There are certain moments that you remember for the rest of your career.  In this case, it was about 45 minutes before the wedding, when the groom came up to me and said, “Ian, I forgot to tell you something.  Entire ceremony in Russian.”

I looked at Vlad and fired off the only phrase I remember from my college Russian class 18 years ago.  I think it translates as “I badly speak in Russian.”  Whatever it means, he laughed, so I’m pretty sure I didn’t accidentally ask him for permission to do something unnatural with his Pomeranian.

Luckily, it was a Jewish wedding, and generally, if you follow the cups, you’ll be pretty good there.

Not the easiest room to shoot in– it’s a nightclub where the area the chuppah was in had a black ceiling overhead.  For a less experienced photographer, it becomes difficult because there’s nowhere to bounce the flash.  I got permission from the rabbi (who’s a bit of a camera enthusiast, so he wanted complete details so he could learn my technique) and hid an off camera flash unit in the chuppah canopy– the white silk turned the whole thing into a giant studio light, with glorious, soft, flattering light.

One of the things that sets the full-time pros apart is the ability to make a quality image in spite of the circumstances.

Was going through my RSS reader this morning while Declan was eating breakfast  (Audrey and Caroline are still sleeping in), and I saw that Photo Business News had a link to a great piece on hiring a wedding photographer. A lot of times, these articles are either dated or don’t really bring you any insight into what real photographers are trying to accomplish in their methods, philosophies, and policies.  Evan from MyDeeJay.com went and interviewed a number of photographers in his market (Baltimore/Washington DC), and the result is one of the best articles I’ve seen on what you need to know about wedding photography and what questions you should be asking a shooter when you interview us during the process.

Even though the photographers he talks to are in a different region, pretty much everything they cover applies in any market in America.  Enjoy!

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I’ll have a couple of additional inside looks at some of my recent weddings going up on the blog shortly…