This weekend was SUCH an odd experience... Here's the short version....

It started off with me getting the Mark IIn. (Yay!)

Then me going off on a road trip up north to Sonoma CA for the wedding with my buddy Matt. I needed another shooter/assistant and Katie had a bridal shower this weekend so my friend Matt came up and decided to shoot with me (another YAY!)

Then when I got up to Sonoma I read the forum and the thread about DJ's Mark IIn, Russ Camera, and me. Pretty much felt terrible. (an understatement)

Called DJ immediatly and we talked for about an hour. Hung up having resolved the issue. (see my post in DJ's thread about Russ' Camera).

I stay up tossing and turning in bed most of the night with a cold/flu. I throw up around 7ish. T Ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep for the night.

Got up called Dane and asked if he knew anyone who might be able to help me shoot the wedding (my friend Matt isn't really a photographer, he was more just assisting me). Dane so graciously makes a bunch of phone calls for me, but in the end we aren't able to find someone. I just decide to try to go ahead and shoot the wedding by myself.

Wedding actually goes pretty well. I definetly wasn't at 100% (but of course I acted like I was!) In actuality, I can't believe how well I ended up feeling for only having gotten two hours of sleep the night before. I was definetly running off adrenaline!

By the end of the reception Matt is telling me he isn't feeling so well either. After we get the slideshow going I tell him to go lay down. After I realize I haven't seen Matt for a while I decide to see how he is doing. We were at a winery and the reception was on the main floor, the upstairs was office space and the bride had gotten ready there and we had set up camp up there. So I go upstairs and Matt is pretty much passed out on a couch. He tells me he's been throwing up for the last hour. By that point the reception was close to ending so I tell the bride that my assistant isn't feeling too well and we leave. We had been planning on driving to a friend's house in Oakland to spend the night, but decide to ditch that idea and find a hotel. Matt was pretty much sick the entire night throwing up almost every hour.

Next day we drive home. Neither of are feeling great, but better than we had the day before.

How crazy is THAT story?!

While on the surface it may have seemed to be pretty terrible, it actually wasn't (though there were moments for both of us that felt that way...). I was so grateful that I made it through the wedding and the bride and groom had no idea I was sick or hadn't slept the night before. I was also really grateful Matt didn't get sick till the end. We had a fun time shooting. For never having really picked up a camera before Matt did a great job.

Here are a few pics from the wedding....







I FINALLY got to try a David Jay "hill shot." Not nearly as good as his, but my best attempt none-the-less.




Check this one out of Matt shooting. Even on his first day he looks like a pro!

Great pics -- sick or not! And it looks like you found a hill! Freaky sky on those shots.

AWESOME pics!!! I'm glad you're back!! Hope you're feeling better
Man your assistant is spoiled to be able to use that gear on his first day!!!!

MMC,

Dude, that dress photo is one of the best I've ever seen. It's amazing, really! Did you run filters/actions over those photos -- if so, which ones? I love the warmer color palette for the photos

Beautiful Chris. I really like the dress shot too. I love that you go the fan in the shot.

I sorry you had such a rough weekend. I hope you will be able to recover this week. I wish I could pull off images like that when I feel like @&$%.

Sounds like a day Adam and I had at wedding about a year ago. Adam woke up at 5:00am the morning of the wedding and threw up until we left for the wedding about noon. He was barely capable of walking, but I couldn't find anyone to fill in for him. I do shoot a second camera, but I do not consider myself a photographer and Adam does all the settings on the camera for me, so I am definitely not qualified to shoot in his place. He did manage to drag himself through the whole wedding. It was really obvious that he wasn't feeling well, but we just told everyone he was getting over something. I did at one point have to grab the camera from him because he started collapsing. I pretty much shot the reception so he could sit. About an hour before it was time for us to leave, I started feeling sick. I made it through the rest of the evening, just barely. Drove Adam home, he doesn't even remember most of the day, walked in the house, ran to the bathroom and threw up. We were both pretty much incapable of getting out of bed for three days after that. We were terrified that the photos would be awful, but they were actually pretty good, the couple loved them!

Sweet shots!
That's almost as bad as being 9 months preggo shooting while you are sick.!
~Alisha

now that's what i call professionalism at its best!!!

another great wedding man!!

Wait, you can be as sick as a dog and the Mark II n takes those awesome shots for ya???? Man, I gotta get me one of them!!!

Man, those shots are gorgeous! I'll repeat Shua, that is the most amazing dress shot!

Hey thanks you guys. I really appreciate it.

Shua, I forgot to respond to this....

I'm basically running the lomo effects and adjusting the opacity of some of the layers. Sometimes after that I'll throw in a cross process and turn down the opacity to like 10-30% depending on what looks good.

Another thing to get some of the warmer tones I do is to go into curves and mess with the different colors (RGB). If you add just a LITTLE bit of red, a LITTLE bit of magenta (which would opposite of green), and a LITTLE bit of yellow (opposite of the blue), it'll warm things up a bit. Just play around with it. There's no science, it's just what looks good.

Oh yeah, sometimes I add a slight blur to the image either by creating another layer and then erasing over it, or by adding the blur to an overlay or softlight layer.

Great job, Chris...maybe you should shoot sick more often!

You did great Chris! I'm just glad you made it back ok.