In late August, I travelled to Mexico for the wedding of some dear friends, Aaron and Paul. They were getting married in the beautiful town of San Miguel de Allende, and my husband and I were to be guests. With celebrations planned over a period of a week, it was a great trip until my husband fell to food poisoning a few days before the actual wedding….

On the day of the wedding, he was still able to attend the service and a short period afterward, but then missed the rest of the celebration. There was no “official” photographer for the event as it had been designed to be a casual affair, so I decided to use my simple cellphone to document the event in my usual wedding style as a way to keep myself occupied as I was suddenly solo in the crowd.

Documenting a wedding on a cellphone proved to be an interesting experience in many ways. There are pluses and minuses to it as I quickly found out. No large camera equipment was definitely a plus. Slow control of focus and other controls was definitely a minus. While low light capability on cellphones is extraordinary these days, it doesn’t solve all problems with moving people. Flash is still pretty useless for creative control. I could go on. But as I used to tell my students, you make do with what you have, so I shot the event with what I had, a Galaxy S20, a two year old cellphone. For the gear heads out there, for the ultra low light shots I chose to hand hold at 1/6 and 1/10 of a second. All of this contributed to the look and feel I ended up with in what you will see. I shot in jpg for space (which I never do) and streamed to OneDrive for security and then did minimal editing in Lightroom to avoid too much destruction and excess artifacts.

Tech stuff out of the way, it was an absolutely beautiful occasion and achieved the casual and laid back feel that Aaron and Paul had wanted. The air was filled with love and friendship and the close group of friends that had assembled clearly enjoyed themselves and being together. The food and drinks were sensational, and the location divine. All told it was a fantastic experience and I was thrilled to be part of such a love filled weekend. Cheers to the happy couple and lots of love for the future!