A PHOTOGRAPHER has dished on one of his most challenging jobs to date.

He said a wedding went awry, sending the bride into tears.

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Kris Labang of Hawaii Wedding Photography spilled the beans on the unfortunate ceremony.

The photographer has seen it all, with over 20 years of experience in the industry.

He recounted one of the worst stories on the job, which turned the big day into a blunder.

The wedding fail took the cake, with Labang describing it as being unforgettable.

NOT TEARS OF JOY

Labang explained that with his level of expertise, he’s witnessed a lot in his industry.

“Believe me when I say that I have seen and heard it all,” he said.

“But some wedding disasters you can never forget.”

What makes the story worse is that the snafu could have easily been avoided.

“Another photographer I know had met with the happy couple in advance to discuss and plan their photos for the day,” he said.

“Every couple is different, and every wedding is different, so planning is important to make sure the best shots are all captured.”

Issues arose once the when the groom’s mother stepped in while the shots were being taken.

“The photoshoot started well enough,” he said. “But then the mother-in-law decided to get involved.”

She began taking her own pictures with her phone, despite protests from the bride.

“The photographer did his best, but with an amateur taking control, the results were disappointing, to say the least,” he said.

“People didn’t look happy in the photographs, and an argument even broke out among the family. At one point, the bride was in tears.”

FEELINGS IN CHECK

With weddings already being a time when emotions are on a high, Labang recommended keeping an eye on the prize.

“A wedding is a highly emotional day, and the frustration when something goes wrong can escalate quickly, ruining the day,” he said.

“Weddings are once-in-a-lifetime, and the run-up to the big day puts tremendous stress on those involved.

“Sometimes, it all comes out during the wedding.”

Labang also had some advice for other photographers on similar assignments.

“A more experienced photographer would have handled the mother’s interference, got the shots, and kept everyone happy,” he said.

“Being a professional is about understanding people and circumstances and working the crowd.

“On this occasion, most of the planned photos were never taken, and the ones that were looked disorganized and a mess.

“No one was happy with the results, yet it all could have easily been avoided.”

The Richmond Photo Club is holding its annual show at Lansdowne Centre with 80 photos on display.

The club’s members are displaying both colour and black and white photos until Sunday, April 28.

The public is invited to come and look at the photos and then vote on their preferred image.

Club members will be on-hand to help with the voting and to talk about their activities.

The photo exhibit at Lansdowne is located at the Centre Court, close to the food court and Toys’R’Us.

For more information on the Richmond Photo Club, click here.

This afternoon, Buckingham Palace announced King Charles would be returning to public duties starting next week. Though his cancer treatment is not finished, a Palace spokesperson said “doctors are sufficiently pleased with the progress made so far that The King is now able to resume a number of public-facing duties.” The spokesperson added that his “medical team are very encouraged by the progress made so far and remain positive about The King’s continued recovery.”

In tandem with the announcement, the Palace shared a new portrait of King Charles and Queen Camilla, taken earlier this month on the morning of April 10 by photographer Millie Pilkington. The portrait was taken the day after the royal couple’s 19th wedding anniversary, and King Charles and Queen Camilla look as in love as ever.

Pilkington posted the image on her Instagram, sharing, “Feeling truly honoured to have been asked to take this portrait of Their Majesties the King and Queen earlier this month in Buckingham Palace Gardens. And delighted that His Majesty the King is recovering so well.” She added, “Thank you @theroyalfamily for such a wonderful commission, and Paul Ellis for assisting me on the day – couldn’t have done it without you.”

Pilkington is no stranger to royal family portraits—in fact, she took a number of photos released by Kensington Palace on special occasions last year, including a portrait of Prince William and his kids for father’s day, and portraits for Prince Louis’s 5th birthday, Princess Charlotte’s 8th birthday, and Prince George’s 10th birthday.

Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.

Former Village Voice and New York Observer photographer James Hamilton lives in a small Manhattan apartment on University Place that also doubles as his studio. There’s a dark room in the corner, where Hamilton develops his images, using chemical ingredients plucked from a wine cooler. His walls are lined with books and stacks of photos, a treasure trove of portraits and reportage he’s shot over the decades, among them BB King in concert, Liza Minelli at home and Muhammed Ali out in the streets.

