5 things you must do if you're asked to photograph a wedding at the last minute

Chris and Maria 

1.     Say "yes" and rearrange anything else you have on, I promise you it will be worth it. On Saturday I got a call at 12.30pm to see if I could stand in for a no-show photographer at a big wedding. After a moment's hesitation (we were just about to go out for the afternoon for my daughter's 13th birthday), I agreed to do it and asked "where" and "when?". "In Chester in half an hour!" 

      

      I think the bride and I set off for the church at the same time, the bride in a chauffeur driven vintage car and me in a husband-driven Subaru. The bride looking radiant in a stunning dress and veil, with beautifully styled hair and flawless make up; me with barely dry, un- straightened hair, no make up (!) and a top I had regretted buying but was clean and not creased. Not my usual wedding photographer "uniform".

2.     Be prepared! Every time you finish a job, put your batteries on charge and format your memory cards, just in case you ever need to be an emergency wedding photographer! This is now a new rule of mine as it would have saved me a lot of stress on Saturday! 

      Whilst I panicked over the state of batteries and cards in the car, my three companions made helpful comments to keep me calm; Sam: "you'll look like Mad Eye Moody running into the church late..." This is a character from Harry Potter, but you don't need to know that to get the idea! Nic: "you should always keep your batteries charged and cards formatted just in case…"

3.     Keep calm and do what you're good at. I've done enough weddings and events now to know what I'm doing, despite not having time to do any preparation, never mind not having even met the bride and groom. They were quite easy to spot, in front of the alter, quite spruced up, talking to a guy wearing white robes. As I started shooting, I was picking up information on the hoof: 

• this was a wedding attended by a lot of people from Spain (the priest kept dropping in the odd Spanish word);
• it was a Catholic wedding (we were still there after 20 minutes);
• it was a very big wedding (both sides of the church were packed);
• this was going to be a lively gig (lots of laughter and spontaneous dancing and singing after the service, especially Y Viva Espagna!). This meant it was a delight to photograph, with so much Latin emotion and expressiveness, unlike us reserved Brits.

"A lively gig" with lots of spontaneous dancing

4.     Don't be afraid to ask for help. At the first opportunity I had a quick word with the videographers (Tom & Tom from Silk Wedding Films) and sorted a lift to the hotel and got a quick view of the schedule for the day. TomTom were great all day, making sure I knew when things were happening, especially when we would get fed! 

      When we arrived at the hotel everything was happening so fast, the light was fading and I hadn't had chance to suss out how to pose the bride and groom in the car. So I asked the chauffeur for his advice. He was more than happy to help as he wanted his car to look great in the pictures.

Great pose in the car

5.     Put the bride and groom's needs first above everything else. It must have been awful for them to have the stress of the photographer not showing up, but I just assured them that they would still have amazing pictures by which to remember their wedding. I tried to find out if anyone had been taking pictures prior to the church service, as I knew that the happy couple would want a complete record of their big day in the album. I've now got a great selection of photos of the bride getting ready before the ceremony and I'm going to pick the best ones and give them a professional makeover so that they can be included.

Chris and Maria with Mark, the hotel General Manager - the man who made the call at 12.30pm

I really enjoyed being an emergency wedding photographer and would do it again in a flash. I didn't have any time to get nervous and it was really rewarding to be told umpteen times that I was a super hero and had "saved the day". I always knew those Wonder Woman pants would come in useful one day! I really can't wait to show the final photographs to Chris and Maria, as they were an amazing couple, so laid back, lots of fun and totally in love, of course.

By Jane Burkinshaw, Emergency Wedding Photographer

How to create a Facebook banner using Picasa (by Cheshire Photographer Jane Burkinshaw)

Would you like to know how to create a banner like this one for the top of your Facebook page, without using Photoshop and without having to spend money on templates? You can create it easily in Picasa, free software from Google, that helps you to organise, edit and share your photos. Once you've downloaded it and told it which files you keep your pictures in, then you're good to go. It's very easy to use and always preserves your original image, regardless of the editing you perform.

