What is a wedding uncle bob?

[Zeisser]

[url=http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/192395/title/img-0055e/cat/500][/URL][url=http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/192395/title/img-0055e/cat/500][img

It was after all the '3 pro photogs and videographer' have had their share of the picture opportunity
that I arranged to take a picture of my mom and my niece and wala one of the pro steps into my view.
So who's 'Uncle Bob' here.

He knows bloody well that I was about to snap....so what gives.:dunno:

 

[catchlights]

I had an uncle Bob at my wedding. I was very happy with him. What if the main photographer didn't catch some scenes?

the professional photographer/videographer can not be omni present during a wedding, but they are exprience enough to know when is the key moment and where to position themselves to capture the best angle.

the term of "uncle Bob" is referring to a guest has little understanding of his own equipment which is often better than the official photographer and likes to get in the way of the wedding photographer spoiling and directing shots.

so, if your "uncle Bob" is so good, why would you still need a main photographer?

and since you already hire a photographer, why don't you trust your photographer and let him do his job, but allowing somebody pulling his leg?


please don't tell me your main photographer is also an uncle Bob just being promoted to be main photographer in your wedding.

 

[TWmilkteaTW]

I had an uncle Bob at my wedding. I was very happy with him. What if the main photographer didn't catch some scenes?

Yes..for godsake..save those what if(s)..
its pointless.

 

[JasonB]

1. [url=http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/192394/title/img-00593/cat/500][/URL]

At my niece recent wedding am I an 'Uncle Bob' ?

Yes. Unfortunately.

For this picture, judging by the composition, it appears that you are shooting the videographer rather than the wedding couple coz, if you intend to shoot the wedding couple to be this way, it is a very badly composed picture. I guess you shoot this picture trying to depict that the videographer gets into your way and resulted you not having opportunity to shoot?

May I remind all uncle bobs with entitlement mentality that the pro team is hired there to do a job, not to give priority to non hired shooters playing with cameras.

Please do not treat people's wedding like a paid sunday photo shoot where amateurs photographers line up to shoot models.

The weddings are fast moving, people are working and doing their jobs. Please do not be offended if the pro team does not have eyes behind their heads to look out for uncle bobs or did not make sure uncle bobs had their turns to shoot so that their egos are not hurt.

[url=http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/192395/title/img-0055e/cat/500][/URL][url=http://gallery.clubsnap.com/showphoto.php/photo/192395/title/img-0055e/cat/500][img

It was after all the '3 pro photogs and videographer' have had their share of the picture opportunity
that I arranged to take a picture of my mom and my niece and wala one of the pro steps into my view.
So who's 'Uncle Bob' here.

He knows bloody well that I was about to snap....so what gives.:dunno:

Looks like a videographer videoing in process and looking down at their screen. When videographers are working, they sometimes becomes oblivious to surroundings due to concentration on their footage or 'tunnel visioning' and might had accidentally entered into your composition frame. Am sure if you tell him nicely, he would had let you shoot. With their own teammate photographers, the photographers understand this and they are comfortable with telling each other their needs. When an uninvited uncle bob foreign to the team steps in, the uncle bob might interpret things differently, takes an ego trip and get offended. Pro photographers who worked extensively with videographers also understands the videographer's lost of peripheral vision during capturing of footages. Rapport and respect had already been built among them. Amateurs photographers shooting for themselves never had the need to cooperate and thus will not understand.

Thus the advice is always: please put down your camera (and your ego and your entitlement attitude) and do what a wedding guest/relative/groomsmen/bridesmaid should do. Let the hired people do their job.

No offense intended at you on a personal level. Just reiterating my points which are consistent throughout this thread and other threads. Hope you are a senior man to understand this. It was really hard to get the earlier boy to stop wildly kicking his legs and calm down.

 

[JasonB]

From last weekend's wedding; scene was morning church march in, brides real sister was the assistant girl to the bride, when they march in, sister was videoing with iphone. When they exit the church, sister was again videoing with iphone. Both occasions very close, since we all know iphone cameras are wide angles, so when people video with iphone, they video really close.

The result was that the sister is always in my videographer friend's shots. Mine shots too.