“This is James Stewart in Rear Window,” says director Wes Anderson, when recalling his first impression of Hamilton, and his apartment, in Uncropped, the documentary he executive produces. Hamilton wouldn’t argue against the comparison. Rear Window – Hitchcock’s classic about an adventurous newspaper photographer taken off the job by a broken leg, abandoned to spy on his neighbours – is a formative film for the cinephile cameraman.

“I was not inspired to be a photographer by that film, but I was inspired to live his life,” Hamilton tells the Guardian, very matter-of-factly, on a Zoom call. “I live in the same neighborhood that [Jimmy Stewart’s character] lived in Rear Window. Almost the same block. He mentions the Albert hotel, which is directly across from where I live.”

I’m speaking to Hamilton and Uncropped director DW Young about the film, which is not only a portrait of the man behind some of the most iconic portraits, but also a look back at a lost era in alternative news media, the staff photographer for the Voice in the 70s and 80s, with stints at Rolling Stone predecessor Crawdaddy, Harper’s Bazaar and the New York Observer flanking that period.

He’s photographed Hollywood galas, capturing images of Jane Mansfield leading a conga line and Cary Grant describing his knife phobia to guests, and has captured Jack Nicholson, Martin Scorsese, Hitchcock and pretty much every rock band that passed through Greenwich Village in some of their most funky or iconic poses. He describes his photography as “arranging chaos”, whether we’re looking at street scenes with kids playing or feminists protesting, or celebrities bringing that same disruptive energy to hotel room photo shoots.

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As a photographer for an alt-weekly like the Voice, he was also poking his camera within spaces and movements that few other outlets at the time would cover with such rigor. During our interview, Young whips out a photo book featuring Hamilton’s images of the burgeoning hip-hop scene, like an image of guys hanging on a low-rise stoop with their boombox in Brooklyn’s Gravesend, and portraits taken in Hamilton’s own apartment of LL Cool J, Run DMC and pioneering group Funky 4 + 1. “The Voice was very important for covering hip-hop early,” says the director, pointing to rigorous writing from music critics like Robert Christgau, Gary Giddens and Greg Tate who, in keeping with the Voice’s whole vibe, embraced the scrappy new sound coming from the Bronx. “When I look through the old issues and start seeing the articles, it really brings it home. [They were] giving hip-hop legitimacy, treating it seriously, seeing all it had to offer as an art form and getting heavy critics involved.”

Hamilton is sitting beside Young at the latter’s Brooklyn Heights apartment. He would have logged in from his own landmark pad had he been comfortable with Zoom. He’s a very analog guy, though he has been dabbling with Facebook lately, digitizing so much of his stunning street photography as a way to archive the work and share with his intimate circles. “Putting pictures on Facebook motivated me,” says Hamilton, about his foray online. “It gave me a job. It amused me. It amused my friends.”

Those Facebook posts caught the attention of Young’s life and producing partner, Judith Mizrachy (Hamilton’s former New York Observer colleague) and became the impetus for Uncropped, a time capsule hardwired with a sense of melancholy with every page flip through the archive. Ironic that social media led to the rediscovery of Hamilton’s photography while it’s that very technology that makes that work impossible today.

Gone are the lively everyday street scenes because, as Hamilton explains, now everyone in New York is looking at their phones. Also gone are the more candid, spontaneous and authentically vulnerable photographs with actors and rock stars. “Everyone goes around with extra makeup, dressed a special way, so that they can be photographed in a completely glamorized form for Instagram,” says Young, describing today’s heavily filtered, PR’d and posed aesthetics, a stark contrast from the harsh and dramatic lighting and action Hamilton worked with. “They expect to be photographed at any moment during the day, in a selfie or whatever. They’re only comfortable with that kind of photograph. A street photograph would expose the falsity of that.”

