Scott Kelby
Salvaging a wedding shoot is Scott’s latest mission
Scott Kelby reveals how to turn sour weddingday lemons into glorious, sparkling lemonade
“Due to the flooding, in an instant, all our outdoor shots went away, so we were forced to shoot in the lobby and the dark bar”
Recently I was shooting a wedding, and had a ‘wedding day disaster’. It wasn’t caused by the usual problems (like equipment failure, dropping a lens, or forgetting a key piece of gear), but simply by bad weather.
We’d scoped out the wedding location well before the event. It was a hotel right
on the river with beautiful grounds, and it had this gorgeous outdoor terrace lined with beautiful columns – perfect for the bridal formals. With the river right there, and the beautiful landscaping around the hotel, we knew we had plenty of places to shoot, which was great because the interior of the hotel itself was… Well, it really gave you nothing. A small lobby and a dark bar filled with other hotel guests, and that was pretty much it. But luckily, we had all those outside areas.
Well, that was until some of the worst thunderstorms in years arrived in the morning. They stayed around so long that they had to close the streets leading to the hotel due to flooding. In an instant, all our outdoor shots went away, so we were forced to shoot in the ugly lobby and the dark bar. Ack!
We went to the hotel’s event manager and asked if there was any other place we could shoot. The only thing he could come up with was to give us access to a small conference room, where you’d normally host a small business meeting. He said, “At least there’s a window.” It was all we had, so we took it.
This tutorial is based around what we did there, and how we used a technique I shared on these pages a few months ago for shooting sports. We applied that same idea to our wedding shoot.
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