Caught In-Flight

I had the very rare opportunity to photograph the bouquet toss this past Saturday using the continuous action capability of my Nikon camera at a rate of five images per second. In a series of ten shots, I was able to capture the flight of the bouquet from the toss to the catch! Although it may be a little hard to see here in this sequence of small images, when viewed as a regular sized photo, you can clearly see the flight of the bouquet and the final catch.

I've enlarged the toss and catch for you to see. And, if you click on the first image, it will enlarge for you to see more details.

This is a great way to capture the action, but it rarely happens at weddings. The reason is that it is necessary to photograph something like this with natural ambient light rather than with a flash (the flash takes time to recycle before you can shoot again... maybe 2-3 seconds.) Most venues where the bouquet toss takes place is in a rather dark banquet hall... which of course requires flash. By the time the flash recycles, the flight is over.

But this time, we had a "private" toss happen outside for just the bridesmaids. The result is what you see above.

I'm all for doing this type of photography at your weddings, but to do it means it must be done early enough in the day before the sun sets and we must do it outside. If you are "up" for that, just let me know and we can move everyone outside for the bouquet toss and the garter toss. I'm sure the DJ's won't like it (they can't be involved because their equipment is inside and they can't announce the toss) but I'm sure YOU will like it!

By the way, the ladies here are "so polite." If you look at the various images, you'll see that none of them really make a huge effort to get that bouquet since it was in a direct path headed straight for the maid of honor. One bridesmaid to the right of the maid of honor makes a slight effort, but the rest just give up.

Now if it were guys, I bet they'd be all over the person in an effort to get the garter. It must be the competitive edge that guys have. Either that or they really DO want to be the next one to get married! :)