I was a second shooter for a wedding in D.C. this past weekend, and it makes for a good story.
It was all fine and dandy, people were having a good time, tons of drunk guests...they were hitting the remmy and Henessey pretty hard, and it was about an hour before the end of the reception.
The primary shooter and I were in the hallway of the venue shooting group portraits (about 50 ft. from the reception room) when there were a series of loud pops from the reception room.
Turns out, a drunk guest (likely a gang member) decides to pull out a gun and start shooting. Don't know if he hit anyone or not, the bride/groom/main shooter and I dove into a side room and just stayed there till the commotion subsided.
When we thought it was safe, we ducked back into the reception room where off in one corner there was what looked to be a really bad impending fight, grabbed our gear, and headed for the front door. Outside, the man (thought to be the shooter) was fighting with a few others on the side walk (sans gun...thank god).
Havn't heard anything else about what happened, but that jerk ruined the wedding and maybe hurt somebody also or worse.
Whoever said wedding photography isn't a dangerous job had no idea what they were talking about!
You might not want to use the terms "primary shooter" and "secondary shooter" in your story. People might get confused. Especially the cops if they come around to ask you questions. ;D
And you didn't get photos of the shooter...man...that would have earned a few photographic awards....think next time!!!!
While we were hiding out in that small room, I had my camera on shoulder...finger on shutter, and really wanted to photograph the bride and groom- they were just in tears, crying, screaming, cursing, the emotion was so raw and I couldn't imagine how they must have felt. But dammit, that 20D shutter is so flippin loud! So I didn't take any shots.
The cops were called to my wedding saturday too. Well, you never stated that teh cops showed.
There was nearly a riot. Seems one of the guests was drunk and being beligerrant, so the management call the cops and closed the bar.
I don't know what happened to the guest, but the near-riot was over the bar closing. It was about 10pm, and the place as booked - and paid for- till 2 AM.
The bar did reopen, but for beer, wine and mixed drinks only. No shots, nothing over the rocks strait.
Yeesh, I've had fights break out, but never actual gunfire. That must have been quite the incident! There's one particular place back home where I used to DJ quite a few weddings, and I think there was a fight there every single time.
