Second Shooting for Kate Leigh

Jul 15, 2010 By Rae in Weddings Comments Off

This has been an insane week… I had several things booked that had to be moved around due to a death in my family, so I apologize for the lack of blogging. Fortunately, just about everything is rescheduled, and I have a crazy second half of July! (starting tomorrow back up in Lake Placid, NY!) Anyway, last Saturday, before I travelled down to NC for the funeral… I did something I have never done before… I second shot a wedding. (with the fabulous Kate Leigh) For those of you non-photographers out there, second shooting is when you shoot for another photographer… ie. the photographer hires you (to help get another angle or things that are going on simultaneously) instead of the bride and groom hiring you.

This was a first for me. Most photographers start out doing this, and now, I know why. It is a great learning opportunity! I didn’t start out doing it simply because there wasn’t the opportunity to do so up in teeny tiny Saranac Lake, NY when I decided to do this thing for real. But, it was a great experience, even after having shot almost 100 weddings on my own. Of course, it took some getting used to for me… to not know the bride and groom at all… to not know their story or what they like… to not be the one calling the shots (though I didn’t miss that too terribly). ;-) But, it was a GREAT experience for me to be able to test out some different things, to always to be looking for something not obvious or mandatory… to TRY to offer something fresh to Kate Leigh for her clients, Danielle & Anthony. And, of course, it was so great to see how things are done in this area. This was only my third wedding in the Greater Philadelphia area, so I welcomed the opportunity to test out the waters as a second shooter first. I am looking forward to doing three more weddings with Kate Leigh this year and hope to do more for any of the rest of you Philadelphia photographers out there reading this!

At any rate, I hope you all are prepared for an epic post. Kate gave me permission to post whatever and whenever I wanted, and I am very grateful for that. But, the weird thing (and GREAT thing!) about this is that I don’t do any post-production past this post, so I had a HORRIBLE time narrowing these down… so I be prepared. I am sharing a ton! Check out Kate’s blog for more! Happy viewing, friends!

it started as a rainy day… while I had a moment at the church, I grabbed a few shots of the rings in a puddle.

i love the moments before a bride walks down the aisle…

a mom’s pride and joy!

we did it!

during the formals, I hunted for moments of joy…

… and peace…

I caught a few of the guys for Kate.

we went to Valley Forge for a few… BEAUTIFUL!!

sweetness!

and then… cocktail hour…

The reception was at the Phoenixville Foundry- awesome location!! I loved shooting from the balcony to give a completely different angle!

Kate and I exchanged a lot of emails… I wanted to be sure I knew what she expected of me and to not step on her toes. One thing I ask my second shooters to do is to focus more on reaction than action, which is challenging to do when you are used to the obvious shots… but, when Anthony dipped Danielle RIGHT in front of me, I couldn’t ignore it.