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Where’s Waldo??? Who cares. Where’s Sherman? He ran away last week, leaving us high and dry with no sock monkey to photograph. This week John and I went to the carnival to have a day out and who is it we should run into working the booth like some two-bit doxy?……I think the photograph speaks for itself.
Shameful.
This weekend John and I headed down to Point Dume for a wedding shoot. I thought that getting married at a place called Point Dume sounded sort of foreboding BUT to each his own. Maybe there will be pirates.
The above photo is actually THE DOOM – THE point of DOOOOOM. But we weren’t afraid. We beat cancer and some stupid million year old rock formation (or maybe it’s only five thousand years old, it depends if you’re talking to certain Christians or certain scientists or certain Christian Scientists) scare us off. No pirates in sight.
ANYWAY, the mister and I meandered down and got our snap on at Damien and Michelle’s wedding. You might remember Damien as the smiling preacher from the last wedding I did. Well, he got married and was permanently pulled off the market.
That said, he and his lucky bride allowed me to come out and go coco-nuts at their wedding.
Shooting another photographer’s wedding made me a little nervous pervous. It was akin to operating on another doctor or serving your manager at McDonald’s. Luckily, most of Daaaaamien’s friends are photographers so there was no shortage of cameras to be found. Everyone had a camera as nice as mine or better and half the kids six and under had iphones. The coverage on the wedding was berserko.
The day was perfect and sunny and warm and then chilly and then WARM and it was just perfect. You really couldn’t have asked for anything more in an outdoor wedding except maybe somebody walking up and down the aisles whispering, “hotdogs….hotdogs….get yer FREE hotdogs….”
It started off as most weddings do – Damien’s mommy walking him down the aisle – or maybe Damien walked his mom to her seat. Either way, they started at the BACK and ended up at the FRONT and, as you can tell, his mother is absolutely disgusted by the thought of her handsome and debonair son getting married.
You might recognize this fella – the newly married DEREK – he and Emily had the Red Sox wedding once upon a blog…..
And here’s me taking a picture of a guy taking a picture of the bride and her papa and for some reason there is a girl standing on that rock way out there and what’s the deal? Do you think she was sitting down on the rock and then stood up when the bride started walking down?
I wasn’t able to get it but John tells me that he THOUGHT he saw the Reverend Damien getting a little choked up. He couldn’t say for sure though as he was sitting in the back right corner next to this silver fox he was trying to hook up with and was at a funny angle.
And then Michelle was finally front and center. LET’S GET THE PARTY STARTED!!!!
It was weird and pretty awkward because they didn’t seem very excited to see each other. Just by the way they looked at one another you’d assume it was some sort of arranged marriage.
Okay, that’s not QUITE true. The truth is that these too kids were so gooey eyed for each other I thought I was gonna lose my lunch. They are IN LOVE!!!
The type of love that makes you write Jade + John Forever in your diary. I’VE never done that of course……….purely hypothetical here.
They did their own personal vows, which is something I’ve always been a little fond of although we went with the traditional vows at our own wedding, which I ALSO quite enjoy. She read a stunning composition on how much she loves him and what he means to her and then he said something about, “how am I supposed to follow THAT up?” He took out his speech, gave it to his best man and just winged it, which John was extremely impressed by.
Their wedding was just so chill and relaxed. They were having a great time, laughing and making faces.
After her vows, the gentle Damien kissed her hand, which I think may be against standard tradition since I think you’re only supposed to HOLD hands until after you’re officially married. I don’t know. I’m not gonna cast stones.
I like this photo because I imagine that the face Michelle is making is a face that Damien has seen a million times.
Afterwards, a little peck on the nose……
…..which is beyond adorable……and then the big finish.
The new duo exits Point Dume unscathed with their dog entail and everyone applauds. I love weddings!
They just marched right up the sandy aisle and then towards the setting sun. Once they got really far away they stopped to enjoy a moment to themselves……and then fifteen photographers all charged them and took a million and one photos of the extremely intimate moment.
