Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/150s f/2.8 ISO 100 – Our top rated non-portrait wedding photograph – taken last year at Cecile and Bruno’s wedding in Provence.
We have been attending – and taking photographs – at 19 friends weddings in the past 10 years (not including ours). Constantly we have improved (and our cameras have as well), meaning the quality of the pictures we gave to our friends have improved as people were getting married older !
Here are a few stats, number of three-starred pictures per wedding –
2004 – 2 pictures (non-digital SLR)
2006 – 2 pictures (EOS 20D)
2007 – 7, 8, 1, 1, 6, 13 pictures (EOS 20D)
2008 – 14, 9 pictures (EOS 20D)
2009 – 46, 81, 55 pictures (EOS 5D Mk II)
2010 – 38, 62 pictures (EOS 5D Mk II)
2012 – 100 pictures (EOS 5D Mk III)
2013 – 71, 83 pictures (EOS 5D Mk III)
Without reading too much into numbers improvement reached a plateau around 2010, and then people stopped getting married ! Obviously most of those pictures are people portraits. We are fan of close-up portraits and there is no better opportunities than wedding for this.
Canon EOS 20D – 24-70mm f2.8 – 1/200s f/2.8 ISO 400 – Christelle and Stephane wedding close to Barcelona, table with a view.
Weddings are personal, so we did not publish anything on this blog for any of those – pictures were sent to the new couple. However, this is something we have been asking a lot to photographers we interviewed for our wedding – to create a great photo album, one needs more than portraits. We need ambiance shots, close-up of objects / decorations – and as much attention needs to be put into those than photographing people to foster decent results.
And we failed … Surprisingly, out of all the 127 top-rated wedding pics we took – only a handful are non-people pictures, and they are almost all published in this article. I guarantee you – if you are getting married soon (and invite us) – we will pay extra attention to this !
Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 24-70mm f2.8 – Location helps. Castle photography at Seb and Hafsa in the south-west of France.
Canon EOS 5D Mk II – 70-200mm f2.8 – 1/50s f/2.8 ISO 3200 – Always challenging food photography – especially deserts as they come after we had too much wine. Chocolate cake at Patrick and Vero’s wedding.
Canon EOS 5D Mk III – 24-70mm f2.8 – f/2.8 – Attention to details matters. Ambiance shots at Cecile and Bruno’s wedding in the south east of France last year.