Nadine Ohara: Wedding Photographer

Nadine Ohara started photographing weddings as a student. Her goal was to have a career in tabletop and commercial photography, but she became sidetracked with a career in marketing communications and later started shooting weddings part time to earn money for a business venture in the graphics field. Eventually she ended up shooting weddings for a local wedding studio as well as shooting independently.

Her 20 years experience shows in her over 9500 contributions to photo.net over the years. Commonly in the Wedding Forum you see people say – “Ask Nadine”, or Nadine is correct, or I agree with Nadine. That’s because when it comes to any questions or problems with lighting or other technical questions – Nadine knows her stuff. Her work is, in her words, “simple and honest”. She believes in having her images reflect the real events of the day and her style reflects a combination of traditional and photojournalism. She is always discrete and has a refreshing intuitive feel for what her clients want as well as never forgetting why the client has hired her.

What draws you to do wedding photography? Most people consider it to be a exhausting, stressful, competitive way to be a professional photographer. But it’s also a situation where the “assembly line” approach wont work and you have to look at each wedding with “new eyes” as it were.

NADINE: Now it is the challenge to do better and the feeling of being fully involved—physically, technically and artistically, at each wedding. I never wanted to be a wedding photographer (or a people photographer) and only started shooting weddings when friends asked me to. Later, I did it for extra income. I found that I really enjoyed it and that there is a lot more to it than was commonly thought at the time. Wedding photography has a lot more ‘cred’ now, particularly because the assembly line approach no longer works.

What equipment do you typically use at a wedding? Would you say that your equipment choices are different than the average wedding photographer’s? Have your equipment choices changed in the time you have been shooting weddings?

NADINE: I use a Canon 5D and a 20D with a Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 as the main zoom, a 16-35mm f/2.8L, and four or so prime lenses—I only use primes on the telephoto end. I do think my choices are different from the average wedding photographer. I didn’t get the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom (considered one of several ‘must get’ lenses), for instance, because I felt it was too short on the long end (for me), plus I do like the fact that the Tamron is much lighter and smaller, yet very, very close in image quality to the Canon. My prime lenses are not L lenses, and several of them are quite lowly—my 135mm f2.8 SF (used without the SF), for instance. Now, this doesn’t mean I will never get L primes, but I have to say that each time I use the 135mm SF, for instance, I am impressed anew at how good it is for the price I paid (used, too). I am sure no one would be able to tell the difference between the two except under extreme shooting conditions and/or with extremely close scrutiny.

Otherwise, I have the usual array of flashes, both proprietary and not, with plain vanilla off camera triggers. In the range of flash use, I am probably one or two ticks past middle toward the ‘more flash’ end. If necessary, I bring studio flashes to a wedding, but that doesn’t happen very often. I like off-camera flashes for the directional qualities, both for formals and portraits, and for reception hall use. I use natural light whenever the natural light is good, though. However, with weddings, you don’t often get to have good natural light throughout the day, so when needed, I use flash (and hopefully, not the other way around).

Since I began to photograph weddings many years ago, my equipment choices have changed for sure. I used to photograph weddings with a Mamiya C330f and Hasselblads. My 20D is my first digital SLR, and I still use it.

Talk about the importance of interacting with your subjects. How would you say that “people skills” compare to “technical skills” in terms of overall importance to the wedding photographer.

NADINE: It used to be that a wedding photographer could succeed in the business having excellent people skills and mediocre technical skills, and not so much the opposite. Now, one has to have excellent technical skills, along with excellent people skills—but technical skills of a different kind—namely, computer skills. However, the need for excellent people skills has not diminished at all over the years.

People skills I had to learn, since they did not come naturally to me. It helped that I was in the business world for a while, plus the process of maturing helps as well. If you have empathy, you will do well. Add experience (both life experience, for the not-so-common common sense, and experience photographing weddings), and you will have no trouble connecting with people and handling any kind of situation that might arise. A sense of humor helps a lot.

As for interacting with subjects while actually photographing them, previously established connections with subjects will allow you to direct without ending up with wooden and obviously uncomfortable subjects, and if subject-unaware images are wanted, the same previously established connections will allow you to be the proverbial ‘fly on the wall’ because you have earned the subjects’ trust.

Wedding photography was once a male dominated industry. Do you feel the great influx of female wedding photographers has changed the wedding photography field in the past few years and do you feel there is an advantage at all in being a female wedding photographer vs a male?

NADINE: I don’t think the influx of female wedding photographers has changed the overall wedding photography scene. There have always been a few of us, even long ago. If you mean the greater number of females among the greater number of aspiring wedding photographers, brought along by the so called ‘ease’ of digital gear, then perhaps the industry has changed, but only in the same ways that the latter has brought about.

