We’ll be at the Tribeza Bridal Show today. This is the first time that we have exhibited at this show and I am really excited about it. My booth is a bit smaller than what I am accustomed to, so I will have to make do. This will be held at the Stephen F. Austin Intercontinental Hotel.
Monthly Archives: February 2007
I decided to take a risk and step out of my comfort zone and allow my work to be thoroughly critiqued by some of the nation’s top photojournalism wedding photographers. While I am great at posing people and great at directing and capturing those moments, I wanted to improve my ability to tell the story of the wedding day in a documentary style that is similar to images you see in newspapers. I am pretty good at capturing moments, too, but I want to get better at anticipating them, as every photographer does.
I also wanted to learn from some top pulitzer-prize-winning photographers and get their take on how to incorporate newspaper-style photography into my style. I also wanted to push myself harder than ever before, and shoot in some styles that I am not usually comfortable with in order to gain from this week-long experience.
Here’s the problem sometimes with photojournalism – sometimes you don’t get people looking their best OR there are things in the background that are distracting. So, you have to weigh ‘do I capture the emotion’ or ‘do I spend a little more time framing the image to make it look pretty or making the subject look pretty’. This is a hard concept for me to deal with because I am all about making my clients look beautiful, so I am learning that sometimes emotion does overrule how a client looks IF the client wants truly candid moments captured.
My assignment was to follow a mother who is a bi-vocational minister. She’s a stay-at-home mom of 2 children and a minister. She’s definitely a busy person, and I observed her for 2 days straight with a small number of breaks (much harder than a wedding). Every night, I would return to the ‘homebase’ to get my work critiqued and EVERY image was critiqued – even the bad ones. My assignment was to capture images that tells her story, and in the end, we had to filter out many images down to 12 (much harder than selecting images for a wedding album). This was a lot of work to just create 12 images. I truly felt like I was working for a newspaper and trying to get ‘the story’. We also had ‘newspaper’ rules placed on us – you had to crop in the camera and no post-processing of images. Sometimes I capture the image, and I crop it later because the moment is happening right then, for example.
This experience was new to me. Weddings are somewhat predictable, and you have a good idea on how the schedule is going to go. I had NO idea at all how this schedule was going to go, and I had to quickly adapt to various environments. Tyler Wirken of Wirken Photography was my mentor and he did an awesome job of critique. I had a tough time at first because I spent a great deal of time taking ‘pretty images’ instead of capturing ones that told the story. This is always a tough call in a wedding day, because you want to take images that are artistic, and you want to take images that are photojournalistic, and it’s a risk that I always have to figure out of ‘how many to take of what’.
I went to some new extremes that I never have been before, such as using all kinds of new lenses (a very wide 16-35 f/2.8 for most of the time on my Canon 5D, and a 24 f/1.4 for a VERY low-light candle-lit church ceremony), and I chose to go the entire time without flash, which was also new for me. I usually use my long lens (70-200 f/2.8) to capture moments instead of being VERY close to people with using wide lenses. I had to force myself into the story by getting very close and personal. I had to break that ‘personal space’ barrier sometimes to really capture the moment.
Her 2 children were very young and full of spirit. Photographing young children and NOT controlling them was tough. I have photographed children before, but you usually can control or ‘bribe’ them to do what you want. I will admit that I talked with them a little, but I wanted to capture them in their natural environment.
I also chose to not interact with my environment at all, such as ignoring the temptation of turning lights on/off for better lighting, closing window shades, having people move to get better light, etc. I don’t do this for weddings (I do control the external environment if possible and if time permits).
I will post a link to the slideshow shortly.
I was off to Dallas to attend a photojournalism workshop and stopped off at the Dallas Museum of Art for a quick engagement session. This lovely couple live in Dallas, and I thought I would save them the drive by meeting them up there on their home turf. This lovely couple will be getting married in June at Vintage Villas here in Austin.
This was a risk for me because I had never been to the Museum of Art before, and I only had about an hour to scout out a 4-block by 4-block grid. I also found out that I needed some kind of permit to photograph there. It’s Sunday – where in the world am I going to get a permit in less than an hour? Needless to say, I may have broke a rule or two. I didn’t get arrested, so that was good.
I was blessed with some beautiful weather that day. I really loved the experience that I had with this couple. They came to have some fun and were very relaxed. Here is some of what we captured.
We had our first visit to the newly renovated Lakeway Resort and Spa with this fun couple.
We started off the day at St. Thomas More Catholic Church. This church is quite modern in it’s architecture and I love the ability to photograph in this church because of the open light that comes in during the day, and the gorgeous grounds outside. Unfortunately, a cold front had just came through, so we were unable to take advantage of the garden outside.
We started off the day by capturing Renee getting out of her limo and arriving at Church. She was already dressed, and we started capturing moments right away. Wayne arrived later, and we finished up group portraits 10 minutes before the ceremony (just in time). The ceremony was beautiful, and we captured quite a few special moments during the ceremony. After that, we were off to Lakeway Resort and Spa. Yuani, the coordinator at Lakeway had everything in order. The couple had set aside some open space in their schedule for alone time, so we took advantage of the bar in the hotel and captured some nice moments. We then went off to the party.
The new facility is unique with 3 walls of glass and 1 wall of wood (the side that faces the sun). It was great to photograph with a lot of available light and we were able to put away the flash gear until dark. We even captured a sunset together with the couple.
I really appreciated how the couple laid their schedule out. Nothing was rushed, and there was time to do many things and enjoy the day. All in all, we spent almost 11 hours with this couple on that day and captured many moments that we hope they will truly treasure.
I could also not stop counting how many times Renee kissed Wayne throughout the day. I captured so many kisses. Some people may call this type of image ‘cliche’, but I was documenting the day, I had to capture it, and it happened often! I have not seen a bride this excited to kiss her groom this often in quite a few months. It really depicted how excited she truly loves her man and adores him greatly.
Another thing we enjoyed about this couple was their DJ choice. It was a couple from Fort Worth named Cecil Knight of Knight Sounds. This was the first time that we ever worked with this DJ and he was awesome! He kept people on the floor all night long! He also does something very unique – he brings props for certain songs, and he gets the crowd to wear them during the song. He did an EXCELLENT job of getting the crowd into it, as well as setting up some awesome photographic moments.
Here is a link to the highlights of their wedding day. I’m so excited that they chose us to be their photographer. Here are some of the moments that we captured.
