Above is the bride, assembling bouquets hours before her wedding. I like taking prep photos, because it means people are occupied, doing something. There's a story to the photos; much more interesting than posed pics. People are preoccupied, and are less self conscious.
I warm up to wedding photography by photographing stills. Flowers are an easy subject matter. Portable, no designated front or back, they look good without trying from any angle. But one can only needs so many flower pictures. Like cake pictures. My own wedding photographer took about 30 cake pictures. I think I spent about 5 seconds viewing all of them. Anyways, other still life subjects include shoes, rings, dresses.
I have trouble with dresses. The dresses I've so far photographed have been long and slinky, fabric cut on the bias. On a hanger, they are rather formless and look like long pieces of fabric. Plus, I am inevitably too short to transport them with one hand without dragging the skirt around, and of course there's no hope that I could reach a hook or ledge high enough to hang the dress. Which means dangling the camera from my neck, dress (always in a disagreeably slippery fabric, like satin) draped over two arms and maybe a shoulder, and kicking a chair into place or easing onto windowsills and still extending my arm at full length and tiptoeing to hook the dress hanger somewhere. Straps (usually tiny scraps of material, that yet somehow manage to hold up pounds of fabric that comprise the dress) slip off the hanger, and those little fabric loops that supposedly hold the dress in place don't do anything useful. They emerge tauntingly from the dress armpits, just out of reach. As I said, I have trouble with dresses.
