Event Photography 📸 How I MESSED UP My First Wedding Photoshoot.
Murphys Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
I was determined to get everything right on my first wedding shoot. After all, there's a lot at stake. Myself and my photo buddy had decided we would could shoot weddings, and threw ourselves into it, rather cocksure. He had been asked by a friend of a friend if he could shoot weddings and he felt he couldn't say no. In fairness, we both had some portrait experience, and a Creative Live account.
What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, it went really well. We had researched like crazy, gotten inspired and done a couple of practice shoots. I even learned how to shoot TTL flash, something that up until then seemed pointless (how wrong I was, but that's for another post) ..
We melted into the shadows during the more intimate moments of the ceremony, and cordially got a mixture of candid and posed shots during the garden reception. I was getting mostly posed shots while my somewhat shy friend sniped for candids with his tele. Apparently he's shy about responsibility too, so we decided I would shoot the group shots, even though he was the more experienced shooter. They went really well in the end. Herding a few people, a little fill flash, job done.
I remember near the end of the evening, browsing the shots on the camera and being impressed at how they were all coming out. My Canon 6D was killing it.
"Why would anyone call this a consumer camera? .... Holy shit, the grip is really warm. I must have taken thousands of shots today.... "
Suddenly..
"Err 02. Card cannot be accessed. Reinsert/change card or format card."
FFFFFFFFFF U C K ...
Somehow the 64GB Sandisk SD card had fried and died. The 6D doesn't shoot dual cards so I had no backup. Rather than make a scene, and not knowing if the data was recoverable or not, we left without incident, saying goodbye to everyone, and getting hugs and thanks from members of the family. Ouch.
That week I rushed the card into a recovery lab, who after some investigation concluded that card was, well, screwed. Desperate, I sent the card overseas to another lab, who had a shot at it. Apparently the more modern "monolithic" SD card design is far more difficult to work with. Unfortunately they had no joy, and the card was even more dead than ever. It was time to fess up.
I got in touch with the groom and gave him the bad news. My partner had a few decent candid shots, but he was sniping with his 70-200. All the formals were gone, as well as some far more intimate candids and detail shots. We eventually refunded the couple and offered our sincerest apologies, but the bride was devastated. I was too. I didn't pick up my camera for a month after that, and when I did, it was to sell the 6D to fund a 5D with dual card slots.
Lesson learned, the hardest way possible. If you're thinking of shooting paid work, don't make the same mistake. SD cards die, all the time. Dual card slots are essential for professional photography, especially when you're capturing the biggest day of someones life.
Image sources: Meme Generator, Canon.com, Pixabay
Oh my! I'm glad you're recovered now! What a roller coaster post!
Oh man! That's awful!!! How old was the card? I would love to upgrade my camera to one that uses dual cards, but I haven't done it yet. In the meantime, I have heard that it's good to replace your cards every year to hopefully prevent something like this from happening. Have you shot any more weddings since then?
It was a fairly new card, a Sandisk Ultra, which I presumed would be durable. I ended up going on to shoot a handful of weddings since then and they pretty much went without a hitch after that.
Surprising with a fairly new card! Glad there were no more issues after that...
Ouch dude, that is a brutal story!! I used to shoot with a Nikon D700, but I've always shot with my wife Sabrina so we have automatic backup because we both act as primary shooters. I haven't shot without a dual card camera for over five years now and I don't think I could go back for this very reason. Though cards have gotten much much better these days.
Yeah, since I switched over to a dual card camera, I don't think I could go back. Even for personal work, I really like having the backup there.
Thanks for the tips, I'm living on the edge after reading that with me shooting weddings with a 6D. Upgrade with some steem money at some stage.
In fairness, it seems to be a very VERY rare thing that an SD card will fuck up beyond repair.
It is incredibly rare. I've never had an SD card fail, and we have gone through a lot of them. It was much more common with CF cards, and mostly high capacity ones at that. I always shy away from the newest "super high capacity" cards, since they can be a bit unstable, but even 128 gig cards are very solid nowadays.
I shot one wedding.
It was the first and the last wedding I done. Too much stress! Not for me :D
Yeah. I've stopped shooting events completely. They were fun, but so stressful and rarely worth it.
Oh man I remember you telling me about this. It was just one of things but damn that couldn't have been fun!
Yeah dude that was so stressful. Nikon D750 has 2 card slots though, so thankfully I'll never have to worry about that shit again.
That is really sad ! I hope it doesn't happen to you again . Thanks for the lesson about dual card slot , really helpful.
Cheers dude! Yeah, dual card slots FTW!
Remember my laptop died I lost so many photos. Crazy!! x
That was a spinning disk drive. You probably could have recovered some or all of that data.
ahhhhhhhhh yeahhh equipment failure is the worst!
I already experience this before but not in an important event. Me and my friends are doing some photo shoot on the street in one of festival here in our place. It was a whole day festival and of course the camera is use all day long. Don some shots after shots after shot and suddenly there was an error "Card cannot be accessed". The SD Card was fried and all the photos are gone. I used Canon 70D DSLR Camera.
If I think I'll excessive use the camera, I'll bring with me 2 cameras (I still have my old Canon 500D DSLR camera) so that I can alternately use them.