The classic saying “Too much of a good thing is never a good thing” had never felt this true to me. Not until I sat my laptop down to start crafting this article and suddenly a heavy rush of many different topics flew through this old and rusty mind of mine. And just like a 1976 Datsun with too much gasoline flooding its spark plugs (another proof of the above saying ), my brain engine stalled, creaked a long eerie gut-wrenching squeak, and dropped dead. It simply couldn’t choose, all topics sounded good. So I thought, $¢µ€ŵ the magazine, and let this one be a laid-back multi-topic conversation, without the usual seriousness you normally find in my articles (kidding guys ).

 

I Think Most People Don’t Really Need SLRs

Come on now folks. You go on a full instant noodle diet for two long months. You flat out lie to your wife and tell her that the expensive camera you’re buying is solely for capturing her beauty day in and day out. (Sidebar trivia: there might be TWO lies in the previous sentence ). You skip work, call in sick (boy, your lies are piling up, eh? ), and purchase that state-of-the –art SLR you’ve been drooling for at your friendly neighborhood camera shop.  (cue drumroll here)

And you do what??? You set it on Auto, leaving the camera to choose and set its ISO, shutter speed, aperture, white balance, picture control, and a zillion other manual settings envied by pocket camera users. You even leave it to the camera to choose which object it should focus on by setting it to Multi Area Focus. You then set your camera to keep the photos in its lowest resolution possible to save on memory card storage. And although you could make big prints out of them, you never do.

Topping the list: you say that you’d never change lenses as you fear that dust might get into your interchangeable-lens camera!

 

I Think Some People Really “Need” SLRs

No it’s not a typo

Go visit a shopping mall, any shopping mall, in its rather busier hour. Take a normal breath (doesn’t have to be a deep one, you’ll see ) and hold it in. While holding your breath, look around and try to spot a visitor with an SLR draped around his/her neck. Unless you’re visually challenged (or you’re holding your breath in the mall’s parking lot), the odds say you’ll live to read my next article (my gain, your loss ).

I once saw a cool looking fellow strolling the mall oh-so-confidently with his entry-level SLR hanging freely in front of his chest, complete with his basic 70-300 lens zoomed all the way to its longest setting. I honestly thought that it was purely unintentional, and I simply assumed that the lens zoom mechanism was loose and it had crept out accidently. So imagine how hard my jaw dropped when the fellow stopped, checked his lens (that apparently had crept back in a little) and zoomed it to its longest setting again! (Moron factor. Check!)

 

I Think Manual Books Kill Trees!

I strongly feel that manufacturers should just leave out manual books when they ship cameras. People just don’t read manuals.

If you say you do, then stop setting your camera to Manual FOCUS mode when I mean Manual METERING mode. (Gosh, photography is hard enough, let the camera handle the focusing, our eyes just cannot match the accuracy of the camera focusing system).

If you say you do, then stop asking why you cannot get every object (of different distances relative to the camera) in your frame in focus, though you had set the camera to Evaluative Metering mode!

 

I Think Some Customers WANT Bad Pictures

They search for the cheapest photographers. They’d prefer vendors they meet at the cut-throat wedding conventions over vendors they’d have to meet personally. They force their so-called “concept” into the photographers. They don’t listen to the photographer’s advices. They must want bad pictures

 

I Think Indonesia is the Best and Worst Place for Photography

Top notch sceneries. Top notch gangsta’-like securities. Enough said

To me, shooting weddings is a real love-and-hate game. Hate the lengthy gear preparation the night before (charging 22 batteries is a buzz-kill ). Hate the fact that I have to wake up before I’m even officially asleep (gosh, how a 3-am make up session does wonder to your sleep quality). Hate the overly annoying family members, who think they’re better shooters than your beloved photographer here. (Yes lady, I checked out your FB page! Your pictures (censored by the magazine editor!)