Express highlights; videographer was really efficient, 6 plus we already standing by at reception. So the excited bride requested to see the express highlights. And saw her sister in the church entrance and exist. Not happy, endured a while but finally snapped at the sister, 'why you stand so close to video!'. Little sister felt hurt, cried. Bride felt guilty, also cried. Both cry together. I then shoot award-potential PJ shots of them crying (sorry for sarcasm). Not tears of happiness, but of guilt and frustration.

Bride ask videographer 'can you edit away my sister?' videographer say 'sorry video cannot, photo maybe can' and tolak the thing to me. I say no worries, for the shots you want to use in your album we can edit. In reality, I worry because it is a lot of pain in the butt with cloning. And it will cost her on an per photo basis.

:dunno:

The uncle bobs do not know how high a bride's expectation could be to make her wedding day perfect.

 

[Zeisser]

Yes. Unfortunately.

For this picture, judging by the composition, it appears that you are shooting the videographer rather than the wedding couple coz, if you intend to shoot the wedding couple to be this way, it is a very badly composed picture. I guess you shoot this picture trying to depict that the videographer gets into your way and resulted you not having opportunity to shoot?

May I remind all uncle bobs with entitlement mentality that the pro team is hired there to do a job, not to give priority to non hired shooters playing with cameras.

Please do not treat people's wedding like a paid sunday photo shoot where amateurs photographers line up to shoot models.

The weddings are fast moving, people are working and doing their jobs. Please do not be offended if the pro team does not have eyes behind their heads to look out for uncle bobs or did not make sure uncle bobs had their turns to shoot so that their egos are not hurt.



Looks like a videographer videoing in process and looking down at their screen. When videographers are working, they sometimes becomes oblivious to surroundings due to concentration on their footage or 'tunnel visioning' and might had accidentally entered into your composition frame. Am sure if you tell him nicely, he would had let you shoot. With their own teammate photographers, the photographers understand this and they are comfortable with telling each other their needs. When an uninvited uncle bob foreign to the team steps in, the uncle bob might interpret things differently, takes an ego trip and get offended. Pro photographers who worked extensively with videographers also understands the videographer's lost of peripheral vision during capturing of footages. Rapport and respect had already been built among them. Amateurs photographers shooting for themselves never had the need to cooperate and thus will not understand.

Thus the advice is always: please put down your camera (and your ego and your entitlement attitude) and do what a wedding guest/relative/groomsmen/bridesmaid should do. Let the hired people do their job.

No offense intended at you on a personal level. Just reiterating my points which are consistent throughout this thread and other threads. Hope you are a senior man to understand this. It was really hard to get the earlier boy to stop wildly kicking his legs and calm down.

In the first picture I stayed back to let the pros do their job in a way just to record the exit scene as I lke candids. In the second picture all of them pros
have had their share of the picture opportunity. The pro who ' walk in ' to my view was one of two main pro photogs and not the videographer.

When I requested a picture from my niece the pro was beside me and should have known about it and yet I do not know for whatever reason
he did that. My point is not all 'Uncle Bobs' are what people percieved them to be, intrusive,obstructive a pain in the a** type relative or whatever
in the eyes of 'PROS' doing their job.

No offense to you I was a wedding photographer years back and nowadays with digital DSLRs everyone
lugging one can claim to be a wedding photographer. I know about wedding photography ethics but what puzzles me is this pro photog
action perhaps I was toting a Canon 5D with Zeiss lens and he a Nikonian :bsmilie: No pun intended.

 

[JasonB]

In the first picture I stayed back to let the pros do their job in a way just to record the exit scene as I lke candids. In the second picture all of them pros
have had their share of the picture opportunity. The pro who ' walk in ' to my view was one of two main pro photogs and not the videographer.

When I requested a picture from my niece the pro was beside me and should have known about it and yet I do not know for whatever reason
he did that. My point is not all 'Uncle Bobs' are what people percieved them to be, intrusive,obstructive a pain in the a** type relative or whatever
in the eyes of 'PROS' doing their job.

No offense to you I was a wedding photographer years back and nowadays with digital DSLRs everyone
lugging one can claim to be a wedding photographer. I know about wedding photography ethics but what puzzles me is this pro photog
action perhaps I was toting a Canon 5D with Zeiss lens and he a Nikonian :bsmilie: No pun intended.

