[Dave]

I can't imaging why people who do this for a living and actually have to get results don't go home and drink heavily afterwards.

Well for me I enjoy the work, and I've never been a heavy drinker I go into each wedding not thinking about making every shot per se, as that would trip me up, but instead thinking about the elements of the shots. What is the light, where is it coming from, do I need flash or can I use ambient, where do I want my flash to come from and so on. Each time I enter a new space I re-evaluate and keep shooting.

It is a lot of mental preparation, but the key is for me is to remember that I've done this before and to have confidence in myself and my knowledge of my gear. Knowing that I can get great results with the K1000 OR the 5D takes some of the stress out of the situation.

[noVICE]

Personally I have really enjoyed the times I have been the "guest photographer". You leave everything else to the pros and just try your best and get good experience without all the stress. The only thing I am weary of is shooting with a flash when you are a guest photographer, I am sure the pro would not appreciate some goof in the background shooting light all over the place.

I did photos at a friends engagement recently and was one of the only photographers there (neither of us were pros). This was a big night for me because I had just bought a new flash unit and as the others here have said KNOW YOUR GEAR. My overall "keepers count" was WAY down and it made it a little embarasing when handing over the photos. It was not a paid gig so I did not feel too bad, but it was great experience. What I learnt from that evening: Take two cameras or have one amazing zoom lens. Moving from indiviual to three people to small group was REALLY challenging with the primes I had taken.

[ramseybuckeye]

I did agree to do a wedding for one of my daughter's friends, it was small and they couldn't afford to hire someone. It wasn't awful, nor was it great. A lot of average photos. It was a struggle with lighting, not really wanting flash during the ceremony, and the lighting in the church was poor except where the outside light came through the stained glass windows. After the wedding ceremony, the priest, who didn't show up until the beginning, said, oh, I could have turned on some more lights. I didn't pull it off as good as I hoped, but it was what I expected.

But my day it turned to crap was when I was a Yellowstone and put a new SD card in, forgot to format it. I did realize something was wrong a couple hours later and didn't lose the whole day. I've also had a day when I didn't realize I left the camera on remote, and of course it was a dark day with no shake reduction using my longest lens.

[VisualDarkness]

Not a whole crappy day but one really failed shot, I call it "The missing invisible sling".

I went passed a playground that had big tractor tyre slings and I decided to put my camera with a 20mm bellow it, push the sling and go for a nice long exposure. Yeah, you can see how well that went...