Indoor Weddings
Barrick-Melnik Wedding
I’ve known Bryce and Jenya since high school, and just by chance we ended up becoming closer friends long after high school through my cousin Wence. Their wedding ended up being quite informal, with the celebration actually involving a video of the short 5-min wedding itself that had taken place months earlier. After the video, we feasted on a taco bar and played a plethora of board games. Overall, we all had a great fun time and I felt quite honored to be their choice for their photography. Eugene let me borrow his D300 again for my second body, and once again the lack of high ISO noise impressed me yet again. This lack of noise makes me extremely excited to upgrade to a D700 or higher, which hopefully will happen sooner rather than later.
Link to all the photos: http://verdugo.smugmug.com/Weddings/Barrick-Melnik-Wedding/
Selected favorites:
Rogers-Spradlin Wedding
My good and long time friends, Russell and Suzy finally tied the knot on the 24th in Redmond, WA. It was a relatively small wedding, with both the ceremony itself and the reception taking place at the Clise Mansion in Marymoor Park. I teamed up with my good friend and fellow photographer Tanya Jose, since we’re both friends of Russell and Suzy and this would be our joint wedding gift for them. I started out the day with the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D that I purchased from Josh Mackey, and then let Tanya use it for the rest of the day. I then switched over to my venerable Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8, which remained on the camera throughout the wedding and reception. Special thanks again to Wence Estrada for helping with the lighting.
Tanya and I decided to split up the wedding photo duties, with myself taking all of the main posed photos and wide angle shots, while she kept the 50mm on her camera for the short telephoto and candids. She said she’d be processing her photos as soon as I finished mine, so I’ll be posting up a link to her photos as soon as she has them ready. The D300 worked great as already proven, and shooting at ISO2000 in the very dimly-lit room proved to be perfectly fine. Without further ado, here is a link to the galleries:
http://verdugo.smugmug.com/Weddings/Rogers-Spradlin
And a few of my personal favorites:
Congratulations once again to Russell and Suzy! I’m sure I’ll see both of you two soon 
Donckers-Klingele Wedding
Wence and I made the trek out to Yakima to shoot Ryan and Rachel’s wedding. We made the wise decision to drive over on Friday night rather than Saturday morning and thanks to Wence’s driving, we made it from Seattle to our hotel in Yakima in almost exactly 2 hours, which included a break to get fast food in Ellensburg. With a good, solid 8 hours of sleep under our belts, it was business as usual starting with photographing the groom and groomsmen getting ready at the hotel. We then headed over to the bride’s parent’s residence to document getting into the wedding dress, and then took the wedding party photos at the Yakima Arboretum. After a quick 45 minutes there, we made haste to the church, where both the wedding ceremony and reception took place. Everything went smoothly and we were back on the road to Seattle by about 8 pm.
While my old D200 still did a great job with the Alpers-Merani Wedding, the high ISO noise compared to the D300 bugged me a great deal. Luckily, Eugene was nice enough to let me borrow his D300 to be my second body for this wedding, and it proved its worth very well since the church was much darker than I had expected. I used the same wide gamut of lenses at this wedding except for the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 and the Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 Micro. The Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 once again proved to be a great low-light lens during the reception, especially since it’s nowhere near as obtrusive-looking as the big “Hatori Hanzo” Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. Since the 50mm didn’t get much use, I actually did end up selling it in favor of the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 that I bought from Mackey. Anyway, here’s a link to the galleries:
http://verdugo.smugmug.com/Weddings/Donckers-Klingele-Wedding
And a few of my personal favorites:
Congratulations again to Ryan and Rachel! It was a pleasure to work with you
Alpers-Merani Wedding
What an epic wedding! This was my first wedding in awhile and I was anxious to see how well the D300/D200 combo would work out. The D300 really shined, but I have to say that the D200 was really starting to show its age, especially with the high ISO noise. Nevertheless, I think the photos still turned out quite well. The Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8 was the main workhorse throughout the day and truly proved its worth. If/when I decide to go full frame, I certainly hope that the new Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 can live up to how well the 17-55mm f/2.8 has worked for me all this time. I debated on renting the new Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8, but as it turned out, I only found myself using the ultra-wide during the reception. On the telephoto end of things, I used the 70-200mm f/2.8 for the wedding itself, but I switched it up with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 for the wedding party photos and reception. I even found use for my Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 Micro at the reception as well, so the only lens I didn’t use at all was the 50mm. Time to sell it? Maybe…
In any case, here’s the link to all the galleries: http://verdugo.smugmug.com/Weddings/Alpers-Merani-Wedding
And a few of my personal favorites:
Congratulations once again to Garret and Melissa! I had a great time shooting the wedding and I’m glad you like how the photos came out!
Stevens Wedding, 9-13-08
I wasn’t the hired photographer at my friend Brian’s wedding, but they were still thrilled with the very limited amount of photos that I was able to take. Most of my shots were taken with my telephoto lens from the back of the ceremony so that I wouldn’t get in the way of their hired photographer. The wedding ceremony and reception took place at Tyee Yacht Club on Lake Union in Seattle, WA. The location beautiful and made for a great wedding locale for a small wedding.
