Pete and Holly, originally uploaded by Webslog.

Just finished going through 300+ images I shot at my cousin's wedding party this weekend. I rented a Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8 AF-S with the intent of getting lots of mid- to low-light candids at the party. And for all of the experience I had with both the lens (none) and shooting people well (less still), some of the shots came out well. Problems persist, however, that are 100% operator based.

First and foremost, good subject matter, great light and a fast lens can make up for a multitude of sins. 

Things to work on:

1) If you can't wait for the frame to clear to get the shot, move to get a better shot.  Any number of reasons why, not the least of which is that a step to the left or right, in closer or backing out would have saved me two hours of Fauxtochopping.  I was behind what I think was the actual wedding photographer and this shot, as it originally appeared, had her flash unit overlapping the sleeve of his shirt.  I was able to do a hamfisted job of retouching it out (on which, more, later), but the better move would have been to lean a little left or right.

2) Fauxtochop saved the shot, but dented the integrity of the image along the way.  I was blessed by the photo gods with absurdly nice light and a looooong golden hour ... more like a golden 2 hours 25 minutes.  It meant that I was able to get some tasty skin tones and that the expressions on people's faces was relaxed, natural and un-squinty.  Score one for not having to futz with skin tones in my post-shot workflow.  However, I did have to Photochop extensively to clean up the included flash that intruded into "my" image.  It's not something I'd done before very much and I learned that doing clean up is waaaay more time-consuming than I thought it would be.  Too, this was the first time I've used PS to change what was actually in the photo/fix a mistake I made in shooting the photo (poor composition choices).  While I don't see myself on any sort of moral high ground, I do like to know, personally, that what shows up in my pictures is what was actually in the frame, rather than what I wished was in the frame.  Won't lose an enormous amount of sleep over that.  But I will pay closer attention to what's in the frame before I pull the trigger next time.

In particular, had I opened the lens another half or 3/4 stop, (3.2 to 2.8, the lens's max), I think I would have made my hyperfocus area a little shallower such that the people in the background would wash out a little more than they did.  Too that would have meant less need to applying the Vignetting tool to close the image in around the bride and groom and move peeps deeper into the background.

3) I manage to do a pretty decent job of walking right past pretty good shots looking for great shots.  Similar to my challenge with the train tracks I talked about previously, I spent an entire evening moving to fast.  The result was a lot of forced composition and trigger pulling before I should have.   Next time, a few minutes spent in meditating my way into the assignment/project before I start shooting anything that moves would be time well spent. 

That's all I've got on this one.

Cheers.