Archive for August, 2007

It’s In The Details

Friday, August 17th, 2007

One of the benefits of having a photography blog is that it forces you to go through all of your pictures and look through the whole lot to find the images that will illustrate the point. I have set a self-imposed rule for myself that each post will have at least one photo that has something to do with what I am writing about. It’s this particular rule that forced me to stumble onto something that I inherently knew but never really consciously thought about.

If you think of a wedding, and all of the planning that goes into it, you notice that there are A LOT of tiny little details that go into the making of one couple’s day.

As I went through the photos from Emily & Geoff’s wedding for the previous post, I stumbled on several images that jumped out at me that were not of the moments that happened throughout the day. This got me wondering why I thought these pictures were important, and it turned out that they were all shots of the smaller details that may otherwise go unnoticed. For example, the flowers that were used to decorate Emily’s hair… there was a lot of thought that went into designing and creating that little arrangement, and it blended very well into her overall appearance, but I really began to appreciate how artfully it was implemented when I saw the picture of it that did not include the rest of the outfit. It was a beautiful piece, that I am sure she had selected or had made for her by her florist, and it would have otherwise been lost in the sea of everything else that was going on, both visually and just through the course of the day.

There are so many little accessories that the couples bring to their wedding day; objects that they either painstakingly select or design, or personal items that are meaningful to them. Yet these are often glossed over and never really shown prominently in the pictures. Mind you, this is not always the case, but it often happens. I’ve been around lots of brides; many of which were not ones that I had photographed, but just people that are around me in my daily life. I’ve seen weddings being planned (and not only mine), and I’ve seen the agonizing over the seemingly little things that are just expected to be there; like… wedding favors, or table centerpieces… All of these things took effort and planning on the part of the bride and it would be a real shame to not have a photograph of them. And this is not limited to just accessories and flower arrangements. Food is an important part of every reception, and while most any photographer will have photos of the cake cutting, the other things served at a wedding reception are often picture-worthy.

I can not count how many times I have been to a wedding and have seen the trays of food that are so meticulously and beautifully arranged that they are works of art in their own right. Especially dessert… because who can resist the sweet stuff? Not to mention, strictly photographically-speaking… a chilled dessert on a hot humid day can provide for some great shots; for example, the chocolate covered strawberries. The little beads of condensation really add to the overall appearance of the picture. You can almost feel their chilled chocolate-covered goodness.

Every wedding I have photographed, I have paid special attention to the detail shots because I remember how much effort my wife and I went through to get our small items to be as we wanted them on our day, but that was an unconscious sort of thing. And now it’s something I am consciously aware of, because of this little exercise. Just about every photographer I have ever worked with has always done detail shots, but the extent to which small details are captured varies from one to the others. Personally, I think I am going to spend more time searching out these little details and capturing them on their own because what seems trivial to a guest or a photographer may be important to the bride, who will look back at the image and remember the preparation and the thought it took to accomplish them. Not to mention all of those cool little bits that get lost in the mix but can really shine on their own.

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Emily & Geoff’s Beach Wedding

Thursday, August 16th, 2007

May 12th was the first wedding of the year for me, and it was a great one to do. Emily and Geoff were married in Bethany Beach, DE on a slightly overcast at times, hot day. I was working with Rob Nicholson of Humbled Eyes Photography, and it was a great way to get back into the swing of things.

In conversation, it was obvious that this couple had a real love for the beach, and it showed in the way that they planned out their special day.

The ceremony happened at about noon, on the sand. A circle of dried grasses and sea shells surrounded an altar where items special to the couple were placed. It was a very relaxed event, where the only suit was worn by the groom. Emily walked down the sand dune that blocked the beach from the rest of the gated community, and down the aisle made of the same dried grasses and sea shells as the circle, the guests parted and a simple but beautiful ceremony followed. The reception was held at a restaurant within walking distance from where the ceremony took place.

But that sounds like an official summary. I had plenty of reasons to be excited, and not just because this was a beautiful wedding of a really fun couple. Firstly, this was the first wedding I was doing with Rob. It’s always very exciting to work with someone new, but it can also be hectic, depending on the person. I work hard at each and every wedding, but my interactions with the people I work with and for is very laid back. I am an easy going guy, and it was great to find that Rob was just as easy going. Things started to click almost immediately, and it certainly showed in the photos.

I had lived in Kansas City for three years before moving back to the east coast. Outside of my own honeymoon a little over two years ago at the time, this was the first time I had seen the ocean and stood on a real beach. Yes. There are “beaches” in Kansas. They are very small and gravely, usually on the shores of smallish man-made lakes. Having grown up in New Jersey, and having been to the Jersey Shore many more times than I can count as I was growing up… they somehow did not count. Ah, it was glorious. I had not realized how much I had missed the sound and smell of the ocean before I wound up in a land-locked state. It just goes to show that you really never appreciate the things that are so readily abundant until you find yourself deprived. It’s just like some mothers tell their children “You should eat your vegetables because there are starving children in some far-away place”. You should enjoy the beach as much as you can if you are close to it, because there are poor land-locked children somewhere in the Midwest that have no idea what a real beach is.

