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I attended a wedding!

September 3, 2014 Neil vN 16 Comments

Angie & Johan’s wedding – One & Only, Cape Town

I attended a wedding! You may well laugh at that, but at 500+ weddings deep, this was the first wedding that I attended as a guest in about 20 years now.

Angie, who I’ve been friends with for more than 20 years, invited me  to her wedding in Cape Town. And you know what? It’s a huge compliment when a friend invites you to their wedding. With a bit of free time now, and a bit of financial wriggle room, and on top of that, not having visited friends and family in South Africa for 9 years now, I thought it was time. I had to go.

Oh, Angie has appeared on Tangents before: on a photo shoot with fashion photographer, Angie Lazaro

With this entire 2-week visit to South Africa, I decided to forego all the heavier, bulkier camera gear, and only take my Fuji X100s (affiliate). It is compact and light, yet the image quality is superb.  It’s a specific decision where I forego the versatility of a variety of lenses, and just accept the single 35mm-equivalent lens.

I specifically wouldn’t have taken a larger camera to the wedding anyway – I wasn’t the photographer, but a guest. Still, I wanted to be able to take a few photos. Here are some of them. All shot with the Fuji X100s, and available light:

Angie and Johan arriving for the reception on a gondola! I just loved how thrilled my friend was with her wedding day. As it should be.

 

This next sequence is my favorite – two adorable girls truly enjoying their friendship. My chair was right behind the B&G as they were cutting the cake, and I didn’t want to be that guy sitting awkwardly in his chair right behind them. You know, the guy you want to edit out in Photoshop. So I ducked low behind them, and there were these two girls on a chair above me, watching the cutting of the cake. With the final photograph, they were chanting, “cake! cake! cake!”

 

During the reception, I did take a few minutes for some detail photos. All shot at f/2 at 3200 ISO.

 

With the ceremony, I snapped a few frames as the flower girl entered, and then of Angie and her dad. I shot these belly-button-height with my Fuji X100S. I didn’t want the camera to my face – that’d just be rude and disconnected.

 

Angie and Johan:

 

And of course, a photo of myself with the bride.

 

Related links

  • Tutorials on wedding photography
  • Be the wedding guest, not the photographer
  • On a photo shoot with fashion photographer, Angie Lazaro
  • Hot-air balloon ride
  • Fuji X100s

Filed Under: Fuji x100s, wedding photography Tagged With: Fuji X100s


 

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Thank you,

Neil vN

Books by Neil van Niekerk


 




16 Comments, Add Your Own

  1. 1Roy Barnes says

    September 3, 2014 at 5:49 pm

    Love these pictures which really underscore what you’ve been saying all along about this camera Neil. What it the same one you brought to Sydney?

    Reply
  2. 2Roy Barnes says

    September 3, 2014 at 11:56 pm

    sorry Neil, but that first image under “During the reception, I did take a few minutes for some detail photos. All shot at f/2 at 3200 ISO” seems to me to be pretty much all out of focus…or was that the intent?

    Reply
  3. 3Neil vN says

    September 4, 2014 at 12:23 am

    The flower at the top is in focus, and is as sharp as the Fuji X100S will allow at f/2 in macro mode with 3200 ISO when hand-held in low light.

    My intent was that the flower’s stem leads you to the single thing that is in focus.

    Reply
  4. 4William Ng says

    September 4, 2014 at 3:43 am

    Great shots. Did you shoot in jpeg? Any post processing? Thanks

    Reply
  5. 5Neil vN says

    September 4, 2014 at 4:29 am

    I shoot in RAW, and it was necessary here because of the strange WB in the reception. My exposures were also off in places.

    The only post-processing was to adjust the WB / exposure / contrast. The usual stuff.

    Reply
    • 5.1Juraj says

      September 5, 2014 at 4:16 am

      Neil, and how do you handle sharpening and noise suppression? Those ISO 3200 files don’t seem to have too much noise in them.

      Reply
      • 5.1.1Neil vN says

        September 8, 2014 at 1:00 am

        I just pulled up the Noise Reduction in ACR a bit. There is some noise visible in the full-res image, but we are looking at 900px wide images here. That reduction in size will hide the noise.

        Reply
  6. 6Paul d says

    September 4, 2014 at 3:18 pm

    Hi Neil, love the images, particularly the series of the 2 girls. They have quite a bright look to them, without being overexposed. When you take this kind of picture, are you adding a lot of positive exposure compensation, or are you just lifting the raw files in post? I would love to see a blog or video from you on how you edit your pics to achieve a certain look. Thanks for the posts so far. As an x100 owner, I find it inspiring to see what can be done within the constraintsof that given focal length.

    Reply
  7. 7Neil vN says

    September 4, 2014 at 8:56 pm

    I had the Exp Comp adjusted up. (I often shoot with Aperture Priority with the Fuji X100s.) But I still had to lift the images about 2/3rd stop in editing the RAW files.

    Reply
  8. 8andrew bott says

    September 4, 2014 at 10:11 pm

    “I shot these belly-button-height…..I didn’t want the camera to my face – that’d just be rude and disconnected.”

    That’s gold and I couldn’t agree more. I’ve never walked down the aisle, but if/when I’d want to see the faces of my friends and relatives not their cameras/iphones/tablets. Unfortunately, I see more and more of the latter at the weddings I shoot.

    If I were a bride these days I’d give serious consideration to putting up signs asking the guests to enjoy the moment, be in the moment, and that they were invited to share a our special day, etc, etc.

    Reply
  9. 9christopher steven b. says

    September 15, 2014 at 10:39 am

    Totally don’t believe you that this is the first wedding you’ve been to as a guest. EVERY dude gets dragged to weddings–there’s no escape, really.

    Reply
    • 9.1Neil vN says

      September 15, 2014 at 10:42 am

      Aaah, I phrased that clumsily. It’s the first wedding that I attended after shooting that many as a professional photographer. So perhaps 20 years now? I’ll amend the text for clarity.

      Reply
      • 9.1.1christopher steven b. says

        September 15, 2014 at 6:17 pm

        Hah. 20 years is still pretty impressive !

        Reply
  10. 10William Ng says

    September 27, 2014 at 7:51 pm

    Neil, do you shoot Jpegs or always RAW?
    Do you mind sharing your preferred settings, such as DR, NR, Film Simulation, Tone, Sharpness, etc when shooting Jpegs?
    Or do you always shoot in RAW and those settings do not matter?
    Thanks

    Reply
  11. 11Neil vN says

    September 27, 2014 at 8:46 pm

    always RAW

    Reply
  12. 12Valent Lau says

    October 9, 2014 at 3:11 am

    Thanks for sharing these. It’s interesting to see what a wedding photographer gets up to when they’re a guest and they don’t often post the images.

    Reply

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