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Young also describes the collective cultural hum below 23rd street that is no longer there. The Village Voice, with its 22 Greenwich Avenue office just a quick stroll from Hamilton’s apartment, was at the centre of so much artistic and even anarchist movement, which meant its writers and photographers were already in the centre of so much action. “There was the ability to interact with many, many scenes in proximity to one another,” says Young, describing the time when the Voice was still in print, before the internet democratized but also saturated media and its value, and bohemians could still afford to live in Manhattan. “That creative combined energy was really critical. That has fractured because of prices of real estate and all the other things. A lot of that world is harder to find on the street.”

Hamilton’s work with alt-weeklies, from the Voice to the New York Observer, continued into the internet era; even after Jared Kushner bought the latter, turning it into a tabloid focused on business and real estate interests, gentrifying the brand so that it lost its character like a New York neighbourhood overrun by glass towers. “Another building’s blocking the view of the Empire State,” says Hamilton, describing the shifts.

But in the end, it wasn’t these shifting winds, in media and New York culture, that took Hamilton out of commission. He was struck by a car, which broke his leg, just like the guy in Rear Window.

• Uncropped is out now in NY and LA cinemas and digitally on 7 May with a UK release to be announced

Arducam, who creates cameras and modules for embedded systems and electronics hobbyists has announced the Arducam Pivistation 5. It’s a Raspberry Pi 5-powered all-in-one camera kit that you build yourself.

Due to its modular nature, there are three different versions of the camera available. There’s the 64-megapixel autofocus Hawkeye, the ultra-low light Darksee and the 1″ 20-megapixel Klarity. All three are on Kickstarter right now.

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Arducam Pivistation 5 – Powered by Raspberry Pi

The Arducam Pivistation 5 is powered by the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB. This means that it runs Linux, so you can use it just like normal Raspberry Pi if you wish. You can experiment with all kinds of software from the many DIY Raspberry Pi-based cameras that have been released over the last few years.

Running a full operating system like the Raspberry Pi means that it’s probably updated more often than any camera you can buy from the likes of Sony, Canon or Nikon. And you have the ability to customise it to your needs.

Do you want to run a web server on your camera or have it automatically upload images to the cloud? Well, it’s a Raspberry Pi, so you can do that pretty easily.

Available in three flavours

There are three versions of the Arducam Pivistation 5. They are the Hawkeye, Darksee and Klarity. Each of them is essentially the same, except for the camera module. Of course, the camera module isn’t just like swapping out a sensor, but pretty much all of the camera’s specifications.

The Hawkeye contains the company’s 64-megapixel 1/1.7″ camera module with a built-in fixed lens. It offers an 84-degree field of view with an f/1.8 aperture and a minimum focus distance of 8cm. It also has phase-detect and contrast-detect autofocus.

The Darksee is the low-light model. It contains 1/1.8″ sensor that shoots 8-megapixel. This makes each pixel around 6.25 times the size of those on the Hawkeye, allowing it to capture a lot more light at night despite being a smaller sensor. It features an M16 lens mount

The Klarity should also work quite well in low light. It’s higher resolution, at 20 megapixels, takes C mount lenses, sports a large 1″ sensor, and actually has larger pixels than the Darksee. This comes with an added cost, though.

All three cameras offer 10-Bit raw output, but the 64-megapixel Hawkeye also offers JPG, YUV and RGB output. All three modules contain rolling shutter CMOS sensors, and they have infrared-blocking filters, so they can only see visible light.

Arducam Pivistation 5 Specs

Price and Availability

The Arducam Pivistation 5 is currently running on Kickstarter. Pledges start at $139 for the Hawkeye, $179 for the Darksee and $279 for the Klarity. Items are expected to ship in August 2024.

Disclaimer: We only share crowdfunded projects we believe are legitimate. However, most of those projects are not in a delivery state. Make sure you look into the project and make an informed purchasing decision. While some projects may offer amazing rewards, others unfortunately may not deliver on their promises.

Brian C. Rittmeyer is a TribLive reporter covering news in New Kensington, Arnold and Plum. A Pittsburgh native and graduate of Penn State University’s Schreyer Honors College, Brian has been with the Trib since December 2000. He can be reached at brittmeyer@triblive.com.