Oh, no! I've Become my Dad!

Actually I’m very proud of my Dad and love him dearly – though he is in Heaven.  I’ll leave that part to another blog entry, however.

When I was a child Dad used to love taking photographs.  When he passed, he left us with a collection of about 28,000 slides.  As I said, he loved taking photos!

He had a number of 35mm cameras, but his favorite that I recall as a child was a German “Exacta.”  He had a light meter, flash, lenses, and all the accessories.  He would scientifically size up the situation, measure the lighting, position us, set the f-stop and exposure, position himself for the best angle, carefully focus the camera, and finally snap the shot.  By the time he pressed the shutter button for that “perfect” picture, we were exhausted!  Have you ever tried to hold a smile without flinching for 10 minutes?  How I remember when the clouds dared to cover the sun just as he was about to snap the picture – oh, the pain!

Well, needless to say, I vowed never to become a photographer like Dad and make everybody endure the same torture.  In fact I was pretty good at keeping my word because the most complex camera I ever had was a Kodak Brownie which I used primarily to take “candid”, unposed shots.  I hated to waste that film, so I took very few pictures – until the digital revolution.

With my first digital camera I went around snapping pictures of anything that seemed interesting – after all I could delete it.  Of course I rarely did.  But still I didn’t make anyone pose, and took only pretty good, interesting, candid shots.  Then came Roseland Plantation…

You see, Roseland Plantation offers a number of wedding packages to accommodate any size wedding from an elopement to elaborate 350 person sit-down affairs.  We use professional photographers for the big events, but the cost is too high for the smaller events so we began offering reasonably priced Roseland Plantation photography as an option for the smaller weddings. 

And yes, I caved!  We bought a very expensive professional grade Canon SLR camera equipped with flash, lenses, etc.  You guessed it:  just like Dad.  I can take gorgeous pictures with it.  I still favor the “candid” shots, and I shoot a couple of hundred photos, which we provide unedited on CD, for the small weddings.  But we also take some formal, posed shots of the bride, groom, and family. 

Yes, you guessed it:  Just like Dad, I now scientifically size up the situation, measure the lighting, position us, position myself for the best angle and snap the shot.  But thanks to modern technology, the camera does all the time consuming work of measuring the light, focusing, setting the exposure, and so forth in an instant.  Some cameras actually have a smile detector for that perfect shot! 

Therefore in a way I’m still true to my word:  The bride and groom don’t have hold that smile for ten minutes, and it doesn’t matter if a cloud interferes with the lighting – the camera can take care of it instantly and still deliver perfect pictures.

At several hundred shots per wedding, it won’t take very long to surpass Dad’s record of 28,000 photographs!  I’ll let you know when we start posting some on the web under Wedding & Receptions > Roseland Plantation Brides.