Double Barrel Booty Drop

A little experimental, but it might work for advertising. 

Sometimes you want a wide shot.  

 I currently use four lenses and two camera bodies.  Each does something different.  The problem is, there are too many times when I want something that I'm not holding.  Maybe I'm holding the zoom lens, but I want to isolate the subject from the background, so I need a fast prime.  Or maybe I have a medium-wide 50mm, but I really want the tight crop of the 100mm for a closeup.  So, for Friday night's wedding, I adopted a technique commonly held by many wedding photographers: two cameras.  I put the 50mm on the full-frame camera for medium wide shots, and the 100mm on the crop-sensor for tight closeups.  Sure, I could get pretty much the same result with zoom lens, but the fixed focus primes are sharper and can provide narrower depth of field to isolate subjects from the background.  It's like holding a burger in one hand and a beer in the other.  The compliment each other, and I always have what I want, in my hand, when I want it.  The disadvantage is that I'm holding two heavy cameras, which is kind of awkward.  Also, I only did this for the early part of the reception when we still had a lot of natural light.  Trying this with two flashes is just asking for disaster.

Anyway, this was another massive wedding party.  Eight groomsmen and eight bridesmaids.  I guess they felt intimidated by last weekend's wedding with a party of 17.  The ceremony was in Bristol, followed by a receiving line outside the church, chilled with some Del's Frozen Lemonade, compliments of the bride and groom.  If you're not a New Englander, and you've never had a Del's, you're missing out.  After that, it was the traffic-dodging mayhem to get to the reception in Newport.  Getting through Newport is notoriously difficult because there are so many narrow streets and pedestrians, so traveling through it on four wheels is tedious to say the least.  I tried to take a back route to avoid the main drag, but an error in calculation meant that I ended up on the wrong side of a lot of pedestrian traffic, including a woman who shouted "We're trying to cross the street!" at every car that passed her.

And sometimes, a closeup.  

I nearly got to the venue, but a last-second wrong turn sent me into the  queue to valet my car at a neighboring hotel.  I flagged down a valet when I realized my error, and he gave me directions... right into a conference center parking lot... with gates.  Then when I tried to get out of that lot, I found that I was exiting through the entrance.  To make matters worse, other cars, thinking I was doing something right (for reasons that escape me) lined up behind me, and someone trying actually exit through the exit had lost his ticket, and was causing further backup.  At that moment, I saw the party bus drive right past and into the venue.  But it wasn't all that disastrous, because the groom's family had had similar problems, so they were delayed 15 minuted behind me.

You can't go wrong with a line dance.  

The venue is right on the water, and there's a low, white wall at the edge of the water.  We got the bridal party up on the wall for some formals.  Rupert told them to do some fun poses, and one girl did a sort of squat.  He asked her what she was doing and she said, "Booty drop!"  This became the quote of the evening.

I think he's going for a Booty Drop. 

The rest of the party was pretty amped.  The families did a choreographed dance to a montage of 80s and 90s songs for the bride and groom's enjoyment.  They also did "Cotton Eye Joe."  And the Limbo.  And a Conga Line.  It was probably the standout wedding for dancing this season.