On the flip side, love the ice-breaking conversations I have with the nervous bride so early in the day, and that first smile of hers I get on camera. Love the reaction on people’s faces when I show them the pictures I just took. Love the moment when a super-cool dad breaks down in tears realizing he’s no longer the number one guy in his baby daughter’s life (Dads, no worries, you’ll always be her favorite, forever ).

Now, the love got me into the business. And despite the hate, the love keeps me in. And despite the constant protests from my old failing body, the love drags me back in. And as I once said in one of my Facebook posts, I wish that I could be a part of this, forever.

So it really broke my heart to see the oh-now-so-many heartless wanna-be wedding photographers starting their business with a huge huge bang (think gigantic stand in every wedding exhibition, with prices so low you’d swear they’re subsidized by the government ), and ending the very same business not a year or two later, driven to the ground by the endless disgruntled clients they let down. Making matters worse, unlike other choices in life, choosing a wedding photographer isn’t a choice you could easily correct further down the road, as you’d usually realize your mistake on your wedding day, or after,  way too late to do anything.

    And, by the very same token, most couple looking for a wedding photographer, simply don’t have the know-hows to successfully gauge a photographer they’re about to hire. Read on, this article might just help you.

 

The Portfolio

Don’t be fooled by a few nice photographs. Make sure you ask to see enough of their portfolio. Ask how many weddings are exactly under their belts, and get the pictures to back up their answer. You don’t want inexperienced newbies photographing your once-in-a-life-time event.

Identify and convey to them the pictures that you like and the ones you dislike, and why. Take a little control on how your pictures will turn out.

Find out what the process is like with your pictures, and how long the process takes. Wedding pictures are so much less fun to look at if they’re only delivered to you a year after your wedding.

The Reputation

Ask around, ask around, ask around. Go to review sites, and look for comments on your photographer.

Find couples that used their service before, and kindly shoot them a nice e-mail. They’re the best source of information on your photographers. Don’t forget to send them a warm thank-you note after your wedding.

 

The Meet and Greet

But nothing beats your own guts. You need photographers that click with you, they’ll spend the whole day with you . You want photographers that can take pictures as you see them in your head.  So insist on meeting the photographer before you sign that contract.

Good photographers would always want to see who they’re going to shoot, so they can start drafting that concept in their head. So, mid-way into the conversation, ask how they would imagine shooting your day, and the feedback should give you a better understanding on us, photographers. We’re always happy to share our concept and ideas with you. Just pay for our meal and drink, we’re making a lot less profits than you think.

Fourteen long and tiring hours into our first wedding photo gig this wedding season, and I got a virtual bitch-slap to the back of my head. Rudy Raharjo, my photography partner-in-crime slash cousin, turned to me and calmly asked “Are you going to sing tonight?”  Eight awkward seconds and one dumb-blank-look later, the best line I could mumble out was a trembling sorry-ass “Yes”.

Now, I love singing. Why, you ask? Singing transports me to a serene place where everything is perfectly orchestrated and flawlessly in tune, a stark contrast to the bitter and chaotic mess we call life. How much, you ask? So much that your beloved photographer wholeheartedly started a wedding band, ready to serve you and your loved ones, whenever he’s not booked to shoot a photo session

It was just that the song the bride chose for me, Michael Buble’s Dream a Little Dream, was a pop jazz piece that usually needs several takes of practice for the band to master. It was just that I forgot to print out the lyric. It was just that I had been laughing and joking all day that my voice was half-gone.

Aside from the annoying off-tune meant-to-be-harmony from the band singer, the ordeal ended well, though. J And when the bubbly MC yelled “One more!”, I knew I got lucky that nothing went wrong. Let’s count my blessings, shall we? 1. Although the band wasn’t familiar with the song (the bride swore she informed the band several days before ), the saxophonist happened to have the song on his mobile phone.  2. My old brain decided to show up for work and remembered all the words. 3. The heavy rain pushed the start of the wedding back, allowing us to have one more practice run at the song. 4. The sorry attempt by the male singer to throw me off tune failed miserably! (Kidding!)

