Wedding on HMS Warrior:

[Radiohead]

An interesting venue for yesterday's wedding - very impressive but a nightmare for light. The ceremony was on the gun deck (ie, indoors) and the ship is about 80 feet width with no light from above and 7 foot ceilings with steel girders every 8 feet - so trying to bounce up meant the light was stopped from spreading by the girders. The only natural light was from the cannon portholes every 15 feet or so, so I was at ISO2000 from the word go. Outside on the main deck the sun was in and out of clouds all day and really windy. I haven't used flash so much for ages and got through 3 sets of AA's.

Some early shots as I go:

[Radiohead]

This one is only here to show the amount of natural light I had to play with:



And this one to show how dark it was down the deck and how the girders killed my efforts to bounce:

[cedmondson]

Hardly surprising you had tricky conditions in an environment far better suited to can(n)ons

Nice work though (as usual).

The one of the bride astride the cannon is begging for a caption far wittier than anything I can think of right now.

[kevin glover]

Guy, looks like this one really tested your skills and patience to the max, a very tough assignment but as usual you have coped admirably(no pun intended!).
You've gotta love the fact that the D3 allows you to ramp up to ISO 2000 and you can still easily produce A4 full bleed images.
Have you got your D700 yet, if so what are your early impressions?, finally... if I may be so bold, the image of the B+G on the ships deck is lovely, however I would want to remove the rope that dangles down behind the grooms head, I just found that my eye kept being drawn to it no matter how many times I looked away, just an observation.

[Radiohead]

Originally Posted by kevin glover

Guy, looks like this one really tested your skills and patience to the max, a very tough assignment but as usual you have coped admirably(no pun intended!).
You've gotta love the fact that the D3 allows you to ramp up to ISO 2000 and you can still easily produce A4 full bleed images.
Have you got your D700 yet, if so what are your early impressions?, finally... if I may be so bold, the image of the B+G on the ships deck is lovely, however I would want to remove the rope that dangles down behind the grooms head, I just found that my eye kept being drawn to it no matter how many times I looked away, just an observation.

It was a right pain - we couldn't any further left as it was roped off behind me and moving them at all revealed the stuff piled behind them out of sight (they;re doing some work on the ship).

D700 yes, but I didn't use it yesterday due to lack of testing of it,

Originally Posted by cedmondson

Hardly surprising you had tricky conditions in an environment far better suited to can(n)ons

Nice work though (as usual).

The one of the bride astride the cannon is begging for a caption far wittier than anything I can think of right now.

That one was her idea

[denno75uk]

Agreed, the high ISO performance is very impressive. But again, it's your mastery of it that has produced the results.
The one of the bridesmaid jumping along the deck is a delight.
And yes, the bride astride the canon is just begging for a caption. I too can't think of anything funny enough. Nor clean enough. Interesting to note that it was her idea. I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall if it had been you suggesting that one, however obvious it may have seemed.

[senu]

I must say they look "effortlessly tasteful" to me for the most part although the sparse "crowd" is noticeable by its absence
TBH if you hadn't given the background story it would be easy to think: "Just another day at the office for Guy"
Do you find that Mono is sympathetic to lower light photography?
Also , as you couldn't bounce upwards did you have to do 45-60 degree bounce
Were you planning to use the last one?
PS: her being astride the cannon was no doubt a gesture to playfulness on her wedding day.. no more..
( you pervs!!)

[Radiohead]

I think you cou;d have had 300 people on the gun deck before it looked well populated. I had a great 30 minutes wandering around the whole thing later in the evening when the camera was down. It's a very, very impressive piece of machinery (Warrior, not the D3 )

Mono will work well in there because of the colour casts from ambient, flash and tungsten light and the low ceilings. I used some angled flash and some straight on with a diffuser and -1.0 FEV where there was nothing behind to catch the shadow. I may well use that last shot with some cropping and a conversion. I'm still rating other shots so haven't decided yet!

[salubrious_k]

Guy, you're getting better and better. I really like this selection!

[Radiohead]

Thanks Jon - I'll add some more shots tomorrow when I do the bulk of the processing

[Bristol Pete]

Quality work time and time again. Nice one mate.

[Biscuit761]

Superb informal shots, these and Salubriuos's recent wedding shots are amongst the best I can remember seeing, love the last one of the first set, a group of really happy people.

Bill

[Beachball]

Great set of shots Guy.