Nov
15
2011Holy smokes, September and October were busy months, and November is panning out to follow in-suit. A lot of catchup to play here on the blog. Why not start with a wedding post. I had a wedding gig up in Whidbey Island last September. Whidbey is a beautiful place, great wooded and beach areas. As you drive along the winding roads (aching for a motorcycle), you never know when the next scenic visual delight will be around the corner to surprise you, going from dense woods to wide beach vistas.
Apr
17
2011If you can remember back last December, I traveled to Maui to shoot a destination wedding. It was an amazing time, the wedding was beyond beautiful, and the Travel channel was there to document this particular wedding. They were doing a piece on destination weddings, and happened to pick Daymeon and Leeann’s event. The video was just released, and I’ve reposted it here on my site. You’ll get a glimpse of me working with the couple on the beach for their formal wedding shots. Enjoy!
Feb
04
2011Life is all about time, or rather the lack of, right? Time is always the most scarce resource, even if you have all the time in the world, others around you, or even mother nature does not. As a photographer, “good light” naturally only happens in small fragments of time, and we counter this by using off-camera light, even when we don’t need to in order to get even “better” light. I think we need to put all our cancer curing resources and task them into figuring out how to extend really nice sunsets to say… twice as long (I kid…. but seriously).
Here is a behind the scenes video I cut together today, it showcases a little bit of the stuff we did while we were running around the island.
Jan
09
2011Wow, ok… the last and final installment to this whole shebang, the trash the dress shoot. We met-up the day after the wedding, around sunset. Leeann and Daymeon’s condo was just down the block from mine, so we just met at the beach that at across the street. Now, these might be my favorite shots from the whole week. It was my first ‘trash the dress’ shoot, so I was pretty excited.
The scene was pretty funny. We roll up, girl in wedding dress, guy with big camera, and Alice (my assistant) walking around to a good-sized mobile softbox. Toss girl with big white dress into the surf and everyone walking the beach stops to watch. There were actually other groups down there taking pics of family and friends. Before you know it, they have turned their cameras on us, taking pics of us doing our thing. Before you knew it, a crowd had gathered, with probably 30 sets of eyes on the shoot.
Jan
09
2011Getting tired of these wedding posts yet? This is the second-to-last one, so hang in there, cause this is the good stuff! Yes, by that I mean the lighting stuff. Towards the end of the wedding reception, I pulled Leeann aside to get some “fun photos.” I had been eyeing the alter they got married under ever since I arrived early that day. I knew it would make a great location to work-in some light, and make some interesting compositions.
Started simple, with one light, 2′x2′ softbox for front light. Then added some edging details to both the bride and flowers with a bare backlight directly behind Leeann.
Jan
09
2011Pictured above are Leeann and her best buds. It’s great when you see a group of friends stick together, even 10 years after high school. Sure, new friends will come and go along the years, but there is just something about those high school friends that makes it special.
Soon after the portraits were wrapped, the sun dipped below the sea, leaving torches, chandeliers, and candles to light the reception.
Jan
08
2011Ok, so getting into the stuff I LOVE to do, setting up some fun shots, and bringing in some lighting. The formal portraits.
Got Leeann and Daymeon on the beach as the sun was setting. Even though we had some pretty thick cloud cover, we got some fun colors in the sky. Knocked these out in 5 minutes or less. The sun was setting and I had to get the couple back to their party!
Jan
04
2011Spent a couple shutter clicks with both bride and groom in the dressing rooms. The beach house on the property was icing on the cake to an already great location. The bride prepared herself in a room that had this awesome bed, had all kinds of drapery and style to it. Naturally, that’s where I placed here for a few shots. Of course… once you are all done up in a dress like this, flopping down onto a bed is messy, so the girls helped her out, got a great pic of that.
Jan
03
2011Upon arriving to the wedding location, it was like something out of a movie. You know… those weddings that make you go “pfff, that doesn’t happen in real life.” There are literally 40-50 people working on setting up the wedding location. A dozen large work vans parked in the driveway of the property, you don’t even consider they are all for this one event. As I opened the gate to the property, I quickly realized that, yes, all these vehicles, people, and resources are all here JUST for this. Running around like worker bees, you could literally watch it all assemble in front of your eyes. All dressed in color coordinated shirts, as to differentiate the various job duties. A half dozen people assigned to just arranging the floral designs, a team of cooks, a team for setting up furniture, etc. All this for a wedding with 24 attendees. Of course, having CNN around pays off, and the coordination company pulls some strings, and upgrades every feature of the wedding.
Let me just say, this was a difficult job. No, not as in, shooting the wedding “job.” The job after it is all said and done, the job of selecting the “picks” of the bunch to give the newlywed couple. It was literally the coolest place and wedding arrangement I’d ever seen. Naturally this led to WAY more pictures than I would have liked to filter through. Of course, all of the photos turned out pretty darn good, I mean… look at this place! Hence my breaking the wedding into a series of posts. Even now that I’ve gone through and made the selects and shipped the photos off to the couple, it’s hard for me to try and write one or even two posts on this experience. Too many good things in this bunch. Hey, it’s a photo blog, get ready for some pics!
Jan
01
2011The first stop of the day, Leeann’s condo, to capture the bride and bridesmaid getting all snazzied-up. A girl has to look good on her wedding day, right? It was the first set of shutter clicks of the day, just a few of the thousands to be taken before I called it a day.
Like I said in the last post, with CNN there to video the wedding, the wedding coordination company was pulling out all the stops, everything that Leeann and Daymeon (bride and groom) had arranged for the wedding months ago all got multiplied by the coordination company so they looked perfect for CNN (they did a pretty darn good job too, they got this event about as close to perfect as possible). That meant, among a slew of other free upgrades for the couple, Leeann had a duo of hair/makeup artists following her around all day. Not a bad perk, eh?
Dec
31
2010A wedding, in December, in Maui. This gig was more than I could have asked for, timing, location, everything… It was a location and setup that was too good to be true. Stop for a second and imagine a tropical location, a place that is literally perfect for your dream wedding, now paint the picture. I’d bet the farm the picture in your head doesn’t have anything on this place. In many ways it felt like a dream just standing there, able to be a part of the whole thing. It’s a beach house, tucked right on the beach, and all you hear are the waves as they crash over the black rock formations and sand.
Dec
06
2010Yep, headed somewhere tropical in the middle of December – Maui. Got a call about six months back from a new client, “hey can you shoot a wedding… in December… in Maui?” Gee, let me think, um, yes. I’m island-bound on Wednesday, scouting locations for a couple days, and shooting the wedding on Saturday. I have no doubt these will be some of, if not, the best photos to ever come out of my cameras.
I’m also going to try my best to update the blog with some fun little photo shoots I’m hoping to capture as well while I’m there for the week, along with a post or two on ‘gear.’ For those photographers out there who are curious about what a lighting freak like me takes when he’s stripped of all his big, bad studio lights and left with just super mobile equipment…. I’m planning on posting a video blog on what I brought and why, and you’ll get to see the results (obviously) from the shoots.
Stay tuned!