One should never leave success to chance. Never. And the same is true, if not truer, for professional wedding photography. Read on, and I guarantee that you’d have much less shooting hiccups.

 

The Virtual Run Down

I always take the time to slowly visualize the shooting day in my head, as detailed as humanly possible. It allows me to visualize the gears, foresee any potential issues, and plan accordingly. Be paranoid, identify the things that can go wrong, and what you can do to prevent and/or overcome the potential issues. Never, ever, allow your plan to have a single point of failure. On a wedding assignment, I carry 2 cameras, 4 sets of camera batteries, 2 flashes, 5 sets of flash batteries, some-40 GB memory cards, and a mobile hard drive to back up the memory cards. Lenses? 24-70/2.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.8, 135/2, and 70-200/2.8. That way, if one piece (or two, God forbid) goes wrong, the others will let you run safely through the rest of the day.

 

The Preparation

Charge your batteries, format your memory cards, reset the cameras back to your preferred settings, clean your lenses, re-read the plan/concept, and folks, it doesn’t stop there .

Ready your clothes, pack a mint. Get enough rest, you’ll need to be quick on your feet tomorrow. Don’t eat anything challenging. Put all your bags in one spot, ready to be lugged.  And by all means, set at least two alarm clocks!

 

The Shooting Day

First off, check your camera settings, and make sure they’re set to your likings, before you start shooting.

Shoot RAW. Memory cards are darn cheap these days. Shooting RAW allows you to correct your picture style, exposure, and white balance later on. And while we’re on the subject, get the higher-speed memory cards, you don’t want to be losing moments.

Chimpings are good! Take full advantage of shooting digital and check your results often. Mistakes will be made, just make sure you find out soon enough to correct them.

And smile often! You’re less likely to be yelled at for your mistake when you’re smiling.

                And as you’re reading this article, you must be thinking, how did the dream get unpoofed?   One single innocent Facebook message from a photography-oriented group member undid my brain bind. A simple “Hi” pulled me back into the group I hadn’t had the time to read, let alone participate. And as I casually browsed along, I found myself smiling as I came across new exciting things, and my grin grew even bigger as I witnessed how some things will never ever change.

“Just how much your photo equipments affect the quality of your pictures?” remains one of the most asked questions of all time.  And it gets asked a lot, and in so many forms, in the said Facebook group. If you care to spin some perspective into the issue, you’d understand why so many people blurt out that very question. Producing good pictures is a darn difficult task, but you see great photos (and great photographers) left and right these days. And when you’re not YET (have faith, people ) churning away good pictures, it’s very common for you to believe that you could do better by just upgrading your photo equipments (instead of upgrading your photography skills and understanding ).

Now I could go on and on, north and south, up and down, and discuss the A to Z of things. But in case you haven’t been paying attention, I only get 1 tiny page, and despite my constant bitching, I suspect we’d see peace in Middle East before they’d raise my quota   So here’s my abbreviated (and confusing:-) )take.

 

YES! Equipments matter! (But only to an extent)

You don’t really think your cheaper-than-your-shoe pocket camera can compete with that camera sitting so beautifully behind that shopping window you’ve been leaving your drool on for the past month, do you?

Pocket cameras are on their own easy-to-carry, acceptable-for-amateurish-print league and Prosumer cameras are in their in-betweens world. Accept that fact. And yes, there are some tricks to take some great photos with those cameras (go revisit a previous article of mine), but in general, prices don’t lie.

Once you get into the DSLR area, most bets are off, though. You now have in your plate, the full manual control that you don’t get with the pocket cameras, and the wide range of great lenses that Prosumer cameras don’t allow, by design.

 

Full manual control – Love it or hate it?

This is, in essence, the number one reason why pros can take great photos. They take control. They decide each of the many little parameters that make up a photo. Be it focus point, ISO, speed, aperture, metering mode, color temperature, focal length, angle (and I have yet to get to the non-technical side of things, like wardrobes, mood, props, and a zillion others).

