As much as I hate breaking a Commandment, particularly one that involves a Holy day of rest, Bethany and I had to do a little work today. Since yesterday was booked and our client only has every other weekend available, we had to make the best of it and take some engagement photos.
Boy, were those photos worth the two and a half hour drive to Dorcas, West Virginia (which is exactly as small as it sounds). The scenery was incredible, our subjects were photogenic and willing to go out on a limb (almost literally) to post for a good photograph.
The last two weekends have been great for shooting. I believe some of my experience is finally starting to pay off. Shooting in manual has been much easier and much smoother this year, which is odd considering I haven't really touched a camera until last weekend.
Most importantly, though, I'm finally beginning to feel more comfortable with posing people and having a little better luck finding those "real" moments in between the poses. Those moments make for absolute perfect photographs if you're watching for them.
Honestly, that was a big part of my gripe with wedding photography. Yes, it's stressful and there's only one shot to get it right. But once upon a time, I was a reporter and I lived for that. No, I've realized that a big part of my gripe is how polished and fake wedding photos so often look. Couples see the "show pieces" that photographers show them and they want photos just like that, yet they don't understand the time and effort it takes to create those shots. It's easy for weddings to become too formulaic and all the same. My goal now is to ignore all that and start looking for those real moments that get looked over too often.
I'd post some photos here to show you what I'm talking about, but our clients haven't seen them yet and I'm not the kind of photographer that debuts a couple's photos by uploading them to the World Wide Web.
It will be a busy week, even though Monday is a holiday. We have to big shoots to process, one of which must be done by the end of the week. I have a ton of fresh writing to do for the new novel since I'm meeting with Heather at the end of the week to discuss illustrations.
And somehow in the midst of all this, I have to find a copy of Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal. I finally worked my way up to The Far Side Of The World and polished it off just a few minutes ago. That ended my initial exploration into O'Brian, since I bought that title along with Master and Commander without realizing that I was buying books one and ten of a twenty-one book series. I just wanted to read them before I watched the movie that, for some inexplicable reason, took parts of books one and ten and made one movie out of them both.
A reviewer wrote that O'Brian was "...an easy taste to acquire and a hard one to shake..." or some such. I have to agree with him. I'm already dreading reaching the final book and I have eleven left to go.
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