We live to learn - so the saying goes (or something along those lines); and it's amazing how apt the saying continues to apply even to our advanced age. My wife and I were guests at a work colleague's wedding ceremony a couple of Sundays ago at Bapchild, near Sittingbourne in Kent, and decided to bring some of my gear along to take some photos, while reminding myself to remain as unobtrusive as I could with the "official" event photographer. I imagine we togs do get rather sensitive and territorial when you see another one lugging enviable gear taking shots at an event for which you have been exclusively commissioned. Alright, I only wanted perhaps half a dozen shots from as however many photos I was able to take and I wasn't going to be poking my huge lens around come the time the tog starts to take all his bridal shots after the main ceremony.

Back to the living-to-learn bit - I knew something was not quite right with the shots I was taking. Obviously because of the low light levels inside the building, it was necessary to use flash, even though with the high ISO capability of my D3s, I could probably get away with not using flash and live with the "noise" associated with the shots. What I couldn't get my head around was why I was getting blown exposures for ALL the shots I was taking with my D3s using flash. I normally couple a Speedlight SB-900 with my D3s while using an SB-800 with my D90 for portrait type shots using a prime 50mm f1.4  lens. During the whole course of the ceremony, I couldn't figure out why this was happening and just soldiered on using different settings to try to overcome the "defect". I was absolutely mortified when later in the week I started reviewing the photos in detail on my PC and realised I had somehow left the exposure compensation set at a massive +2.3. Okay, some of the photos are recoverable with a bit of post-processing work but when an exposure is completely blown out in some areas, there is no software that can recover the lost pixels. It reminded me just how easy it is, despite seeming to know your gear inside out, to have a disastrous outing for a photo shoot. I was real glad I wasn't the one taking the main shots at such a critical ceremony on that occasion although I certainly would have been much better prepared in advance - not just grabbing my gear on the way out of the house. I've heard the horror stories several times before, how the hapless tog ended up ruining the shots of what is meant to be a couples most wonderful day and having to resort to re-staging the whole ceremony just to get the shots! An absolute nightmare that would be to anyone involved no doubt.

My gallery is slowly growing but it's still early days. I am currently on a 2-week leave during which I expect to create some time for hang-on-the-wall photo sessions. I hope those aspirations turn out successful.