Below (on the right) is the house where the reception was held. BE-A-U-tiful place. Incredible. Ridiculous. I really can’t describe it any other way. Unreal inside and out.
For her wedding gift Damien wrote a song that was sung by one of their friends. How cute is that? You can see her playing in the back there….
This shot is completely out of focus but I love it anyways. I know – the worst kind of photographic blasphemy……but it’s my blog………and I’ll post what I want to. I love the motion of it.
One of the fun parts about being a candid / documentary style photographer is that I perch myself on a wall and then, essentially, just spy on people, taking pictures of them. Only, instead of keeping the pictures for myself and being really creepy, I give them back. I am silent as a fly, graceful as a cougar, as discreet as – AH! I’VE BEEN SPOTTED!!!!! I’M OUT!!
Congratulations Damien and Michelle. Your wedding was fantastic. Thanks for letting me be a part of it!
Lovely couple and amazing photos!
Travis
Sherman was trumped by the big fat greek wedding……so this week’s photo is brought to you by Malori. From her lips to your ears………
The title was a toss up, “Save the Endangered Sherman Species.” or “Adopt a Sherman Today.” but I thought there should be some kind of Saturday Sherman photo- EVEN IF I HAD TO TAKE IT MYSELF!
The ladies LOVE The Sherman Tank.
Our clients will often ask us what the difference between a “raw image” and a “custom image” that’s ready for print/web/email is. So now, in fabulous Technicolor, allow me to demonstrate for you the entire working process from FART to ART.
BELOW is one of my most very favoritest processes and I’m going to show it to you. LET’S GET STARTED!!! WEEEEE!!!!!!
This is an SOOTC (that’s robot talk for “Straight. Out. Of. The. Camera). It means the image is just as it appeared when I took it – no muse, no magic. It’s okay (I think) but it can be so MUCH better. Too flat, lifeless and no *ZING*. You can tell I’m a pro by all the professional jargon I use.
Let’s teach this photog to be all it can be.
So the first thing I would do on an image like this is run a great little action called “Fresh and Colorful” from the Pioneer Woman actions set*. This will boost the contrast and color saturation. I recommend using actions sparingly and only on an image by image basis.
*An “action” is a pre-set in Photoshop that you click and boom-biggity-boom-boom it runs a bunch of different filters over your image. That said, you still have to tweak different features – there is no magic “fix-it” button. This is not Staples.
The above action gives us THIS effect. It was a little much though so I pulled back the opacity t0 30%.
Next I added a warming filter. It makes the skin look nice and…….well…….warm.
I usually don’t do the following step, but for this particular image I decided to add a Saturation layer as well as darken the luminosity of the green channel so that the grass was darker and then desaturated the yellow channel so that the grass was green (not army fatigue green, but grass green).
Now we’re getting pretty close to the final image. There’s just a few finishing touches…
First I’ll apply the Quick Edge Burn (also from The Pioneer Woman actions set) and then again lower the opacity so that it doesn’t look like we’re shooting through a telescope.
Finally, I finish it off with a slight curve to lighten and boost the contrast JUST a bit.
SO THAT’S THAT!!! Not too bad.
Here’s a quick look at the before and after.
BEFORE: raw image (OR, as we’ve all learned: SOOTC)
And AFTER: custom image
ZING! Pretty snazy.
So why all the fuss? Sure they look better but is it really THAT big of a deal?
To us that is a resounding…………….well, duh.
Every one of our images that we send out into the world, whether it be via print, email, Facebook or singing telegram is a direct business card and represents our company in it’s entirety. We want to be sure that an image is top notch before it heads out. If IT looks half cocked, so do we. And we don’t wanna look half cocked. We don’t even like saying the WORD half cocked. It’s embarrassing.
You only get one chance to make a first impression.
!!!!!!!!!!! love !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!