So, if you’re the type that would take advantage of having a full manual control, then YES! Equipments will greatly affect the quality of your shots. Ohers? Rrrrr.. Equipments’ll help, but not by much Read on, you’ll know.

 

The speed of things

Camera response time is arguably the main differentiator between any two camera levels. Other differentiators (Number of AF points, number of CF slots, battery power, full frame vs DX, etc) can be remedied by clever work-arounds. But response time simply can’t be fooled. This is why wedding photographers invest in professional camera bodies. They can’t afford to miss those priceless moments.

But if you’re a weekend photo hunter whose objects can be told to pose or wait for you, spending the extra bucks on a pro camera wouldn’t do you a lot of good. Instead, spend on..

 

Glasses

I mean, lenses

Now this is a whole different discussion altogether when we’re talking lenses. Pricier lenses tend to be sharper (in the middle or even all across), focus faster, and let more lights in (which also results in the ability to blur the fore/background).

So, this is the one area I’d suggest you to go crazy on. But, sharp objects and blurry background get old real quickly if the photo is lacking framing, emotion/mood, clever posing and good..

 

Lighting

Good lighting is so easily overlooked. They create beautiful photos, but most people aren’t aware of the lighting complexities behind the scene.

And as I’m already well over my 1-page quota, let me just tell you this, if you’re MOST people, spend your money elsewhere

I was sipping my overpriced cup of hazelnut latte, sucking in polluted Jakarta outdoor air into my poor lungs, enjoying my far-too-precious time with my family on a Sunday late afternoon a few years back, when my mom stated calmly, but firmly, that had I been more outgoing, I would have more friends. My kid sister, a living proof of how speed-of-mouth can well outrun speed-of-thought (peace sis ), quickly added that I simply am too quiet, and must really work on how I interact with people.

And at that very moment, I thought to myself, no one, no one, really knows us, but ourselves. People change, we go through many phases in our lives. And we’re labeled, many times, along the way. So it’s completely normal that my family still sees me as this fat introvert kid who can down one jurassic piece of bread in 2 seconds flat. It’s also normal that my high school friends remember me as the still fat piano-and-guitar player who couldn’t stop talking . And yes, it’s perfectly normal that my college friends see me as this skinni-er hyperactive all-sports-playing dude who’d go longer than the Energizer bunny. And the longer you go, the more labels people tag on you.

But let me let you in on a little secret of mine, a secret perhaps only a handful of loved ones are aware of.  Folks, I’m a romantic. A foolish,  hopeless, romantic. And it was one of the main reasons I took the plunge into the wedding photography business. The smiles, the tears, the drama (mix a psychotic overprotective single parent mother-of-the-groom trying to let go of her only son with one razor-sharp-tongue high-pitched bride, and you WILL get drama! ), but most of all, the love-filled atmosphere of the wedding day, make me want to do this forever. And I really hope that my pictures can serve as a reminder to those couples going through patches of rough time, that it was love that brought them together in the first place, a love worth fighting for.

Most people probably go through around 100 weddings in their lifetime. For most guys, that’s 100 too many! And if you’re like most guys with cameras, you’ve likely wondered what it’d be to photograph a wedding as a guest or a family member. So read on brothers!  (sisters are welcome too )

 

Stay Clear of the Pros!  

Dude! I know you’re a family member or a close friend. And I know that you think that makes you more important than us, mere photographers. But when you’re in our way, you’re actually hurting the couple ‘cause you’re preventing us from putting good pictures into their wedding albums. And you simply can’t undo the damage. So, work with the pros, politely introduce yourself, offer to help them with family members, and they’ll work you in. Win win.

 

Be Informed

Good photographers stay ahead of the moments, so they’re the ones who are standing with the perfect gear set up, in the perfect spot, snapping away when the moments are happening. Amateurs? They’re the ones trying to ready their gear or rushing to get to the spot. So, get the Wedding Rundown from the couple of the Wedding Organizer days ahead, and envision yourself shooting through the day, and you’ll know what to do.

