We’ll focus on the kids themselves and then next edition we’ll end off with the reception
I think this is a picture one of my interns took as I was setting up a shot… he got in close and photographed this neat moment. Go Will!
In any case you’ll notice a distinct usage of plant life in their pictures… a couple of reasons, she loves plant life, she studies it up at Utah St and she is even did her reception at Cactus and Tropicals and so I’m thinking I’ve done more than a few weddings at SLC Temple so I wouldn’t mind at all focusing on some places I haven’t been to a lot since often I’m focused on the building.
OK let’s meet them
This is Bret
He’s older than you think… not like ancient or anything but he’s older than his brothers who we kinda met last time.
And this is Michelle
OK we hope to hear from Michelle and Bret later with their stories and advice from the day and hopefully learn about what pictures are special to them with some fun stories why.
But for now I took a quick peak at the pictures she posted on facebook to see what she was liking.
She put up that first one
A couple of my favorites I put up last time
And there’s nothing like a good ol fashion straight smiling at the camera kinda picture.
When I made the decision to cut back on the number of weddings I made a decision to put more work in the weddings I do.
One of the things I started doing was double checking my edits, then triple checking and each time finding quick fast improvements that would make the pictures way better.
CHECK OUT THIS NEW AWESOMENESS -
(More about it in Posts to come)
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SELECTING
After those looks I would go back through and select pictures I think would look great in black and white. Now days after working on thousands of these I can often spot the picture that will look best in B&W but sometimes I have to double check by converting it quickly and then converting it back.
In Lightroom the shortcut is “V” you can check to see if it has potential if it does make a virtual copy and then make the second copy the one that will be B&W the shortcut for virtual copies is ctrl+’
I often find myself selecting the pictures with the most emotion and usually my favorite pictures are given that second B&W look.
One extra benefit
An extra benefit from turning pictures B&W is that going through the pictures is yet one extra look at them. And when they’re in B&W you often pay so much closer attention to exposure levels because colors (specially bright colors) are not playing with your perceptions anymore. I’ll therefore turn B&W see what needs to be done and make corrections before I create the virtual copy… so i don’t have to do things twice. B&W is also great for paying closer attention to making things sharper.
HISTORY
In times past I would tell my clients I could turn their pictures B&W but hardly anyone made reqeusts of me… I took that as a compliment that I was practically perfect. haha But in the end I figure they just don’t know what it might look like, and they might choose pictures that don’t look good in B&W
A little more history is that when I first started photography I wasn’t a fan of B&W… it seemed like cheating to me. I’ve grown to love it and recognize for me it’s spot in my work.
CREATING GALLERIES
Another fun thing I’m doing is creating a gallery of all the images from the session that I converted to B&W.
Usually I leave a copy in color because it often never fails that you do Only B&W and they’ll ask for the color… so if I just have B&W I either think the colors weren’t anything special or I was lazy and might pay for it later, it was probably an afterthought picture anyway.
To create a gallery of just B&Ws in Smugmug you’ll have to start in Lightroom (or similar program) keyword every B&W … I use the keyword “bw”
How to select all B&W the fastest… go to gallery go to the filtering options > select metadata options > change one of the columns to “treatment” > you’ll see you can filter by B&W > select them all > keyword them “bw” > then export > then upload to smugmug
In SmugMug: Add a new gallery seperate from the gallery that contains ALL pictures from the event the B&W gallery will be seperate with nothing to upload > when you get to the uploading section instead select Make Smart Gallery > select the from gallery option and select the gallery with all the pictures then add another qualifier and use that one to select by the keyword > then make sure to select the option that requires ALL requirements otherwise it will select all pictures from that gallery and all B&Ws you have on smugmug.
Anyway check to see if it works and then you have a gallery of all your B&W from that shoot
(Above) I’m pretty happy with this picture because they wanted a picnic look and had these grand aspirations of the prototypical look, and when I saw this bright and yet rustic fence I thought this will be different and fun. They trusted me enough that their awesome idea would work in a grungy street in the middle of no where on a patch of here today gone tomorrow green grassy-weedy with a couple of surprise flowers. No big fancy set up needed… just plop down the blanket and basket and say, hey by the way we’re doing your picnic picture here now have yourself a little romantic moment while I lay down on this sidewalk.
A continuation
Last week I posted a teaser of some of the pictures I had taken at night of a couple in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The Rest
Today I share the rest of the pictures taken throughout the day and throughout the city.
They get married in July in Idaho but she lives close to San Fransisco and I was already there doing a wedding, so he came down and we spent a few hours trying out dozens of locations throughout the city.
You want good pictures?
What makes for a great engagement picture session? a whole bunch of enthusiasm… and this couple certainly had it and it led to me trying out a bunch of new things. If a couple is good with “whatever” then that’s what happens, and if they want amazing and are willing to work for it, then that’s what we’ll strive for.
Last year I made a goal of weddings and i hit it and did a few extra.
This year I upped the goal by 15 to 40 weddings.
Happy to announce
I am very happy to announce that I went to the mailbox a minute ago… and saw I had complete confirmation on booking wedding #40
Commence balloon drop and other types of fanfare!!
Might I add the strange part that only 1 wedding is booked for after august 22nd
Yes Utah is a bit crazy with bookings… but I did go to 10 different states to do weddings.
Don’t try this at home! haha
I know many of you are photographers
And if you do try to do that many… have assistants, or at least don’t have a family or another job and expect consistent 12-15hr days.
Plan for future
Well while i’m young single 40!! and up to the task It’s all good.
But I have plans to slow things down and do a more manageble amount of weddings… in part to have a bit more of a life, not get burned out and to be able to work on other projects.
The question was posed on how I’m gonna photograph 3 weddings in one day.
Crazy Coincidence
First off it’s all about fate. It’s crazy how it all worked out.
All three inquiries were for SLC LDS Temple.
I don’t charge per hour… I charge for the day and give the couple the full reign of deciding what’s going on that day. Which makes it even more uncommon for me to do 3 weddings in one day.
Speaking of coincidences
I did a photoshoot monday, tuesday and wednesday this week so far… and each has been an engagement shoot.
It just so happens that they were each for the three weddings I’m doing on the same day in May.
I will post pictures soon.
First Wedding
Well the primary wedding that booked me first isn’t getting married at the temple until about noon. So that’s when i need to be there then then have a reception that night in Alpine.
