It’s your wedding day. A day that you’ve been thinking about and planning for months and in some cases years. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Right? In most cases this is true but not when it comes to Mother Nature and not when it comes to heading out into the great outdoors for your wedding photography.

As those who had weddings in Edmonton this past weekend can attest to, Mother Nature doesn’t always appreciate the fact that it’s your wedding day. When Sarah and I were married back in July of 2004, Edmonton experienced a violent downpour resulting in parts of the Whitemud along with many basements being flooded. So what happens if Mother Nature decides to ruin your day with a flash flood, a violent downpour, a freak snow storm, or some other natural event that has everyone running indoors to escape her wrath? Fortunately for us – we had a backup plan.

It all begins with proper planning between you and your photographer. When we meet with our brides and grooms, we always make it clear to them that they need to have a backup location in mind and it is their responsibility to book something in the event of bad weather. The last thing you want to be doing on your wedding day is scrambling to find a good location so it’s a good idea to work out where you will go in advance so that everyone involved in photographs knows where to go in the event of bad weather. Here are five things to consider when planning to have your photography and/or wedding ceremony in the great outdoors:

1. Location, Location, Location

Once you’ve decided where your ceremony and reception are taking place, try to look for an indoor location that is conveniently located near where your ceremony or reception is taking place. The further away your backup location is, the more time you’ll spending getting to it which means the less time you and your photographer will have for photos. Also, if you plan to have your family photos done at an alternate location, keep in mind that it may take family members some time to get there and no matter how good your directions, there’s usually someone in every family who will get lost on the way.

If you are planning an outdoor ceremony, try to pick a backup location that is very close to where the outdoor ceremony was to take place. That will make it easier to redirect your guests to the new location when they arrive and if you have to pull any decorations indoors, you won’t have as far to go.

2. Accessibility

Consider the people on your guest list who will be attending the wedding. Are any of them in wheelchairs or need to use a walker? If they are going to be involved in the family photos, are they able to access the location easily? If the location involves climbing stairs to get to the area where you plan to do photos, will they be able to get there? Is the area handicap accessible? What about parking? You might pick what you think is the best indoor location but if grandma and grandpa can’t get there then it will be difficult for them to be in the photographs.

3. Availability & Affordability

There are only a limited number of great indoor locations in Edmonton where you can go for photographs. Many of the most popular venues such as the Muttart Conservatory, Art Gallery of Alberta, McGrath Mansion, and Rutherford House require you to book the space in advance and many also charge a fee to book the space. During the busy summer months, many of these locations book up to a year in advance. Fees will vary from location to location but in all cases the fee is typically non-refundable even if you don’t wind up using the space for your photography. The best way to think about this fee is as a form of wedding photography insurance. You hope you won’t need to use it but if the weather doesn’t allow you to do your photos outdoors, you’ll be glad you paid it.

If you are getting married in a church, many couples choose to use it as a backup location for family photos if they can’t go outside. If you’re planning on this option, find out if there is another wedding taking place after yours. If so, you may have to clear out as soon as your ceremony is over which means you won’t be able to use it as your backup indoor location.

4. Size of the Location vs. Size of Your Group

Before you book a location, consider it’s size relative to the size of your wedding party and family. If you plan on doing a lot of large family groupings, make sure the space that you’ve selected can accommodate everyone. Places like the Muttart Conservatory might look like a great location for photography but because of the way it’s laid out, it’s not the best location to photograph a large group of people. If you have a smaller group or plan to do more intimate family photos involving a small group, you may find that there are a few more locations for you to choose from.

5. Check with Your Photographer

Most experienced photographers have likely had to deal with adverse weather conditions and wedding parties who weren’t prepared with a backup plan. Ask your photographer for their advice on locations where you might be able to go but don’t wait until the night before to spring this on them. If you haven’t booked a location in advance, start looking at the long range weather forecast and if it doesn’t look good, start coming up with a Plan B. Before you book a location, seek the advise of your photographer on the suitability of a particular location. You might have your heart set on a particular location but if it is poorly lit or is crowded with distracting backgrounds, it might not be ideal for photography. If you find yourself short on options, let your photographer know about the location you’ve chosen so that they can scout it out if they haven’t been there before. Professional photographers with proper lighting gear can find creative ways to make just about any location work but lugging extra gear and setting up lighting will require some additional time so be sure to allow enough time for this. Being able to cope with adverse weather conditions and think on their feet is one of the areas where a Professional photographer will start to separate themselves from the ‘shoot and burn’ photographers you’ll find on sites like Kijiji.