To create a Facebook banner like this, select the photos that you would like to appear in the collage and click on "create collage". I've written a blog on how to create collages so if you're not sure how to do it then take a look at it first. 

You need to make your collage the right size so that it displays correctly on Facebook, so when you are creating it and are selecting the dimensions you need to scroll to the end of the size options and create a custom size. If you enter 30 X 11 as the dimensions and then name it as. Facebook banner, it will always be there for you to use.

Click on the image to see a larger version

You can shuffle the images around in your collage until it looks like you want it to. Just bear in mind that much of the bottom lefthand image will be concealed by your profile picture once you upload the banner to Facebook.

This is how it should look on Facebook once you've uploaded it

Once you've clicked on "Create Collage" and it's finished you will need to re-size it as it will probably be a bit big for Facebook. You need to use the "Export" option at the bottom of the Picasa screen. If you're not sure how to do this I've also written a blog on this(!) so take a look. Re-sizing images in Picasa. I'd re-size this banner to around 1000 pixels.

I love creating different banners for Facebook and keeping it fresh and topical. This one is to celebrate my son's 11th birthday this week.

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!

Shoot to live or live to shoot? (By Cheshire Photographer Jane Burkinshaw)

As a professional photographer of course I have to shoot to live i.e. take photos and get paid for them in order to earn a living. I do this by taking portraits of people, occasionally animals, and of businesses, products and events. However, there is another way to earn a living with a camera that I haven't explored yet: shooting for stock, that is taking photographs and submitting them to image libraries, where, hopefully, they will be purchased by people. Stock photography is big business, with photographic images needed for newspapers, magazines, websites, brochures, greetings cards, calendars, point of sale material etc etc. and it can be seen as "easy" money; you post your pictures and wait for the cash to come rolling in.

I've sold one image from a stock library and that was more by accident than design. Before going professional I posted a few of my best images onto a library that was a bit like Flickr and promptly forgot all about them. Several years later a cheque for £75 dropped through the letter box; someone had bought an image of some masks that I'd taken in Venice. I was really chuffed and started to look into how to get images accepted onto the more well known galleries like Getty and Shutterstock. I quickly concluded that I hadn't got enough images of the type required and that I still needed to focus on building my portraiture and commercial business.

Cut to the the present day where I now have an extensive library of photographs of all sorts of subjects and every now and again someone tells me I should be selling via image libraries. I was browsing the internet a few weeks ago when a course on how to get into stock photography caught my eye. I realised it was being run by someone who sold a lot of flower and garden photographs and decided to sign up.

The course was yesterday and it was great, really informative and I came away with all the knowledge I need to start submitting to image libraries. But something's been bugging me since and I've been mulling it over and over. The course leader is a successful stock photographer, selling tens if not hundreds of images per month, some at less than 20 pence per image, others for £400. This is no mean accomplishment and it has taken her about four years to get to that stage. But what struck me was how cynical she was about the industry and how "un-passionate" she was about her trade. Photography for her was now only a means to earn money and she didn't shoot the things she enjoyed photographing, just the ones that she knew would sell. "If it won't sell, I don't shoot it."

Now that is just good commercial discipline and I get that. When I'm photographing a newborn I avoid unflattering poses and ugly angles as I know the parents won't like the image and it won't end up as a framed print, so why waste my valuable time. What I couldn't get my head around was that this photographer would shoot stuff that was mediocre, uninspiring and in her own words "not a great photograph" purely because she knew it would sell. She laughed about us not reacting to her images with "oo's" and "aa's" and didn't seem to mind that we weren't blown away by her work. I spoke to her at lunchtime and she said she couldn't remember the last time she'd picked her camera up for pleasure and just taken it out with her.

