Last wedding story was quite the read wasn’t it? Hope you enjoyed it.
I’m thinking about cutting this one down in more manageable chunks… plus it means that I get to string it along for more days. I mean I wasn’t supposed to tell you my tricks. I suppose it’s more like a mini-series with jack bauer just about to do something crazy right at the end and you have to tune back in to see what happens in the next installment.
So here we go.
I was here
This was the first picture of the day… I took it to test out the camera. I just got my 14-24 2.8 back from the shop not too long ago and I missed it for getting cool architecture stuff.
So we so often show off when LDS bride and grooms come out of the temples… like their mini-revealing and unveiling. Their version of walking down the aisle.
But what happens prior to that moment… the non-lds (mormon) in the audience might find this interesting.
I’ve often seen many photographers just sitting in a waiting room waiting for their bride and groom… they’re missing out… this is time to get to know the family and get some of those candids and solo portraits.
Such as…
Then the moment comes… they come out.
Many times for the actual ceremony she’s wearing a different more subdued dress and so she goes and changes into her wedding dress, so often this really is the first time most have seen her.
Except of course her mom who probably went with her dress shopping (with the card) and her sisters who she played dress up for, of course. haha
This is me… I’m happy because I’m doing what I like to do. Shoot People…
(Shall I be more specific… I shoot people in the face… and if you don’t like that well then… Tough)
My name is Scott and I photographed a Reception and by “I Photographed a Reception” I mean that’s all I photographed.
Here’s my story:
This is Joel he’s a friend. He’s also a photographer. He’s also married!
He’s the groom. You could tell though couldn’t you. Without me saying you could tell… The coat, the flower, and yes of course the smile, the look on his face… you could tell couldn’t you.
I’m not sure why I can get away with doing these things and it works so well sometimes.
It’s really so simple and cheasy and yet it works.
I just have them look at me and say “serious, now smile and now look at eachother and giggle like girls or whatever.”
I do it all really quickly to capture the first real emotions and the spontaneity.
I don’t give them time to think of the request and try to make it posed and stale… usually they’ll do it as a reaction to the request and then when they find themselves looking at eachother smiling and laughing it usually sets off a trigger to make them do it more and more when they realize what they’re doing… so I’m ready to capture the whole sequence.
Obviously sometimes it’s better than others.
People so often look at pictures and comment on faces… they love such and such person’s face in this picture. Well this is one way to make this happen more often
This has kind of become one of my things I do at each wedding.
First of all I always stay until the Bride and Groom leaves… though there might not be much going on and though the families tell me I’m free to go, it doesn’t hurt to stick around just in case something happens so the families aren’t left saying and remembering how there was one shot they wish they would have gotten.
I usually drag the shutter when they leave with a low flash straight at them… I’ll pan along with them and sometimes even exagerate the pan of the camera to get some fun lines.
As you can tell it’s best when they’re waving good bye… and lots of fun when the car is decorated nicely. (The people that decorated the car will be so happy with your pictures documenting their hard work)
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
We were staying at the beach house of next week’s bride (last week) I thought it’d be fun to do some pictures for her (spontaneous) prior to leaving back for Utah. So we talked down to the beach and took some pictures in a short 40-60 minute block of time she had open.
I love that she’s picking something different for her wedding dress and it matches her personality and looks.
So I think a lot of people would love to have their pictures taken on a Hawaiian beach. This bride wanted it and that’s what she got.
Even as a very subtle sunset it was still good enough for some pretty cool pictures and perhaps because it was more subtle we were able to focus on some other locations and poses.
I had a ton of fun photographing for this couple, both of their families were awesome and their love of photography made it a wonderful experience for me.
That makes 2 terrifically awesome weddings in a row in Hawaii! Let’s not slow down or break the streak yet!
Ok ok so it’s not exactly molten lava coming down a mountain… but it was once upon a time.
You should just be happy I wasn’t cheesy enough to title it “Whole Lava Love” – (Though I wanted to)
Anyway… expect a few more posts on this wedding. We did wedding pictures at the Kona LDS Temple and on the way to the resort we stopped in the middle of no where and took some fun pictures. It was like going to the salt flats for something totally unique, but obviously it’s not salt and we weren’t there at sunset, but where we were at sunset was pretty amazing and those will be coming… when I get back to Utah. I leave Hawaii tonight and will be back in utah tomorrow. I have 3 weddings next week, so it’ll be busy.
By the time it posts these two will be married in the LDS temple in Kona Hawaii.
Last night we took the chance to walk the beach and take some pictures. No wedding dress as he hasn’t seen her in the dress yet. But they got some more great pictures to show off at their reception in Utah in one month’s time.
Now it’s time to get ready and head out to do the wedding. Since it’s only close family everyone is going in the temple and Scott is left to play babysitter for the one baby that made the trip.
(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.
I did their wedding pictures out here in Utah even though they got married in DC/NC
Sometimes it’s a much much less expensive option to get the formals (pre-wedding pictures), if you’re on a budget and can’t have it all might as well have one thing be really awesome, perhaps better than have everything be just a bit mediocre.
So for a bride on a budget consider doing a pre-wedding photo session and then perhaps going for the more risky less price on the wedding group pictures. Or perhaps do it the other way around.
So we did her bridals and formals all inside. A portion at the capitol and a portion at the SLC library.
We did go outside for a couple of minutes at the Capitol.
They wanted to do something with the bench… I said sure let’s give it a try. At times I’d love to be the planner, think of great ideas way in advance, but then I realize why mess with a good thing.
