Making The Most Of Inconvenience

Sometimes as photographers we find ourselves in situations that are just totally inconvenient. Like this wedding from a couple of weeks ago in Northern California. Great location, awesome bride & groom, the families all got along, lots of love all around, yadda, yadda. But the rain. Oh my word, the rain.

Arriving about 2 hours before the rehearsal to scout locations – rain, then the rehearsal itself, more rain and by now, totally soaked shoes. I try to travel light, which means no spare shoes, so by the time the rehearsal was over the only store open was Wal-Mart, so $20 shoes for the wedding the next day.

Day of the wedding and, you’re beginning to see the trend, right? Yea more rain. Did I mention this was an outdoor wedding? There were so many great locations just totally unusable at this point and I’m feeling a little ripped-off, I mean inconvenienced :) . Well, I’ve never had a more laid-back couple and it’s no big deal to them, so they grab an umbrella, hop in his dad’s truck & off we go.

Well, I learned an important lesson that day – be happy when you’re thrown a curve. I had some really interesting light to work with, all the rain had really greened up everything & the umbrellas gave us some great compositional elements.

Take this photo for example. Without that umbrella, this photo would just be so-so, IMHO. With it, interest was added and the compositional flow was “capped” so that the viewer’s eyes are kept in the photo & directed back to the main subject – the couple.

Sometimes an inconvenient situation can conveniently provide us the push we need to add creativity to our photos.

At the end of day, the couple ended up married (always a good thing), and I had some images I felt pretty good about.

So, am I hoping for rain at my next wedding? Not exactly, but I will be ready for what ever curve is thrown my way & I’ll be excited to see how I’ll spin it around for some fun photos. Here’s to inconvenience!