I will say that I have a new found respect for professionsal wedding/ function photographers as you have to try and deal with so many location and human difficulties when composing a shot in 1/50th of a second.
Such as distracting backgrounds, un-level surfaces/ walls, optical illusions, light sources (or lack thereof), the suitability of your own gear for the task (28mm on a 1.6 crop body is waay to narrow for indoor group shots, and F3.5 is waay to slow for a dimly lit room!!).

Anyway, after a decent amount of processing and culling of a LOT of terrible shots, here’s a few i’m happy to share.

See, distracting background, damn coffee machine!!

Has been a tradition amongst our friends to have a special bottle for the wedding day

Location, Location, Location

Beautifully restored by the Father Of The Bride

Find your name and take a seat

See what I mean about more distractions, damn Fan!!

the formal part is now over and the groom can relax with his mates.

Another keen photographer (Sam Shelley) commandeered my camera (although a little smaller than his regular kit, 40D) with the 50mm attached and started work on some of the other guests. I really like the contrasts in this shot. although he had trouble positioning the subject directly below the overhead spotlight

I find great pleasure in taking “random” or “candid” photo’s at gatherings of family and friends, and having good equipment makes the task so much more enjoyable when you see nice sharp images that aren’t washed out, as you tend to find when taking photo’s with a point and shoot.
It just gives a nice feeling in a few months/ years time to look back on the images and remember what a great time was had.

One memory from the night, was our other photo-nut, trying to teach my (relatively) technologically-illetirate (de-facto) father-in-law how to use his new E-3, and a little about the basics of aperture settings and shutter-speed, and their effects on an image. All of this after a few glasses of “fizzy cordial” and during The Rolling Stones, rocking on in the background.

Here’s one of my fav’s from the night

With the DSLR market becoming much more affordable and easier to use with the introduction of very basic DSLR’s such as the new Canon 1000D which have a lot of the “gimmicky” features of point and shoot cameras, but they still give you access to the brilliant quality and speed of SLR lenses for every possible occasion.
This, accompanied by prices for a basic package that are equivalent to the top of the line point & shoots, means that it’s even more accessible to more people to be able to take great pictures, to make the memory of the event even more special.

And finally, another one of our new “pro”

All images shot with Canon 400D and 50mm F1.8