Conclusions

No matter how much planning you do, at the end of the day, if Mother Nature decides she doesn’t want to cooperate by delivering perfect weather, there isn’t much you can do about it. Smile, relax, embrace the elements, and try to have fun with it. Worst cast scenario – pull out the umbrellas, put on some fancy rubber boots and take advantage of the stormy skies for some dramatic photographs. If you have a good backup plan in place however, you’ll reduce your stress levels and hopefully have some great stories to tell about your wedding day.

Last year I signed on to do the show notes along with Tom Newman who hosts his own podcast called the FogView Podcast. Each week, Tom and I take turns transcribing the contents of the show and posting the notes on www.twiplog.com. Each show is approximately 1 hr 1.5 hrs in length and features a regular cast of characters. I also do the show notes for Scott Bourne’s PhotoFocus podcast which comes out on the 5th, 15th and 25th of each month. The Photofocus podcast is dedicated to answering listener questions about photography. I have learned so much from listening to theses podcasts and picked up some great tips which I’ve incorporated into my own work. I highly encourage other photographers to subscribe to these podcasts and check out their companion websites for tons of great information.

• Listen to the podcast: This Week in Photography 116 – Filter Fight
• Subscribe to the TWiP podcast

On this week’s show, a listener question got us into a discussion regarding U/V filters and whether there is any point in having them on your lens.  I do have protective filters for most of my lenses however I don’t use them all the time. There are some who argue that it doesn’t make any sense to put a $100 filter in front of a $2000 piece of glass as it will degrade the image quality particularly in certain lighting conditions where you may get flair if light is entering from the side of your lens.  If I am indoors or shooting under relatively controlled conditions where I’m not concerned about something damaging the front of my lens element, I have typically removed the filter to avoid any chance of degrading the quality of my images. I tend to use my lens hood at all times which I find provides me with adequate protection. If I’m headed outdoors or into a situation where there might be a chance of something striking the front element of my lens, then I typically will put the filters back on. One thing I forgot to mention on the podcast is that the one filter that I use frequently when shooting landscapes is a circular polarizing filter. These filters can help cut down reflections on things like water, ice, etc. They also help to increase the contrast in a scene however you will lose a stop to two stops with most polarizing filters. The circular polarizing filter is also the one filter in your bag that you can’t replicate using something like Photoshop as it actually changes the quality of light before it hits your lens. For a more technical description, Wikipedia has an article on filters which explains how a polarizing filter works in more detail. If you are going to invest in any filters, this should be the one you have in your bag for sure. In terms of brand, I like to use the B+W filters which you can buy from most photography stores or order online from B+H Photo.

What’s your take on filters? Do you use them? Have you noticed a difference in image quality when you use them? Feel free to leave comments on the topic below.

Just noticed today on Canon’s website that they have released a firmware  update for the 40D which happens to be the camera I currently shoot with (although I’m hoping a 5D Mark II will be in my future soon). Here are the details on the update from Canon’s site:

Firmware update Version 1.1.1 incorporates the following fixes and improvements.

1. Fixes a malfunction that in rare occurrence causes a low battery indication to be displayed when using the EF 85mm F1.2L II USM lens. Depending on the battery check timing of the camera, the battery level displayed on the camera’s LCD data panel may shows Battery will be exhausted soon or Battery must be recharged, even though the battery capacity is sufficient.
2. Fixes a malfunction that in rare occurrence causes an Err 06 Self Cleaning Sensor malfunction to appear on the camera’s LCD monitor and LCD data panel, even when the Self Cleaning Sensor Unit is operating normally. This message may appear depending on the timing of when the camera is switch to the ON position.
3. Fixes a malfunction that prevents correct colors from being printed when direct printing. RAW images captured using the camera’s custom Picture Styles (Emerald, etc.), which have been downloaded from Canon’s Web site and registered under User Def. 2 or User Def. 3.
4. Modifies the level of subject brightness that causes the AF-assist beam to fire when using an external Speedlite.
5. Enables an external flash connected to the camera’s synchro terminal to fire even when the camera’s built-in flash is popped up.

