Bridal
After looking at the post of Abbey and Taylor's formals shoot, I realized that some of my favorite photos of Abbey didn't make it into the post. Here's a few that I really wanted to share. This first one is probably one of my favorite all-time photos....
I love doing bride and groom shoots (or "groomals") before the wedding. You get to pick the time and place, ensuring interesting locations and good lighting, and you can always reschedule if you have to because of bad weather. In this case, I was glad we did a formal shoot of Jenny and Josh as we ended up getting some rain on the wedding day, and because of the previous shoot didn't have to stress too much about it. We took a couple of photos, and headed on out.
Anastasia grew up watching Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson each get married and looking at all those old pics from famous weddings in the 1950s and 1960s- it definitely had an impact on her wedding style. In fact, her wedding dress was made as an exact replica of Grace Kelly's wedding dress when she married the Prince of Monaco. Her dress was beautiful, and definitely one of the most unique I have shot. The tulips were in full bloom for the shoot- definitely one of my favorite flowers.
A horse and carriage ride was definitely a requirement. :)
Just take a look at that veil and the back of the dress....
I think the vintage feel of this one really fits the dress.
You can see more photos here.
Well I'm back! After a week and a half in California shooting two weddings and spending our first real vacation with Thomas, I am back and headfirst into the backlog of editing and blog posts. Sorry if you've checked the blog recently hoping for updates- I promise more will be coming....
Here are a few photos from Megan's bridal session- we set up camp in Gardner Village and wandered around to see what we could find. It still surprises me every spring that sometimes you can get trees so colorful that you would swear it was fall.
I seem to say it very frequently these days, but I just had so much fun with this couple. I easily had the most fun shooting this couple that I have ever had. They are happy, super stylish people, and are great in front of a camera. Abbey's mom is a photographer, and so Abbey and her siblings pretty much came out of the womb knowing how to smile and pose for photos. I was also super impressed with how poised Abbey and Taylor were under all the stress surrounding the wedding preparations. We had to postpone the first bride and groom session because the alterations place LOST ABBEY'S DRESS (like, gone-no-more-to-be-found lost), so they had to get an identical dress (which happened to be 2 or 3 sizes too big) and alter it to fit her. Then the day we were supposed to shoot it snowed (late May in Utah? par for the course I guess), necessitating another delay. By now it was the week before the wedding, and my week was almost completely booked. We shifted some things around, got it scheduled and showed up for the shoot. Of course, right as we start, Taylor's tuxedo jacket button pops off. It was just one thing after another, and you would not know it to look at these photos.
We shot at the Tahitian Noni Gardens, aka'd as the Morinda Gardens, and I tell you- if I could go back in time and redo my wedding, I would want a dress and veil like Abbey's. They were both stunning, and so was she.
I love how the colors in this one turned out.
I could have shot in these gardens all day...
After the gardens though, we headed over to a private property owned by a friend of Abbey's family. It was a beautiful location.
We got some really lovely colors in the sky when the sun set.
And then the moon rose... life was good.
To see more of Abbey and Taylor's photos, click here.
I met up with Alyssa and her posse in Salt Lake at Temple Square. We managed to schedule a time when they still had all these gorgeous tulips all over everywhere (alas, they have been replaced now with other flowers), which made for some eye-popping color in the backgrounds. Alyssa brought along three friends to help out with the session, and I put them all to work holding flashes and reflectors (future bridal-photo-posse-members be warned). Alyssa was so natural in front of the camera and just so easy to work with that I literally felt like I could shoot her all day.
She had this really fun shawl that she wore with her dress part of the time... I have never seen anything quite like it with a wedding dress.
Between the superbly manicured gardens and the classic architecture, Temple Square is a great place to shoot even when you are not trying to get "temple photos".
I LOVE the exposed bulbs along this exit by the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. The lights, along with her pose, the way her dress is flared, and the combination with the visible flash give it a really "vintage 50's paparazzi" feel to me.
I love spring. Love it. It's just so refreshing after a really long, dull winter.
Click here for the full gallery.
Well, yesterday Lindsey and Justin tied the knot and Justin got the see his beautiful bride in her dress on the wedding day, without any bad-luck-inducing sneak peeks beforehand. Thus, the rest of the world gets to see her now too!
Given the style of the dress, ("Think ball gown. Really really big, old school ball gown." -Bride's response to my question in the planning session) we elected to head downtown to get some classic architecture for the bridal photos. We wandered around a bit, and got some shots I was really happy with.
Stay tuned for the photos from their wedding..... it was a longer one (~10-11 hrs), but we had a great time. Gotta love photography.
The photo above is one of my favorite bridal pics I have ever taken. I love the lighting in it.
The stone and pillars below create a setting that I think perfectly fit the feeling that I think the dress conveys. Something very classic, very I'm-waiting-for-my-Prince-Charming-to-show-up-in-the-carriage.
The dress itself weighed 12 pounds and had well over a dozen layers of tulle. It made for some very neat "just casually relaxing" photos.
Click here to see more bridally-related goodness.
Recently I've been reading a fantastic photography book entitled "Light: Science and Magic". Early on the authors make an observation that really struck home to me.
"In some ways, photographers resemble musicians more than painters, sculptors, and other visual artists. This is because photographers, like musicians, are more interested in the manipulation of energy than that of matter... Photography is the manipulation of light."
I was impressed by this simple statement, and it underlined one of the primary reasons I love photography as much as I do, and especially why I love to shoot on location as opposed to a studio. The ever-changing nature of the light and weather conditions ensures that nothing is EVER quite the same. You can go to the same locations, at the same time, and it's always different to one degree or another.
It was for this reason that when I saw the huge stormy clouds at the beginning of Natalie's bridals I started to get little jitters of delight. It made for some wonderfully dramatic contrasty goodness. (did I put enough modifiers in that last sentence?)
I love working with really serious, sophisticated models.... ;)
The deep purple of this bouquet was gorgeous...
Take a look at the rest of the photos at the full gallery here.
We got lucky with Allison's bridal session and scheduled it on one of the few consistently warm days in the past couple weeks. It definitely makes it more pleasant to shoot when you can feel all your extremities.
Allison's dress was beautiful, with a very classic, traditional feel. We explored the area around Daybreak in West Jordan for this shoot. A couple new locations were discovered, and there was much rejoicing.
She has a great smile, doesn't she?
I love colors in the flare on the lens... I guess this is Darron's treasure at the end of the rainbow? :)
Click here for the full gallery.
