I haven’t even downloaded my 2nd shooter Sergio’s images yet, but felt like this story has urgency due to the implications that hurricanes have on our clients and that the fact is we just experienced what some brides would call, “THEIR WORST NIGHTMARE” Actually, this group was the complete opposite of that. Vanessa has to be the coolest bride I’ve ever met… Under the circumstances, she played it out like a champion of champions. This girl wins the all time award for brides that go with the flow and do not get stressed out. I’m serious here, not 1 ounce of stress from this girl, all happiness and smiles. She did after all name her wedding “Mission Mexico”

I had to put these images up before this storm hit landfall. Keep in mind, as I’m writing this post, this family is STUCK on the Yucatan Peninsula… They will be riding out the storm there in Valladolid Mexico, the small town in central Yucatan. Mexico has it figured out very well, government mandated evacuation. GET OUT NOW. And they do it several days for the Sh!t hits the fan… props to them. I can honestly say that this story is one that I will NEVER forget and I am so lucky that I was able to get these wonderful memories. The group totally didn’t mind at ALL that we were documenting the entire day… From the moment we were awake until after midnight, we were flying around shooting everything!

Why in the heck is this wedding on Flash Flavor??? Well, I managed to squeak out a technique that I feel folks need to try, when given the situation….more on that later. IN the meantime, I wanted to include a few images here and showcase the rest of them in my wedding blog, so feel free to jump over there to check out MY shots. I will update the link with sergio’s images when I get to it, amongst other things, a slideshow of favorites too!

I did a complete writeup over on my wedding blog,

26 + photos as well as a story time-line to showcase how I documented the event. I didn’t want to bloat FlashFlavor with all those shots… even though this one is a MUST see story… My most favorite project to date out of 150+ weddings.

First off, I was reading a post on Strobist the other day about this guy who was throwing his camera up in the air to get the shot…although innovative, I say the HECK with that idea… what do you do when you are shooting standing in the water? But it got me thinking….Why not put your camera on your monopod??? DUH? So, after reading that post, I was armed and ready to complete the idea and this wedding gave me the PERFECT opportunity to do just that.

Take some notes here folks, this technique WILL change your wedding photography!

All the guests were asked to bring all their luggage across the beach and to the edge of the ocean, and then to carry them over their heads about 100 yards to a few boats that were awaiting departure to get off the island… The scale of this was important to me…but, i’m kinda short, 5′8. Here, I was able to extend the monopod up to 8 feet or so, and then set the camera to timer mode (i didn’t have the PW cables to trigger it) and set my focus on a subject about 5 feet away, set my Canon 5d to shoot at f14 around 1/200 with a 580 on camera, adding fill at +2… BUT, the point here was to photograph the event from a perspective that showcased the awesome spectacle of what was actually happening. Can you imagine this happening at ANY of your weddings?

Here is another…

Ok, so here is one image from Sergio’s camera, showcasing the same moment seen above… and my bounce flash, aimed at the sky…do you like that???

and another (check out that freak storm in the background–not the hurricane) It arrived to add insult to injury or as a going away present to the evacuation… i guess it should be raining to justify evacuation an island to abandon your wedding location..

Here, Sergio & I are getting ready to make the “great escape”. The bride’s sister made this photo of our flee

At this point, you seriously must jump over to my wedding blog to read this story if you haven’t already… there is so much more pulp there to add to this experience…

 

Full story on the Evacuated bride

Anyway, fast forward to the end of the ferry ride over to the mainland, and then a 2 hour drive to the city where they planned for the makeshift ceremony… I commandeered (politely asked) a guest who I had been hanging with and chatting with, to assist me by personally assisting me with the speedlight. This is proof that ANYBODY can do this. We set our SB-28 to 1/16th power and figured a distance of about 15 feet, with our 5d’s set to ISO 800 F3.2 at 1/30th, to add some ambient in the frame.

Guest assistance…who would have thunk it? I don’t do this all the time, but I have actually enjoyed a few successful photographs with it!

and the father and bride walking across street, traffic being stopped by hotel staff.

We work lite at our gigs, after all, this one was some intense moving around. We had to utilize our resources and make do with minimal setup. Light stick (monopod) a few sb-28’s and our cameras with our normal zoom lenses..

 

Please keep in mind that this post is all about being resourceful and making the best out of a situation… I think we all can improve in this category. These people were able to have a ceremony in a place they had never visited, all planning done at the very last second… like planning a 35 guest reception, 30 minutes away from the start time of that reception. Imagine that?

Please provide comments
cheers!

matt

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Photographers, Matt Adcock. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.