For those wondering what a firmware update it, basically it’s an update to the software that runs on the camera. Sometimes these updates can provide new functionality to the camera while in most cases they are released to fix bugs that were discovered after the camera was released. Updating the firmware is actually quite straightforward for anyone with a little bit of computer knowledge.

Updating your camera consists of downloading the update to your computer, transferring the file to your camera’s memory card, and then inserting the card into your camera and selecting to update the firmware in the Camera’s menu. In the case of Canon you can also upgrade the firmware by connecting the camera to your computer and using the EOS Utility that shipped with your camera to install the update.

If you haven’t upgraded the firmware in your camera since you bought it, I would recommend checking the version of your firmware and upgrading if you are on an older version to ensure that you are getting the most out of your camera and not compromising your images as a result of any software bugs.

After reading about this, the first thing I wondered was why this company didn’t have an off-site backup? The golden rule when it comes to backups is that if you don’t have a backup in two different physical locations – you do not have a backup. Having a local backup is important to protect you in the event of a hardware failure, data corruption, accidental deletion, etc. However, a local backup is not enough to protect you from things like break-ins, fire, flood, or other acts of god. Thus the reason for the second backup which is stored in a different physical location.

For those who are curious, here is my backup strategy. I have a main desktop PC where I do most of my photo editing. I also have a laptop that I take on the road and use when I meet with clients, etc. In my desktop PC, I have three separate drives where I store all my photos. After a shoot, I create two folders organized by date – one on my main drive and one on a removable drive. I then import my photos using Lightroom 2.0 and use the automatic copy feature to place a 2nd copy on my removable drive.

Once this process is complete, I have a Windows Home Server with 1.5 TB of storage space. My main PC is setup to automatically backup every night so any photos I upload that day are backed up to the server automatically. On my WHS, I use the folder duplication feature to ensure that the data is backed up across at least 2 separate drives. I now have copies of my photos on 4 separate drives. Time permitting I will also burn a DVD of the most important images – particularly any client work that I’m being paid for. That takes care of my local copies.

For my offsite backup, my current method is a bit of a mishmash that needs some work but I make sure my photos always exist in two separate locations. First, I backup the jpgs of my most important stuff on Flickr and to my own website. Then, I have two removable drives plus a hard drive toaster with a 1 TB drive that I use to backup my Raw files. Every few days, I update these removable drives with the folders I’ve added since my last backup. Two of these drives come with me almost wherever I go – usually to my office or I carry them with me in my laptop bag. The third drive I leave at my parent’s house and then bring it back home to update it every month or so. I realize that this isn’t ideal but I figure the odds of the house burning down or being broken into on the same day that I have that drive at home is pretty slim. Having said that, I have just signed up for Amazon’s S3 service and will be setting up my WHS to do a backup of itself to Amazon’s web servers. Then, if disaster strikes, I will always have a copy up in the cloud that I would be able to access.

Am I being anal about backups? Perhaps. But I’d rather be overly anal than wind up losing a client’s photos or my own personal photos. Once those images are gone they are gone forever so even if you are not earning money from your photography, ask yourself how valuable are those moments to you and can you afford to lose them?

Blogs & Websites

• http://www.twipphoto.com – Home of This Week in Photography
• http://strobist.blogspot.com/ – the site to visit to learn all about off-camera lighting
• http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/2733 – Photoshop guru Scott Kelby’s blog
• http://luminous-landscape.com/ – the web’s most comprehensive site devoted to the art of landscape, nature and documentary photography
• http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ – a humorous look at bad applications of Photoshop
• http://www.dpreview.com – the site for reviews of photography equipment

Twitter

• www.twitter.com/scottbourne – from This Week in Photography
• www.twitter.com/frederickvan – formerly from Adobe and a contributor to TWiP
• www.twitter.com/halfpress – Aaron Mahler – producer of TWiP
• http://twitter.com/stevesimon – contributor to TWiP
• http://twitter.com/lisabettany – Mostly Lisa
• http://twitter.com/RobertEvans – commerical and wedding photographer
• http://twitter.com/robnlauren – amazing wedding photographers from Edmonton