Flying Solo at the Monica & Shawn Chapman Wedding

This was a first. Well, kind of.

I shot this wedding by myself. No second camera person. For my first couple wedding shoots, my wife Martha was able to tag along and operate the camera at the back of the ceremony, but she was out of town during the Monica and Shawn Chapman wedding at the beautiful Legacy Springs Premier Events Center in Madisonville, TN.

No big deal though. Thanks to a little pre-planning and more than ten years of experience shooting news/sports stories solo, this went wedding went off without a hitch.

Take a look at the highlight video above and see for yourself. The bride had a few special song requests for the video, and I think they complimented it quite nicely.

For the ceremony, I locked a Canon 5D on a tripod in the back of the crowd, mounted a GoPro Hero 4 Session behind the couple and the preacher and carried my Canon 70D on a monopod to switch up the shots. I haven't posted any "raw" wedding videos yet, but I offer them to the couples as part of the package I provide them and here's how this one turned out.

For the reception, I switched things up a little bit. Normally, I carry around my 70D and lock the 5D on the tripod because the 70D is so much easier for me to use as a run-and-gun focus-on-the-fly camera. But the 5D is stronger in low-light settings and is a better camera overall (when used properly) so I shot most of the reception with that one. I'll just say the results were mixed from my perspective.  Plus, the sunlight coming through the barn made for some horrendous backlighting issues at times, but I worked around it for the highlight video.

Also, if you want a laugh, check out the maid of honor's toast at 13:40 of the reception video below. She wrote her own rap lyrics to an Eminem backbeat. Gutsy.

Thanks again to Monica, Shawn and Monica's mother Yvonne for hiring me!

Also, thanks to Jean Lee at Legacy Springs, photographer Hannah Joy Brown of Joy Wildflower Photography and Adriel McCord from Effective Mobile DJ Service for making the day fun and easy.

I'll be shooting another wedding this weekend. So stay tuned for more...