Plays nicely with others…

This weekend as part of my pixel pushing efforts I was asked to shoot my younger cousin's wedding. Cool. Aside from being pretty good money and having a very refined process that makes it simple for me, I rather enjoy shooting for people I know…especially family.

The interesting thing was not the bride, nor the groom, nor the excitement that they finally got married. It was the interaction I had with the photographer. This was my first time shooting with this particular one and let's just hope it was my last. I have shot well over one hundred weddings over the last eight years and I have never had an interaction like this.

I need to explain one thing before I give you a handful of highlights from the day. As you may have read lately on the web or head while you were in the electronics department somewhere, most of the new still cameras from Canon, Nikon and Sony now shoot HD video. When combined with the right lens the footage as absolutely brilliant so I asked my younger brother, Craig, if he'd be willing to come out and shoot a second camera for me. He said he'd be happy to.
Here we are at the Bountiful LDS temple waiting for the bride and groom to exit and greet their families and the celebrations to begin. Craig and I are in different places gathering shots of family and friends as they wait. Everything is cool until the photographer approaches Craig and asks him to put the camera away to which Craig responds, “I'm here with the videographer and I'm shooting video for him.” The guy didn't know what to say so he left Craig alone and went to finish getting ready.

A few minutes later I'm at the very last door before the happy couple exits and I see the photographer (no I won't give you his real name, so let's call him Buddy Boy) approach so I reach out to introduce myself as Joe, the videographer. I didn't know at the time that he had the previous discussion with Craig. Buddy Boy had a puzzled look on his face and seemed so thrown off that he had to ask me three times what my name was. Apparently, Joe is a difficult name to remember.

My cousin and her new husband finally came out to greet us and my work began, but I quickly saw that this was going to be a bit of a challenge to work with Buddy Boy. He seemed to not care one bit about the work that I was doing and constantly walked in front of my shots for the first few minutes. It got even better when a few minutes later I was walking just ahead of the couple getting one of my signature shots and Buddy Boy came from behind, grabbed me by the arm and told me that I needed to stay by him and that I was ruining his work.

So I went into my "difficult photog" mode which is to do everything I can to still get my shots without holding up the event or cause a scene. That seemed to be working out well till we were at our next-to-last location. I told Craig that I needed a handful of shots to use for the DVD cover and disc label and to use the camera I had given him to get them. So we were shooting and all the sudden Buddy Boy turns to Craig and says, “I can't have you taking photos of my shots and posting them on Facebook, man.”

I turned to him and said, “He's doing exactly what I told him to do. He's shooting video almost all the time. I have told him to take several photos for the printed parts of what I'm doing. Can we get the shoot done please?”
Buddy Boy finished his shoot and left me to finish my work. I got my last couple shots and apologized to my cousin and her husband about the incident a little earlier. They said it was no problem and thanked em for coming out and I turned to leave.

When I got to the parking garage Buddy Boy was waiting for me. 'Oh great,' I thought. I then got a sort of lecture about how unprofessional Craig and I had behaved and that it was inappropriate to have another photographer on-site. I told him very calmly that I backed Craig up 100 percent in how he was working and that in eight years I had never had a wedding that was this difficult to shoot. He did not appreciate that tried to justify his position several more ways but I was not buying it. I had had enough of his whining so I said, "We're done here and this conversation is over." to which he replied, "You're walking away because you know I'm right and you're wrong."

So I'm opening it up to you as commentators, was it inappropriate for me to have a second camera there that could and did capture still images to be used on their final video? Let me know your thoughts on the matter.