North Georgia Mountain Wedding

Wedding season is full-on, and June kicked off with a fine mountaintop wedding in the North Georgia Mountains, near Helen, Georgia.

Helen is a quirky little Germanic alpine town about 1.5 hours north of Atlanta. Mountain bikers know it for awesome trails like the NORBA race courses at Unicoi, and climbers might pass through Helen en route to Yonah Mountain or Tallulah Gorge.

The more adventurous do what the locals do for fun: monster truck rides, a dip in the river, beer and putt-putt… A huge downpour signaled good luck and cleared the skies for the beautiful ceremony, which was held at Lucille’s Mountaintop Inn

Congrats to Vanthan & Adrian, June 5, 2010:

Crew:

My indefatigable assistant Sharif Hassan and my intern Brett May. I try not to leave home without them.

Here’s one reason why: shooting at the reception, my Nikon SB800 flash started doing unholy things to the exposure, so I grabbed Brett’s brand new SB900 and shot away. It worked, the SB800 did not.

I’m pretty sure the critical difference here was that the SB800 shoots TTL at a maximum ISO of 1000, where the SB900 will work up to 6400. The controls on the 900 are way more intuitive. These together mean better performance in the trenches. I bought one immediately.

Your crew should all shoot the same gear and have it ready to go. It also helps if they can assemble a grease a new racing bike with a multi-tool and a can of mustache wax.