Indeed there are bad pros around. It is these type of people who pollute the occupation with bad practices. Am sorry to hear about your experience.

As you mentioned too many people with dslr think they can be a photographer:

http://www.clubsnap.com/forums/newb...e-can-buy-dslr-wedding-photographer-days.html

Too many people think with a dslr they can instantly be a wedding photog but what they produced most of the time is a load of crappy snapshots with bad exposure bad composition bad ideas and even badder photoshop nonsenses.

 

[t3hkor]

she's directly in front of me. so i can see clearly what's on the screen. it's actually quite shocking. but of course, i don't want to ruin the atmosphere by shooting my mouth off :bsmilie:

But there are times when u see that its sharp and right focal point on your LCD and it turns out a little blur when u upload. Is that true or is it my eye playing tricks on me?

just to share a little short story, when i attended my cousin's wedding, this wedding photographer dont look very pro to me lol. Whenever i saw him, he was walking around (but i was really dozing off most of the time). So i thought my cousin got ripped :x
So a yr later, i had to engage a photographer and i looked at my cousin's wedding photos. It was really amazingly done. This guy became my photographer and he taught me the basics and yea. i was unclebob in 2-3 of his actual day shoots because he agreed to bring me along for the experiences.
Honestly, on my first and second shoot wedding he did commented i was very uncle bob and it was also extremely tiring. Yea I am not a pro, there is always a learning curve. I learned to be more situationally aware. In fact during my sister's wedding, i believe i was working behind the photographer / videographer the whole time and i tried to really plan n minimize the number of photos i had to take so as not to obstruct them.

I am not trying to say im a good person but im considerate enough to keep in mind the whole time that im shooting for my own. Try my best not to be in the way of the ones that is earning from it. It was hard initially but like i said theres a learning curve.
End of the day, its still the people we are dealing with. Given what I see, people's selfishness overprotecting of themselves is just mindblowing.

 

[JasonB]

But there are times when u see that its sharp and right focal point on your LCD and it turns out a little blur when u upload. Is that true or is it my eye playing tricks on me?

just to share a little short story, when i attended my cousin's wedding, this wedding photographer dont look very pro to me lol. Whenever i saw him, he was walking around (but i was really dozing off most of the time). So i thought my cousin got ripped :x
So a yr later, i had to engage a photographer and i looked at my cousin's wedding photos. It was really amazingly done. This guy became my photographer and he taught me the basics and yea. i was unclebob in 2-3 of his actual day shoots because he agreed to bring me along for the experiences.
Honestly, on my first and second shoot wedding he did commented i was very uncle bob and it was also extremely tiring. Yea I am not a pro, there is always a learning curve. I learned to be more situationally aware. In fact during my sister's wedding, i believe i was working behind the photographer / videographer the whole time and i tried to really plan n minimize the number of photos i had to take so as not to obstruct them.

I am not trying to say im a good person but im considerate enough to keep in mind the whole time that im shooting for my own. Try my best not to be in the way of the ones that is earning from it. It was hard initially but like i said theres a learning curve.
End of the day, its still the people we are dealing with. Given what I see, people's selfishness overprotecting of themselves is just mindblowing.

If the hired photographer bring you along, you are not uncle bob but a second photographer regardless he paid you or not or if he assigned you responsibities or just allow you to roam. And provided you have no relations to his wedding couple clients, ie not your friend or relative.

The first few times you will be very bobish because simply newbies do not know what's happening at all.

If you follow him longer he probably would trust you with a proper brief and specific responsibility and that's where you start to appreciate the battlefield.

Good luck.

 

[t3hkor]

If the hired photographer bring you along, you are not uncle bob but a second photographer regardless he paid you or not or if he assigned you responsibities or just allow you to roam. And provided you have no relations to his wedding couple clients, ie not your friend or relative.

The first few times you will be very bobish because simply newbies do not know what's happening at all.

If you follow him longer he probably would trust you with a proper brief and specific responsibility and that's where you start to appreciate the battlefield.

Good luck.

