31 Dec Maui Destination Wedding – Intro (pt1)
A 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.
Here is some raw video I took:
[jwplayer mediaid=”4443″ width=700 height=418]
It’s a lot of pressure, getting handed the responsibility to thoroughly and creatively capture a wedding. It’s a lot of pressure in just a “normal” situation and location. Being given the opportunity to capture a destination wedding, in such a perfect place, making sure you bring all the right equipment (a lighting guy like me has a lot), making sure it all fits in your luggage and making weight at the airport bag check-in, covering an event at a location I’ve never been to, along with a hundred other things on the checklist… and knowing that I’d most likely never get the chance to do a wedding at this location on this scale ever again. Please don’t mistake this as negative, each little thing takes the challenge-factor up a notch, which I love, it makes me work that much harder. If I were going to be able to pull this off – the timing, the being in a dozen places at once to make sure it’s all documented, keeping my fingers crossed that equipment failures don’t pop up, and managing to take some awesome photos (which are the only kind of photos worthy of being taken at this event), I know that I’d be able to accomplish just about anything. As with most destination weddings, it had only 20-some people in attendance. This allowed me to spend more time on the lucky couple and their beautiful venue.
Oh wait… did I mention that CNN was there video capturing the whole event, and they selected this venue to air on their ‘Destination Weddings’ special that will soon play on national TV? Yep… pressure bar just got set a little higher, some of the photos I took may end up on CNN. IF I find out soon enough, I’ll give the heads up on when that airs.
Luckily, my specialty over the past couple years has been exactly that – walking into a new, never-before-seen location, and making it work within 10 minutes. I just had to get into my zone and stay there… for 10 hours. 🙂
I loved it…. did I mention I loved it?
This post is just to spin up the set of posts that I’ll be publishing for this week-long adventure. I finished editing the photos late last night. A couple thousand photos will make you go cross-eyed real fast, especially when they are all fun and rare by default because of the location.
The photos I’m including on this post are from my scouting trip out to the location the day before the wedding. Granted that I knew the location was going to look completely changed once the wedding coordination company setup everything, I at least knew what corner of the area was going to be used for the ceremony, I could get scale of the place, and check relative lighting conditions (I headed out there roughly about the time the ceremony was going to take place).
Photo below… see those palm trees to the left? The bride and groom will be tucked inside there as they say their vows.
Ok, so finally… here come the wedding event photos. Over the next couple days, I’ll share some photos and stories from the week.