Hey Jay!

Yes! it has been slow in this section and some of that may be my fault because the moderators or managers in these specialized sections are supposed to promote their sections and perhaps I have been remiss in doing that. I don't like to blame these things on members, conditions, or the industry at large, at least not until first I see if I am doing anything wrong or have been negligent first. That the way I have been running my business for over 50 years- when things are not going along well, I look to myself first and then, if I feel I have done my best, I look for other causes.

As long as I have been contributing to this site, the wedding section has never been heavily trafficked. There is only a handful of us that were frequenting the section along with the occasional visitor. Some folks would post questions about wedding photography in the main section and I would try to direct them or invite them to participate here but mostly they never showed up.

Sadly, many of the posts were somewhat negative- folks complaining about something they saw go down at weddings such as a rude, inept or fumbling photographer where the amateurs had to come to the rescue, etc. There were many posts by disgruntled ex-wedding shooters and always the comments like "... I would not touch a wedding witha bargepole...etc, etc". All very discouraging or a bit demoralizing to read.

Then, of course, there are always the folks who were asked to shoot a wedding, don't know the first thing about the job, asking for foolproof methods and these are then followed by a litany of discouraging posts. What's worse is some others chime in an advise the rank amateur to "...go ahead and do it anyway and have fun..." I no longer bother to inject the fact that lawsuite and disgruntled brides are not fun"! There is no use in discouraging anything because folks will do what the want anyway!

As far as the industry itself is concerned, it varies greatly as to geographic location, buying habits of the folks in these places, traditions in different ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic groups and the availability of good professionals in any given area.

GOOD wedding photography, aside from artistic and technical savvy and prowess, requires a lot of people skills, kindness, and passionate dedication to the work at hand and not every photographer, regardless of their talents, is cut out for the job. Every time I hear the " word "bridezilla" uttered by a photographer "my blood boils and my skin crawls"! This shows a horrible dispassionate attitude, disrespect and a complete misunderstanding of the job.

Generally, speaking, pertaining to this entire site, I have come to the conclusion that there is little interest in professional photography and in some circles, pros are resented or under-appreciated. There is little action in the Advanced and Pro Portrait and Commercial sections as well. The folks that have posted there seemed to have benefited from the experience.

There are still very successful and highly competent wedding shooters doing well financially. There seems to be no middle-ground- either there are top pros at one end of the spectrum and a whole bunch of well meand folks kinda floundering around, perhaps because they are not promoting and pricing their work properly and profitability. Also not every wedding couple or family prioritize photography in there plans and budgets so the will accept anything at a low price, that is until they receive bad results!

So that's all the bad side! On the good side, I think your idea of "Weddings and Events..." is great. I'll tell you why I like the concept. What many photographers fail to realize, even if they never even entertained the idea of shooting a wedding, there is SO MUCH to learn from experienced wedding photographers. In my own case, I started off as a wedding shooter and soon became interested in fine portraiture, I began to combine the techniques and soon learned to produced good portraits, even under somewhat rushed or time-constrained circumstances. I became a fast candid shooter and later on in ny career, I work as a press photographer using many of the technique I learned at weddings. Wedding photography, if done right, entails a bit of journalism, portraiture fashion photography, architectural work, flash technique, low light techniques and lots more.

I never separated wedding photography for other events. I have photographed, wedding in many cultures, Bar Mitzvahs, Sweet-Sixteen Parties, Baptisms, First Communions, Confirmations, Investitures, Ordinations, Quinceaneras, anniversaries, corporate events of every kind, conventions, trade shows, funerals, memorial services, military events, graduations, athletic events and more. If you can do BIG full-fledged society or ethnic weddings and can always come out unscathed and with good results on a consistent basis, all the rest is a piece of cake. For me, it was easier when compared to the onus that comes with weddings- It ain't a job for the lazy photographer or those who are faint of heart! co-conspirator in this section. BK will soon chime in and let's see what he thinks.

Different strokes for different folks my friend.

I've been at the wedding photography game for about 33 years, and learned the trade through a mentor, who also learned through a mentor. I learned when everything was manual, and personally find that to be much easier than using all the auto this and that. I don't put down those who do, but as you say "I have no concept of why you find Auto ISO and ttl, 'perfect' every time"

Yes, I shoot Nikon, moved from Canon to Nikon about 12 years ago (ish), but am fairly comfortable using either system, I only switched because my mentor passed away, and I inherited a lot of state of the art (at the time) Nikon equipment. It's not the brand, or model of the camera, it's how you use it.

Again, just my opinion. We're all free to have our own, and share our experiences and thoughts and feelings on a variety of subjects. If we all felt exactly the same, this would be a boring world.

Well I got banned from one site for this ….
It seems popular to have a heart shape with all the guests or the b and g initials made up of guests....so you divide the number of guests by 2 and arrange the half balls in a heart shape about 3 ft apart. You then ask the guest to stand between the balls conga style and put on foot on the ball ( to hide it) 100 guests in a heart shape in less than 5 min ....
Hope you like that ...helps if the daughter has access to a tennis club !!
I might be a bit crazy but not totally stupid.
How many use a megaphone to organise the guests ???

Hey, Jay.
So are you saying that the 600 pro recycles faster? I thought the only difference was TTL, the standard 600 even still has HSS.

It would be interesting to find out. I literally can't stand using TTL, too old of a dog, and too used to just doing what I do using Aperture to control how much light I'm getting from my flashes. For some reason, messing with exposure compensation, still seems more difficult than just adjusting what needs adjusted. On my flashes (and studio strobes) I never power them higher than 1/2 power, so they all recycle pretty fast anyway.

Well, shoot. I lost my wonderful, and well thought out reply. Kidding, it wasn't any better than what I'm about to try again.

Of course, Ed covered it well and I do agree that the edit is better, but what I wanted to say is that the look in the eyes of the dog just make this photo for me, and no matter how it is cropped, straightened, etc. It is a winner in my book. If anything, I might even dodge him a bit to draw more attention to him. Just my 2 cents. Often the technical aspects can take second place to the "story", and this dog's look really tells the story with "his" boy.