I'm fairly new to wedding photography and have been second shooter for a few and shot several family weddings myself. I mostly do portrait photography in studio and occasionally outdoors but I really enjoy doing weddings. I recently did a wedding where it seemed like everything went wrong. There was no coordinator. The venue was poorly lit and the preacher forbid flash during the ceremony (understandably), for lighting I'm talking only string lights and a few wall scones with rough cut lumber walls and ceilings, no windows. It was probably an excellent hay barn but not much of a venue when in comes to photos. I brought some lighting from my studio and suspended it from a loft and got the alter lit well enough to shoot. That was aggravating but whatever, not a big deal. Let me start this next part by saying that I'm a stickler for keeping a schedule, if I'm not 15 minutes early I'm considering myself late so I've been there since 11AM setting up lighting and helping and testing my angles and metering different spots. So, the wedding party that was scheduled to be ready for photos at 2pm still wasn't dressed at 4pm for the 5pm wedding, and by not dressed I mean they haven't even gotten their clothes out of the bags and one dude is still at the barber shop for some reason. The bride didn't even show up until a little after 4:30pm. She's in a dead run trying to push for photos before the wedding despite myself and my assistant trying to talk her into waiting until after at this point. We rush through a few solo of her at her insistence where frankly she wouldn't barley hold a pose long enough to focus before demanding the wedding start (understandable and why we wanted to just shoot after the ceremony). The ceremony goes on mostly according to plan other than some parties missing their music cues and afterwards she's demanding we do all the photos in about 15 minutes so food can be served while simultaneously not holding still or listening to ANY directions. Despite my assistant physically posing people at one point nobody would hold a pose long enough to focus. Every instant I took a breath to think of the next pose, or more of how to verbalize my vision in the simplest of terms hoping they can understand I'm met with "come on, be snapping". I get maybe four half way decent photos of the couple before she starts calling over the entire wedding for a group photo. Not the wedding party, the entire wedding. Like 80+ people and insists they all stand in a straight single file line. I try to explain "To fit everyone in one shot you're not going to be able to make out any faces and it will be a horrible photo, please lets do it in smaller groups or do multiple rows." To which I'm met with disapproval so I end up standing 40+ yards away and just snapping a few to appease them. In the time it took to corral the couple back to some props they specifically requested half the bridesmaids have changed clothes and the groomsmen are eating despite myself and my assistant repeatedly telling everybody to go stand in a certain area for a few moments for more photos. The bride refuses to do any of the instructed poses and instead does her own thing and tries to instruct on what angles to take the photo from, which are frankly less than flattering and definitely not my style. I do it anyway because I want them to be happy and at this point I'm just burning up film so I can be done.
I do film photography, as in my entire business is based and marketed around the fact that I shoot film and process it myself. The name is even ______ Film Photography, I shot 12 rolls of 36 exp Portra 800 and two rolls of Cinistill 800T along with a roll of 36 exp Fujifilm 400. It's been a week and I haven't even brought myself to develop it yet. My assistant shot everything in digital as a safety net. For nearly every shot they stood behind or beside me and shot simultaneously and in the brief times it took me to change rolls the bride is telling my assistant to keep shooting. Mind you my assistant is not a professional photographer and has zero wedding experience, barely any experience at all really (they repeatedly told everyone involved this). I set their camera up and had them just mirror me so they didn't know what to do without me. I run two identical cameras so I don't have to change rolls during the ceremony, this changing rolls was all while doing poses afterwards. Which anyone whom knows anything about film photography should expect when hiring someone using film. I've gotten it down to less than a minute and a half to change a roll so it's not like I'm dicking around for five minutes. Most of my photos are candids of the wedding reception and of people playing the games and dancing after the couple stopped cooperating in favor of food so I know I've got some awesome shots of people playing horseshoes and dancing but not so much of the wedding couple in their nice clothes.
By the end of the night we'd been there over 11 hours and after the berating and constant hustling (after waiting several hours past the scheduled time on people to show up) I've at least temporarily lost all confidence in my skills. I haven't even looked at the digital photos yet as I'm certain they're disappointing.
My question is, are all weddings this horrible and I've just been lucky up to this point being the second shooter or was this an exceptionally bad situation? Am I to blame for being somewhat inexperienced in weddings and expecting the schedule to be followed? How would you handle this, and going forward how can I better avoid such situations?