The biggest advantage to being a female wedding photographer is the ability to walk into the bride’s dressing room more easily than a male photographer, making it easier to get those truly candid shots. And let’s face it, the bride’s dressing room shots are more prized than the groom’s getting ready shots, even though I make an effort to get those too.

Otherwise, a male photographer can have the same sensitivity to the emotional content of the day. Any other differences would be minor. Perhaps women tend to have better instincts with detail shots, and they may pay more attention to how the bride looks (from a female perspective). A woman photographer knows how NOT to photograph another woman, for instance. Male photographers tend to go for the drama of a shot, and females tend to go for the emotion in a shot (two different things), but these are generalizations, and you will find opposite examples too.

Over the years, you have helped many MANY beginning wedding photographers in the Photo.net wedding forum. Your patience with questions that others find to be tedious or repetitive is as as wonderful as your information is helpful. Can you summarize your general advice to someone wanting to learn to be a professional wedding photographer?

NADINE: I can only draw upon my own experience over the years. While I went to photography school and had a short apprenticeship in a photo studio, I would have to say that a large part of my total knowledge was gained through self study. I read everything I could get my hands on and wandered up and down the aisles of photo stores just looking at gear and trying to figure out what that ‘thing’ was for. This is why I think the Internet is such a wonderful thing. If I had that resource long ago, I would have been able to proceed at a much faster pace.

So I would say to someone wanting to get into wedding photography—first and foremost, keep your mind open, remain humble, and keep learning. That same wonderful online world has one big disadvantage. While it is easy to find information and to look at thousands of images, it is also too easy to skip over useful information, to follow trends and take shortcuts—too easy to go for the sizzle and not the bacon. Remember that you can learn from older wedding photographers and old techniques as well as newer wedding photographers and new techniques. In fact, you will find that new techniques aren’t all that new, and knowing the history and development of your craft gives you a competitive advantage, and might even illuminate your current arsenal of techniques.

It is traditional for an aspiring wedding photographer to assist with an established professional, then second shoot, then go out on his or her own. It is still a good journey if you can arrange it, but in today’s market, it is difficult to do, in some cases. If you can’t arrange it, the next best thing is to soak up all that good info online, in books (be sure to read business books or take a business course), and in life in general, prepare yourself (don’t, for instance, treat someone’s wedding like target practice), and then just start. Start small, and build.

And finally, the question we ask everyone: Your work primarily involves wedding photography. Do you enjoy other types of photography as well? What would be your ‘dream project’ if you could work on anything in the world?

NADINE: Actually, I don’t do any other kind of photography besides weddings, events, and portraits. When I studied photography in school, I fully intended to become a commercial, tabletop photographer. I don’t do any of that now either.

My dream project would be a dream wedding—a small wedding held at a photogenic place (not locale specific) in which I had no time or logistical constraints, no gear or technical problems or breakdowns and the people are attractive (this does not mean ‘model-like’), cooperative, and laid-back. And my creative juices are flowing at peak level. Dream on.

Some Examples of Nadine’s Work

Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	20D, ISO 800, f2.8, 1/30th The expression on this bride’s face was so ‘inward’ that for me, it represents the classic pre-ceremony self reflection, also known as the jitters. I tell brides that they won’t look the same after the ceremony. I should use this image to illustrate the reason.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	5D, ISO 100, f4.5, 1/125th In the middle of a traditional shot, I got this, and loved it. You just can’t ask for anything more, and you can’t really direct a shot like this.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	5D, ISO 640, f4.5, 1/200th This group was particularly easy to photograph, since they would extemporaneously do things I didn’t set up. This was one of about five equally good frames.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	20D, ISO 400 f4, 1/30th One of my favorite images—sometimes things line up just right. You can’t beat pure emotion shining out at you, and you can’t NOT press the shutter button.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	5D, ISO 640, f6.3, 1/40th I passed over this image many times before I really paid attention to the moment. I love the expressions on the faces of the groom and his mom—the bride, too. The image, of course, has to remain in color, because you need red for a Chinese wedding.
Nadine Ohara - SF Bay Area/CA	5D, ISO 100, f5.6, 1/125th I am sure there will be critics who think I should have blurred the background, but I like this image just because of the extreme depth. I even like the traditional ‘smile at the camera’ pose.

Links

• Nadine’s member page
• Nadine’s gallery page
• Photo.net Business of Wedding Photography Series featuring Nadine Ohara
• Photo.net’s Wedding Forum

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