 

Be Patient, You’re HUNTING

Imagine your shot, set the exposure, and wait. Wait for the perfect moment, don’t give up easily. If need be, help create the moment by telling a sweet story or by cracking a joke. Follow your hunch, snap away. You’ll smile when you see the results

 

Come Prepared, but Pack Lightly

A DSLR body, 17-50/2.8 and 50/1.8 lenses, a flash unit, enough memory cards and batteries are what this doctor recommends

 

Share the Joy

Pros often need weeks before they can deliver the draft photos to the happy couple.  So, pick some of your best shots, and quickly send them to the couple, you’d really make their day!

    It had hit me many times before. And by many, I mean MANY. Yet, I couldn’t be further from mastering how to feel when it hits. And as I’m cracking my blackberry-ridden sore hand knuckles, I’m beginning to see that I will never ever get used to it.

I am old. That’s what hit me (yet again) today. Now I’m not saying I’m Queen Elizabeth-old. (can you feel my death stare?) Heck, I’m not even saying I’m Prince Charles-old (although the dude does look pretty old. But hey, if you’ve been waiting to be crowned King for 62 years and counting, you WILL look old ).

So just how old do I feel? Old enough to badly miss my younger years. Oh the years when things were so much simpler. So simple that the day of the week was defined by what TV series was playing on the one-and-only cable TV station in town, RCTI .  So simple that my kid brother would view a shortage of chicken meat as a natural disaster (sorry Ping ). But most of all, life was simple ‘cause the notion of wealth hadn’t really corrupted our mind just yet.

Fast forward 30 years, and the harsh truth is staring you cold in the eyes. And when we look in the mirror, we see the image we thought we’d never become. We see people with endless issues, we see a wrinkle for every family turbulence we’ve survived, we see our ever growing eye bags with every financial headache we’ve had to overcome.

That’s probably why more and more people turn to photography as part of their effort to escape that taxing image. Perhaps, it’s the picture creating process. Perhaps, it’s the friends we make along the way. Or perhaps, it’s just the pleasant feeling of lugging a DSLR. Whatever the reason (or excuse, to be completely thorough:-) ), photography could serve as an effective stress-relieving outlet, and let me share how you can start snapping away with (almost) any type of budget.

 

Under IDR 3 million

Go buy a used prosumer camera (e.g. Panasonic FZ series). Prosumer cameras give you the manual control, decent zoom range, and at times, quite fast lenses (in terms of maximum aperture). Yes, the sensor is on the small side, but you weren’t really shooting for a wallpaper-size print at this budget, were you? And yes, buying used has its risks, so you need to be careful. But with this budget, you really don’t have any room to be picky, right?

 

IDR 3-6 million

Forget the DSLRs. You’d still be better off getting a new prosumer camera at this budget range. Forcing a DSLR here would leave you with a crappy kit zoom lens. And *sigh* yes, many great photographers take amazing pictures with crappy kit zoom lens. But you’re not one of them, are you?

 

IDR 6-10 million

Now we’re talking Buy an entry level DSLR, without the kit lens (get my drift?). Then find a 3rd party 17-50/2.8 lens. Trust me, they’re a gazillion times better in terms of sharpness and ability in making your object stand out. Use the rest of the budget on a 50/1.8 lens. You’ll be amazed by what you can achieve with this system.

 

IDR 10-20 million

Control that urge of yours to upgrade your DSLR. Unless you’re a wedding or action photographer, you’d see very little benefit in upgrading. Instead, expand the above system in the following order: an external flash that you can bounce off the wall (you’ll drool over the soft diffused lighting), an 85/1.8 lens (models, errr I mean, your wife, would love this lens ), then spend on accessories. Again, buy used whenever you can, and you just might be able to squeeze a camera upgrade with the budget leftover.

 

IDR 20-30 million

Sell the 85/1.8, get a 70-200/2.8. Upgrade your DSLR.

 

Above 30 million

Dude, you don’t really have any business reading this article with that much money, do you?