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The Summer of 2007

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Even though I moved to the Philadelphia area earlier this year, and just recently set up shop in Blue Bell, PA, the summer has been a busy one. I’ve been pretty fortunate. Since the Spring, I have been working with two excellent photographers in the area, who have kept me busy doing what I love, which is shooting.

Rob Nicholson of Humbled Eyes Photography has been a great guy to work with and a constant source of information and inspiration to me. I happened to run into his advertisement looking for someone to help him out with his busy shooting schedule in the Delaware beach area, and it has turned out to be great. I also have been working with Stephanie Sherwood of Voch Wedding Photography, and have shot a few weddings with her in New Jersey.

The picture? Taken at Cara & Mike’s wedding that I shot with Stephanie in July out in Ocean City, NJ as Cara and her sister (also her maid of honor) were enjoying the ocean breeze on the balcony of the bridal suite before heading to the church. Despite the fact that the wedding took place in Ocean City, it was not a typical beach wedding. Instead of having the ceremony on the beach, it was held at a church a few blocks away. After the ceremony, we took a trolley ride to the beach, and photographed the new husband and wife, along with their bridal party under a wooden pier that extended over the beach and into the water, where the surf provided both the soundtrack and the background. A quick stop at one of the amusement parks that are right on the boardwalk for some shots on the carousel, and off to the party we went!

The reception was at the Flanders Hotel, which is just one block off of the boardwalk. There was lots and lots of great food, and lots of family and friends there to celebrate the happy couple! A great time was had by all, and it was a pleasure to have been a part of it.

This was just one of the great weddings I have been to, and had the privilege of photographing this summer. I’ll be spending a little time catching up here with everything that I’ve done, especially since heading in to the fall, I am looking at a wedding almost every weekend through the months of September and October, so I would like to tell the stories of the summer weddings before I dive headlong into the fall season.

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The Beginning

Monday, August 13th, 2007

Welcome to the Something Blue Photography blog. As with just about anything you’ve ever seen, things have to start somewhere. And so, this is the obligatory first post where I get to introduce myself a little bit.

No, that is not me. But it was pictures such as that one that made me want to rethink my initial stance on photographing people.

A couple of years ago, something drastic happened that changed the way I thought about photography. I had been happily photographing nature, nature, wildlife, and more nature. It was, and certainly still is, a passion of mine. My wife and I were living in the Kansas City area at the time, where her work and social circle revolved around her graduate school work. In that group, I happened to be the token non-student that knew just enough about the subject matter to scratch the surface of being dangerous. (She studied Ecology. While building a career in an unrelated field, I happened to photograph some of the things that she studied. This worked out well when I needed to know what that pretty plant that I just photographed was… or what that bird in the picture is…) And then it started to happen; friends started to get married, and it was one such wedding that did it for me. This particular couple of friends were graduate students from well out of state, and were getting married. Their wedding would be in their home state, far far away from Kansas, and most of those that were now their friends would not be able to make it for the ceremony; nor was it going to be a big ceremony in the first place. (They planned a low-key wedding with very few friends and immediate families.) But who could resist the temptation to throw a party? They decided to have a pre-wedding ceremony and celebration where all of their friends could attend and celebrate with them. And so, my wife suggested that perhaps they would like to have photographs to remember their celebration by.

I will admit that I was apprehensive to say the least. Aside from the random snapshot of my wife, I was quite content to photograph the beauty of the landscape and things that live in it. Wild things. To photograph an event such as this was taking me well out of my element, but with some convincing, I agreed to do it (all the while being quite certain that I would hate it and would never do it again.) Being married to a scholar tends to rub off, and so I immediately started studying the whats and hows of photographing a wedding. With a couple of weeks to prepare, I read every website that I could find and every book I could get my hands on. By the time the big day came and went, I was shocked to find myself in love with photographing people.

There is something magical that happens at weddings; people tend to subdue their displays of emotion on a daily basis, but at these events, they show them so openly that it is heartwarming. Take for instance, the father/daughter dance. Lets assume for the moment that the father is your typical manly man; in normal day-to-day circumstances, you would never see him cry. And yet here he is, dancing with his daughter that had just become someone’s wife, and you see him smile at first, but as the magnitude of what is happening sinks in and he buries his head into her shoulder, you see those interesting little sparkles right around the eyes. Those are tears. That moment is powerful enough to break through anyone. It is a moment that begs to be remembered; to be captured and enjoyed again and again. And it was something akin to that that changed my mind.

A few years later, I have had the chance to work with and learn from some wonderful photographers. We left Kansas City in the late fall and moved back to the east coast, where I started working to rebuild what I left behind in Kansas City, and here we are.

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