Saturday 22 October 2011

Caution amateur wedding videographer standing in the way at all bloody times

If you can’t afford a professional wedding photographer don’t ask your best mate to do it.

“Advice from an anonymous York wedding photographer”

Wedding videographers give my bum a headache but there is a class of videographer that boils my piss more than the standard 21 yr old media grad and that’s the amateur videographer, typically that’s the Father / Uncle of the bride who is intent on standing in front of the photographer at key times.
They’re dangerous too, not only due to lack of awareness but they’re a bridal party VIP so you cant taser them when they get in the way and registrants allow them to wander wherever they want whilst reading the riot act to the wedding photographer.

This year I shot a wedding at the Black Swan Helmsley. The registrant pounced on me and barked in a perfect Gestapo dialect:

“Stay at the back and no pictures during the ceremony!”

I wanted pull her tongue out and stick my fully charged studio battery contacts on it. But I had my reputation to uphold so I resisted the urge.

When the ceremony started the Father of the Groom stood right next to the newly weds and filmed the whole ceremony permanently in the frame of my camera, douche bag! So there’s me chained at the back being paid to get the shots and the Stanley Kubrick wannabee in the frame of every pic.

When the ceremony finished I marched up to the registrant and asked why I was chained at the back of the ceremony whilst Uncle Bob could wander wherever the wild potential of his handicam took him. The Gestapo officer, sorry I mean the  registrant countered with “We don’t  Like flash” But I don’t use flash I explained. But I wasn’t getting through, her eyes were drained of humanity maybe bleached colourless from years of flash photography, either way she wasn’t listening and marched off with her reptilian assistant trying to keep up.

But this is a serious point; too many registrants are instructing the photographer to stand at the back and giving the amateur videographer a free reign. If its fear of the flash then the registrant should say no use of flash and all is good.

So if your booking a videographer and he’s your best mate tell him not to stand in the way unless you want a wedding album with a camera man in every shot.

And my final bit of advice from the angry pulpit of disempowered wedding photographers is make sure you tell the registrant that you want the photographer to take pics at the front of the ceremony and chaining them at the back wont be necessary ;-)