I hired Tacey of Laughing Willow Photography for my July 2016 wedding. We went over every detail and I was confident that she would capture the feeling and once in a lifetime event professionally and artistically. There are some images from my wedding that achieved that, but many key moments were lost due to Tacey's lack of understanding of professional photography. I believe that the work she shares on her website represents the times when she gets lucky, has ideal lighting settings and is able to capture something decent.
My wedding was at the height of the long summer nights, and started at 7pm. We were finished with the ceremony at 8:09pm. The ceremony took place outdoors with open light and skies. It was overcast, and did begin to rain at the end of the ceremony so our reception was in an event tent. This was all "no problem" when I told her my reception would likely be in a tent and most certainly occur after all natural light was gone.
I had to consult with a professional photographer in order to understand what was wrong with many of my images.
I was told that Tacey didn't have a low-light lens on her semi-professional camera body and was inconsistently using her pop-up, on camera flash. She had to increase her ISO settings and decrease her shutter speed in order to try and get enough light to the camera sensor. Because of the lower quality of her Canon 60d camera body and her kit lens, a 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens she shot in high ISO which created a grainy looking image, with digital noise that makes the images look pixelated and blurry even though the file sizes are huge.
Here is a review of the camera's ISO capabilities. She shot most of my reception at 3200 ISO and the results are horrible. Here is an image for your reference. You can see on the right of the image the metadata that shows exactly what her settings were and what she shot with. That's me in a once in a lifetime moment, dancing with my dad at my wedding. All grainy and soft focus. I zoomed in on this shot below so you can see how bad it is.
Here is an image to show what the grain looks like zoomed in a little bit on another shot..this is one where the flash DID FIRE (see metadata) and because her ISO is at 1600 and her shutter speed is at 1/30 of a second...this shot is grainy and full of noise as well.
Here is an image she was proud of where my bouquet is out of focus. A lot. Why? This isn't a quality image! Here she was shooting with an L-series lens but it isn't going to compensate what her camera can't do at high ISO and really low shutter speeds.
Also, why is this image so close? We are awkwardly cropped. She is shooting in this shot with a very expensive lens but it's minimum zoom is 70mm! Why would you shoot wedding portraits of two people on a 70-200mm lens!?
In summary, Tacey doesn't use full-frame camera bodies and does not understand what her camera body is capable of. She should have been prepared with off camera lighting, a lens that shoots well in low light and a camera body capable of shooting quality images at high ISO. She did NONE OF THE ABOVE. For a wedding portrait photographer in the Pacific Northwest, you'd think she would be prepared for indoor shooting for an evening wedding!
My wedding was at the height of the long summer nights, and started at 7pm. We were finished with the ceremony at 8:09pm. The ceremony took place outdoors with open light and skies. It was overcast, and did begin to rain at the end of the ceremony so our reception was in an event tent. This was all "no problem" when I told her my reception would likely be in a tent and most certainly occur after all natural light was gone.
I had to consult with a professional photographer in order to understand what was wrong with many of my images.
I was told that Tacey didn't have a low-light lens on her semi-professional camera body and was inconsistently using her pop-up, on camera flash. She had to increase her ISO settings and decrease her shutter speed in order to try and get enough light to the camera sensor. Because of the lower quality of her Canon 60d camera body and her kit lens, a 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 lens she shot in high ISO which created a grainy looking image, with digital noise that makes the images look pixelated and blurry even though the file sizes are huge.
Here is a review of the camera's ISO capabilities. She shot most of my reception at 3200 ISO and the results are horrible. Here is an image for your reference. You can see on the right of the image the metadata that shows exactly what her settings were and what she shot with. That's me in a once in a lifetime moment, dancing with my dad at my wedding. All grainy and soft focus. I zoomed in on this shot below so you can see how bad it is.
Here is an image to show what the grain looks like zoomed in a little bit on another shot..this is one where the flash DID FIRE (see metadata) and because her ISO is at 1600 and her shutter speed is at 1/30 of a second...this shot is grainy and full of noise as well.
Here is an image she was proud of where my bouquet is out of focus. A lot. Why? This isn't a quality image! Here she was shooting with an L-series lens but it isn't going to compensate what her camera can't do at high ISO and really low shutter speeds.
In summary, Tacey doesn't use full-frame camera bodies and does not understand what her camera body is capable of. She should have been prepared with off camera lighting, a lens that shoots well in low light and a camera body capable of shooting quality images at high ISO. She did NONE OF THE ABOVE. For a wedding portrait photographer in the Pacific Northwest, you'd think she would be prepared for indoor shooting for an evening wedding!
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