I believe i am very much just a hobbyist and not in high confidence that images taken by me will sell BUT i really do love my photos very much. I stopped following for wedding because its really too taxing on me in terms of energy used.
so i just would like to keep at that level and be a hobbyist hoping to earn some money to cover the gears. Yep its just a hope and im sitting on it

 

[avsquare]

Bride ask videographer 'can you edit away my sister?' videographer say 'sorry video cannot, photo maybe can' and tolak the thing to me. I say no worries, for the shots you want to use in your album we can edit. In reality, I worry because it is a lot of pain in the butt with cloning. And it will cost her on an per photo basis.

:dunno:

The uncle bobs do not know how high a bride's expectation could be to make her wedding day perfect.

one of the most feared and hated question to hear for me.

whenever people tells me, "can't you photoshop it away", or "aiya can photoshop it away one lah", I always give them the "b**** please" face, and tell them "erm, not everything can be photoshopped nor that easy to photoshop. photoshop is a tool to help you on finishing touches, not a tool to fix problematic composition. and I'd rather spent 3 hours shooting something else rather than cloning something off on photoshop"

But for wedding photos, kind of a "lan lan" situation. If the picture can be saved, die die must try to save and charge extra for DI work. And show the couple the before and after to let them know how helpful these people are, and how these people made the couple paid extra (if the photo can be still rescued)..

 

[Blur Shadow]

Never mess with the bride on her wedding day. Haha!

 

[catchlights]

one of the most feared and hated question to hear for me.

whenever people tells me, "can't you photoshop it away", or "aiya can photoshop it away one lah", I always give them the "b**** please" face, and tell them "erm, not everything can be photoshopped nor that easy to photoshop. photoshop is a tool to help you on finishing touches, not a tool to fix problematic composition. and I'd rather spent 3 hours shooting something else rather than cloning something off on photoshop"

But for wedding photos, kind of a "lan lan" situation. If the picture can be saved, die die must try to save and charge extra for DI work. And show the couple the before and after to let them know how helpful these people are, and how these people made the couple paid extra (if the photo can be still rescued)..

just tell them you are shooting photojournalist style, don't do photoshop thingy, but can send the photos out for DI for them,and they have to pay for that, probably will cost as much as hiring another photographer.

 

[kei1309]

i just got asked to "Stand-by" the photographers for my friend's wedding day when i'm helping out. what the heck???

i'm just gonna try to push this aside diplomatically.... :bsmilie:

 

[avsquare]

just tell them you are shooting photojournalist style, don't do photoshop thingy, but can send the photos out for DI for them,and they have to pay for that, probably will cost as much as hiring another photographer.

good idea! :bsmilie:

 

[kei1309]

i just got asked to "Stand-by" the photographers for my friend's wedding day when i'm helping out. what the heck???

i'm just gonna try to push this aside diplomatically.... :bsmilie:

actually... come to think of it... it's the bride who asked me... and... knowing bridezillas... anyone has any advice for me before i get killed?

 

[Blur Shadow]

actually... come to think of it... it's the bride who asked me... and... knowing bridezillas... anyone has any advice for me before i get killed?

Make a will. And tell me where you keep your photographic equipment. Haha!

 

[Larken]

actually... come to think of it... it's the bride who asked me... and... knowing bridezillas... anyone has any advice for me before i get killed?

One option is to be brutally honest and tell your friend that you HATE shooting weddings in general. If a person can still ask you to do something after a statement like that, time to get new friends.

 

[kei1309]

Make a will. And tell me where you keep your photographic equipment. Haha!

:bsmilie: no way!

One option is to be brutally honest and tell your friend that you HATE shooting weddings in general. If a person can still ask you to do something after a statement like that, time to get new friends.

no... you mis-read it. as in "Stand-by Bed" in the Army. this is "Stand-by Photographer". According to the bride, it's a photographer provided by the Bridal Salon and another one they hired.

i'm supposed to ensure they do the job properly :bsmilie:

 

[avsquare]

no... you mis-read it. as in "Stand-by Bed" in the Army. this is "Stand-by Photographer". According to the bride, it's a photographer provided by the Bridal Salon and another one they hired.

i'm supposed to ensure they do the job properly :bsmilie:

if they never do their job properly, will kena knock it down or sign extra? :bsmilie: