Lucky In Love :: Brian & Christine :: Married St. Patrick's Day 2012

Dustin and I had the pleasure of shooting Brian and Christine's wedding on St. Patrick's Day.  I would assume that when planning a wedding in Southern California weather isn't usually a factor--it's always sunny in California, right?  Not this day.  But, everybody says that it's good luck if it rains on your wedding day, and if that's the case Brian and Christine have a whole lot of luck going in to their marriage, because it POURED rain on their big day!  As if rain wasn't enough there were also high wind warnings.  Dustin and I drove carefully down the Cajon pass with our hazzards on most of the way.  The rainy day obviously removed any hope of natural lighting portraits of the wedding party, and on top of that the clouds kept any hope of sunlight through the stained glass windows away, making the already dark church even darker.  But, all obstacles aside, we had a wonderful day capturing moments with this fun family.  They totally rolled with all of mother nature's punches and didn't seem to let it get to them.  Below are my favorites from the pre-ceremony & ceremony.  The formals, reception pics, and a few more portraits will be in the next post--I just couldn't wait any longer to share these!  FYI: these photos are a mix of mine and Dustin's.

Groom & Best Man

Patiently waiting...

 

Watching his bride come down the aisle.

This one may be my favorite of the day... I absolutely love it!

Game Plan

I am a spatial person.  It's always easiest for me to sketch out ideas so that I can see them while I think through them.  When we were recently re-hanging the picture frames in my living room, for example, I made a whole Photoshop document of the layout-- complete with a couch and each of the six frames and mini versions of the pictures-- to help me visualize the layout before we pounded a single nail.  I make lots of lists and go through tons of Post-It notes.  Many of my students, after asking me for help, have seen me grab a piece of scratch paper to sketch out photos or brainstorm lists. 

So, the other day, in true form, I sketched out a general layout of the church where we'll be shooting the wedding.  Dustin and I walked through the whole ceremony and picked the best spots in the church to take each important picture (note the X's on the diagram.)  We listed out which of us would be where and who would be responsible for each shot.  I guess I'm just not the kind of person who is comfortable winging it, so the whole thing was actually relaxing for me.  When we were done I just had to take a picture of the layout.

Our New "Baby" : 50mm f/1.8

We headed down to San Bernardino a couple weeks ago to scope out the lighting in the church where we'll be shooting a wedding this coming weekend.  Yes, I did say we--Dustin and I will be co-photographers for this shoot, and I'm really excited to get to work with him!  Our favorite favorite favorite lens, our 85mm prime, was great in the somewhat dim lighting in the church (it opens up wide to f/1.8) but was just a bit too close for many of the shots we'll want.  So, we used the wedding as an excuse to add a new lens to our kit--a 50mm f/1.8.  It came highly recommended and was actually very reasonably priced.  Now, where our 85mm is a rather beefy lens that just looks fancy, this itty bitty lens weighs only 1 lb and juts out a mere 2 inches off the camera body.  It's tiny!  But, don't be fooled by it's size (and low-ish price).  This lens is pretty awesome!  It's only downfall that we've noticed so far is a little extra lens flare, but hopefully paying attention to the angle of the light will help that.  Plus I actually usually like a little flare.

Somewhat random side note: This pic of the lens was shot on my kitchen counter, and I think it's my new favorite place to shoot still life pictures.  It's just so bright!  I don't know, I just like it.

Here are a couple quick pictures taken with the lens.

P. S. If you're going to check out lighting in a church DON'T go on a Saturday.  Saturday seems logical, right?  Church services are usually on Sundays, so should be pretty empty on a Saturday, right?  No.  I had a serious "Doh!" moment when we arrived.  What happens in churches on Saturdays?  Weddings, duh!  Yep, and the church we went to had TWO weddings back-to-back.  We had to hang out in our car out front and wait patiently (probably looking like total weirdos.)  Lesson learned.  :)

Goal #9 - Update Family Photos

I know it's already two and a half months into 2012, but I'm still excited that I finally get to cross off one of my 2011 Goals.  If you're not familiar with my "11 Goals for 2011" you can still see them on the My Goals page, because I haven't made 2012 goals yet... story of my life! :)  Maybe my 2012 goal should be to update my goals and actually put something on my About Me page (been blank for a year!)  Anyway, thanks to the amazing photographic talents of Ruben Tinajero, former student, I can now say that Goal #9 - Update the family photographs in my living room - is now complete.  I wanted the whole experience of having someone else take my family photos this time--no remotes or self timers and no editing on my part.  I wanted to see someone else's vision.  I chose Ruben, because I knew that he had experience with shooting portraits and would be a confident director of our shoot.  I also really admire his photography and editing skills.  Thankfully he said he'd do it!  Since we had recently moved to Hesperia I wanted a "high desert feel" to the photographs, and scoped out some great locations off of Santa Fe Road near Hwy 138.  Unfortunately it was really really really cold the day we met up for the shoot.  Not sure if we're hiding it well in the photos, but we were freezing!  I wanted kind of natural looking interaction photographs with at least one good photo of the four of us.  So, we just kind of horsed around and let the boys wander a bit while Ruben followed us around and captured images.  When he dropped off our CD of edited photographs Dustin and I were beyond excited. The pictures were everything we were looking for and more!  And, the more we looked at the pictures the more we loved them!  We used to have three frames with family photos above our couch, but couldn't decide on just three favorites from this shoot, so we ended up adding three more frames to our wall!

If you would like to see the amazing photos that Ruben posted on his blog click here. There were a few that were our favorites that Ruben didn't post, so here are those.

February Brag Post : Joseph M.

My February Student of the Month, Joseph M., could have just as easily been my September student of the month, because he started standing out from the crowd way back then.  On more than one occasion Joseph has approached me the day after I've announced one of our class-wide photo challenges to tell me that he had a dream about the assignment.  When he makes these dreams a reality his photographs usually do really well in the challenge, and I know that he's won class favorite at least a couple times.  Another thing that made Joseph stand out in my mind was when he brought in an old photo of his Grandma to scan and re-touch as a gift for her--such a sweet and simple gesture that probably made her day.  Thanks for being such an awesome part of 2nd period, Joseph!

Sugar Shaker

Yesterday on a whim I decided to give Dark Field or Bright Field Lighting a try, so I started setting up a shot after school in my classroom.  I had brought this sugar shaker (sans lid) in from home a while back, because I liked the shape and thought it'd be an interesting subject.  I used a couple different setup photos from the internet as my guide.  I placed the jar on a very dirty piece of glass atop a piece of black foam core.  I figured I'd set up the shot and if it was looking good I'd take the time to clean off the glass.  I placed a strobe light below the table, directed it at a white piece of paper on the wall, and attached my fancy snoot (made from a cardboard mailing tube) to direct the light and prevent spillage.  Finally, I placed two more pieces of black foam core on either side of the jar.  In the end I don't know if it's a Dark Field or Bright Field success--I'm still a bit confused on the topic and want to give it another go after more reading.  But, I liked the result anyway, and it got me shooting, so I'm happy.  Oh, and if you look at my setup shot below you'll see that I never ended up having to clean the glass... :)

Editing details: Shot in RAW, so first editing was done in CameraRAW.  In Photoshop I duplicated the background layer, converted that to black & white, and set it to Soft Light.  I also added a magenta layer set to overlay and at a very low opacity.

From the Vault: Ashley & Dave's Wedding

I was recently asked about the possibility of shooting a wedding.  I realized that I don't have any examples of my wedding photography on here, but I have actually shot two weddings before.  The first was when I was about 18 years old.  It was for a friend and was shot completely on film with my Pentax K1000.  Thinking about that still makes me nervous... film!?  I don't even have those negatives anymore--after I got them developed I just gave them to my friend and she printed them.  This was before I began working with Photoshop, so the photos were completely unedited... yikes.  Then, in 2008, I flew back to Wisconsin to attend the wedding of one of my best friends--Ashley.  I was teaching photography by that time and had a digital camera, so I brought my camera along just for fun.  As it turned out Ashley and Dave's wedding photographer had a family emergency and couldn't make it.  They asked if I'd fill in, and of course I said I would.  I was pretty unprepared with only my 18-55mm lens, but I made do and ended up shooting a ton of photographs.  It was really fun, actually, because I was adopted as part of the wedding party, which meant that after the reception I got to go with everybody in the "Jambo"-- instead of a limosine they opted for an RV.  :)  Here are a select few of the photographs.

Getting ready...

 Exchanging rings... (it was so dark in the hall!)

 The wedding party...  I had seen this done before and this wedding party was so much fun I knew they'd be up for it.  This is probably one of my favorites.  It's in the style of Philippe Halsman's Jumpology... check it out.

 They ended up using this photo on their thank you cards.  So in love!

 Father and daughter

Like I said, this was a fun bunch of people to shoot...

 First dance...