Wedding Photography

Our First Wedding Shoot

On June 23rd of this year we had our first wedding gig! It was a lot of fun, a lot of work and honestly one of the best learning experiences we've had in a long time. We have been quite active in photography for the past year or so, more so than normal. Luckily all the experimentation in styles (landscape, portrait, action shots, and a bit of dabbling in the street photography) has been enough to prepare us for it... weddings are a fun mixture of all of the above.

I did the ceremony and the reception (although I must admit, the reception shots are limited due to the bride and groom giving us a few seats for a delicious dinner) and my wife Melissa did a lot of the "people watching" shots, which came out great.

Luckily, as most first gigs go, we knew Doug and Katelin for many years and Doug had approached me to do the wedding photos. That allowed us to go into the day with a positive mind and really allowed us to focus on the job at hand. 

The wedding took place at Sweet Arrow Lake in Pine Grove, PA. A beautiful place for a wedding: it has a little amphitheater setup right on the edge of the lake and you couldn't have asked for a nicer day. It was around 80 degrees and sunny.

The biggest challenge was the fact that during the ceremony, the large, white, fluffy photogenic clouds were constantly passing in front of the sun. Tough lighting conditions for myself... I chose to do it on a manual camera setting. The photos came out great, although I needed to wrestle the light out of the shadows in some of them; the sun allowed for vibrant and crisp shots and the cloud covered sun shots gave a nice relief from the vibrancy. Exactly what our Hatha photo-philosophy calls for... a little bit of everything, balanced in the end.

We were very happy with our initial purchase of the Canon T3i. We use a 18-55mm lens for wide angle shots and a 55-250mm lens for portraits and close-ups. The camera produces professional quality images and we would highly recommend it to anyone looking to take a step up from the lower quality camera phones and point and shoot cameras. The ability to shoot in RAW format (which is a digital negative and gives you the flexibility to develop photos with Darkroom precision) is indispensable and to anyone who still debates over JPEG vs RAW, I say "Give it up!". RAW is King of photo quality and developing, hands down.

Our favorite part of the ceremony was when the bride and groom exchanged the "You may now kiss the bride" kisses and afterwards they brought their daughter on stage to read vows to her. The lines were heartfelt, genuine and hilarious (Star Wars, string theory and embarrassing her were included). I personally have never heard of that sort of thing happening during a wedding ceremony and I thought that it was a One-of-a-Kind original idea... We're glad they did it and we're honored to be a part of it.

In the end...

What we learned from this experience was invaluable. Having the opportunity to put all of our years of practice into a day's worth of photos was something that you can only understand if you actually do it. I liken it to people with children and people without children. You have no idea what it means to raise a child until you actually do it. No amount of training/reading/research/second hand opinion/advice will help you until you actually do it and experience it. It certainly helps to prepare for the event but until you actually do it, you have no idea.

With this experience we will definitely continue our search for the next wedding. Being new to the business, we are very flexible in pricing. One thing that all potential clients need to understand is that we take our work very seriously. We're not going to put out a handful of photos and tell you to pick from a few (I'm looking at YOU, photographer that took our wedding photos). We're going to capture as many potential moments in time as possible, get the cream of the crop and develop them. Ultimately you have the final say in how we did. Your wedding portfolio is posted to our website and stays there indefinitely. If you see a picture that's in black and white and you would like it in color, let us know. If it's vice versa, let us know. In the end, we are only artists with one goal in mind:

Complete Satisfaction from our Clients.

The only difference between photographers and most other mediums of art is that we have the digital negatives and we can change the final product to something more suitable to your own personal wants and needs.

Take a look at our first Wedding Portfolio and let us know what you think! We love hearing from everyone...

http://goo.gl/6KLxV