Wedding Photography—Creative Techniques for Lighting and Posing. - Review - book review

PSA Journal, March, 2000 by Timothy Dwight Morton

Wedding Photography--Creative Techniques for Lighting and Posing By Rick Ferro 152 pages, CD $45.22

Rick Ferro was the senior Wedding Photographer at Walt Disney World. He is now Director of Photography for K&K Video and Film Productions in Orlando, Florida. He has shot over 10,000 weddings.

This text is designed to assist the beginning professional wedding photographer, and indeed this is a field uniquely operated by professionals. But the text is well-worth reading if you are attending a wedding for two reasons--first to suggest ways to improve the casual shots that you might take as a friend, and secondly, to help you understand what the professional photographers are doing at the event.

Much of the practical information is of use primarily to the professional-timing, pricing, the appropriate grouping and the like. But the illustrations and the comments on the illustrations are of general usefulness. Two aspects are particularly striking about wedding photography as presented here. First, the participants are for the most part more concerned with other matters than the photographs, so the photographer has to seize the moment, and occasionally act as stage-manager of the event. The advice here would apply equally to an amateur trying to get some nice shots of an informal picnic, or family party. Secondly, the wedding itself usually makes a visual composite of the people and the building--characteristically the church--both of which will be important for the memories stimulated by the finished photos. Bridal dress tends to be light and flowing--churches tend to be dark and are certainly solid. To let the two play off each other and capture the key emotions are the task of the wedding photographer, and also any amateur photographer taking pictures against an architectural background--typically, perhaps, travel photos--"My friend in front of the Tower of London!" This text is filled with useful hints for placing and lighting, and the illustrations--especially those of cloisters--are admirable and moving.

This text, then, while directed at a very specific readership, is a very useful guide to photographers in general.