I couldn't do that, I love what I do and every picture I take has to be the best I can do or it doesn't make it into my galleries, in front of a client, or in the future, into an image library. I know who will make the most money from stock photography and it won't be me, but I'm not willing to sacrifice my  passion and enjoyment for the sake of earning more money. I've been trying to think of a comparison with other industries and I guess it could be a bit like a talented chef giving up working   in a top restaurant serving fine cuisine and instead setting up a fast food restaurant  because it would earn him more money.

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!

Wintry walks with a compact camera (by Cheshire Photographer Jane Burkinshaw)

I've been desperate for some proper wintry weather, a hard hoar frost to transform everywhere into a glittery winter wonderland, or a decent covering of snow just for a few days, preferably over a weekend. Instead it's been mild, wild and wet for the most part, depriving us photographers of any typical winter landscapes to get excited about. If it weren't for Ferb, our Italian water dog (a lagotto  if you want his posh name) I would have stayed indoors waiting for more exciting and photogenic weather to arrive. Our energetic dog lives up to his name and needs his daily splash in filthy water, so we've been out anyway and along with lead, treats and poo bags, I always pick up a camera on the way out of the door.

Occasionally I have a photographic mission in mind and will take a SLR and specific lens along with me, my "nifty fifty" for arty, soft focus shots of forest and fauna, or "big boy" (my super fast Canon 70-200mm f/2.8) for action shots of Ferb haring along woodland paths chasing squirrels. Lately, due to an increasingly painful tennis elbow (or in my case photographer's elbow) I've had to opt for a much lighter load, so it's the Fujifilm X10 that's accompanied me. Not that I'm complaining as it's a wonderful little camera, with a maximum aperture of f/2.0-2.8, beautiful colours and great performance in low light. A whole load of other typically Fuji features make it a joy to use, much more than a point and shoot compact. The zoom is a bit limited at 28-112mm but for general shots of landscapes, close ups and portraits (usually my husband or the dog!) it's perfectly adequate. If you'd like to see more images taken with this lovely camera see my Pinterest Board.

All taken with the Fujifilm X10. I had some fun editing them too with actions in Photoshop Elements.

You might wonder what I've found to photograph on our muddy walks, but if you've got the clicking bug like me, then almost anything can be transformed into a picture if it catches the light in an interesting way, or if you can see a striking composition. I have a thing for trees at the moment, but haven't quite mastered how to shoot them when there's a lot of other trees around them creating clutter. Watch this space for a tree project one day. On our last few walks we've had a few sunny spells and the low winter sun has created slanting shadows through the trees.

Top tip for this time of year

• Wintry light can be quite dull and if you are photographing anything that moves you need to watch that your shutter speed doesn't get too slow. It needs to be at least 1/250th of a second or your moving subject will be blurred.

• Check your shutter speed as you take the picture. As you half press the shutter button it will be displayed on the LCD display or in the viewfinder.

• Or after you take the image and are looking at it, if you press "Display" or "Info" (depending on your camera) then you can usually see what shutter speed you used.

• If it's less than 1/250th then you need to increase it. If you're using the green fully automatic mode then you need to change to P (Program Mode) by turning the dial on the top of your camera. The camera still does the important stuff automatically for you but you can take charge a little.

• Now look up how to change the ISO setting. This might be a button on the back of the camera or in the menus. Increase it to a higher number until your shutter speed is fast enough. You can check your shutter speed by half pressing the shutter down as you focus on your subject and checking what number it displays.

• You can do all of this on any type of camera apart from the majority of camera phones.

Knowing my way around the camera, being aware of what the camera can and can't do on the Auto settings and knowing what to do if the light is tricky is second nature to me now and I can concentrate for the most part on "seeing the image". If something happens unexpectedly I am ready to catch those spontaneous moments (or some of them at least!). Photography is a constant learning process for me, and probably for everyone and that's one of the things that makes it so addictive and enjoyable.

If you'd like to get to grips with your camera then why not book a course or one to one lesson with me. This all becomes second nature very quickly when someone shows you how to do it and it will make a dramatic difference to your photography.

By Jane Burkinshaw. Share this post by clicking on one of the Share buttons on the right hand side. I'd love to hear your comments too!