera, and barely any time to switch out flash memory cards. One thing often goes wrong with the equipment: camera and flash malfunctions.

So, this is where I come in, any heavy lifting, holding four or sometimes five cameras around my neck and shoulders, holding batteries, flash cards, reflectors, flags, the list goes on. Depending on the type of wedding, Dan (head photographer) will send me to work with the other photographer to hold and switch out equipment for the first part of the wedding. Then, during the ceremony, that’s when I usually get to shoot. They like to give me the fish-eye lens and the 12-24mm wide angle on the Cannon Mark II and Mark III. Sometimes, I will be sent to shoot the cake, the table setups, and the entire party room during the ceremony. In my opinion fish-eye is a great lens to shoot all that, but that’s just me. Most people want a simple picture of the cake.

When the ceremony ends, we shoot the bride and groom walking down the aisle. We let them hang out for a few minutes, then it’s our turn. Time to shoot the bride and groom with all the family members only. We get about a half an hour to do what seems like 5000 different combinations that the bride and groom want (and don’t end up using in the end). Meantime, I am holding reflectors, switching out cameras for the different shots, as well as getting anything we don’t want in the background removed. After the family, we usually get the last 10-15 minuets to shoot just the bride and groom…and then they’re off to the party!

The cool thing about weddings is the food! We eat when everyone else eats so that we don’t miss anything. “Enough break time to work.” It’s toasting time: they have brothers, sisters, parents, and best friends get up, talk, cry, toast and sit. We shoot everyone that gives a speech, Usually, I shoot the married couples’ reactions to every speech, then that part is over. Time to party.

This is when I turn into a human tripod. A quantum turbo flash attached to a mono pod, a radio slave attached to the flash, and a 5 pound battery pack attached to my hip = boom a human tripod! This human device is used to create light where there is no light! It can also create some cool silhouette shots, but I am not going to leak any secrets.

That is my job throughout the rest of the night. “It’s time to wrap it up.” is my cue to pack everything and load it into the car. That takes about a good 15 minutes to make sure we have everything and leave.

It was a 50-mile drive back to Orange County from Temecula area. I got home at 1am and slept ’til noon the next day!