Evro Moudanidis

A Filmmaker's Perspective

First let me start off with a brief introduction; my name is Evro, I produce wedding films but have no formal training in TV, Film or the Arts. Like many people who end up producing wedding video, I too started this journey as a weekend hobbyist. So here I am writing this blog entry thanks to a second mid-life crisis that occurred 5 years ago prompting me to trade a high-paying Information Technology career to become a full-time wedding film-maker/photographer.

Anyhow, lets get to the topic at heart:
Last October I attended the 2 day workshop headed by internationally acclaimed Master Photographer, Yervant Zanazanian. Being a photography nobody it was an opportunity I wasn't going to miss. The venue was Blue Hotel on Sydney Harbour's foreshore, a hotel built inside the 200 year old Woolloomooloo Wool Sheds featuring some amazing architecture, a photographer's dream!

Over the two days, Yervant spoke about his lengthy career in photography starting with how he and Annie (his wife) started their first studio & lab in their home. He described the endless hours spent hand processing negatives & prints inside their tiny laundry room which served as the makeshift photo lab during the evenings. He went on and talked about the huge financial risks he & Annie took to move their studio to a commercial space in one of the most exclusive parts of down-town Melbourne and how they succeeded in getting to where they are today - it was an inspiring tale for sure - this is the sort of stuff I look forward to in seminars & workshops because you just can't beat the information & wisdom imparted by an industry veteran. Annie also took the reins and spoke at length about their business structure, marketing & sales techniques they use to attract high-end brides.

Another of the highlights of the workshop for me was the photo shoot.

Yervant demonstrated how he interacts & poses his brides - in our case a leggy model in an unconventional wedding gown with the personality of dry white toast.

This was of particular interest to me because as a videographer I rarely had to pose or stage any action for video (I avoid cheesy skits.) Previous to my entry into still photography, as a videographer I would quickly and unobtrusively shoot whatever the photographer was setting up, using different angles and motion camera techniques before anyone got in the way. Yervant's approach to posing was quite relaxed and even though we were using a professional model, you could see how his tone of voice & body language could make any bride pose without making her feel uncomfortable or looking unnatural - this 4 hour session alone was worth the price of admission.

For those that have not met Yervant in real life, he's a short stocky and unimposing guy who absolutely loves to talk about photography & art, in fact, if it were not for Annie being there he could have continued talking way past the scheduled and of the day.

Free SecS for Everyone!!

At the end of the last day he talked about his most revolutionary & controversial technique, the 'SecS' or 'Seconds' method. In a nutshell, this technique involves using the Canon 5DMKII's video mode to capture unrepeatable & candid moments of a couple's wedding day as 30P video. Then you go through every frame of video footage to find the best moments and extract them as a still images for processing and inclusion into a client's printed photo album.

As a film-maker this didn't strike me as anything revolutionary because it is a technique I'd been using to generate images for our blog for quite some time. I mean as videographers, unless we had a short video clip to post, there was no other way to show our blog readers what each couple's wedding day looked like. I personally found this whole process very laborious, however, it did help me learn to use Photoshop & in particular Photoshop Actions.

When Yervant introduced this technique in mid 2009 it caused quite a stir within the pro photographic community; the majority of people claimed that it took the skill out of photography negating the value of a professional wedding photographer, while others looked at it as simply a new technique to help them out of a tough situation.

Overall I came away from the workshop with a lot more knowledge about lighting, composition, posing & post production techniques.

Thanks for reading
Ev